''Cardboard Piano'' is a play by

Hansol Jung Hansol Jung is a South Korean translator and playwright. Jung is a recipient the Whiting Award in drama and three of her plays were listed on the 2015 Kilroys' List. Jung is a member of the Ma-Yi Theater Writers' Lab and was a Hodder Fellow at ...

. It premiered in 2016 at the

Humana Festival of New American Plays Humana Festival of New American Plays is an internationally renowned festival that celebrates the contemporary American playwright. Produced annually in Louisville, Kentucky by Actors Theatre of Louisville, this festival showcases new theatrica ...

Summary

''Cardboard Piano'' begins on

New Year's Eve In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Eve, also known as Old Year's Day or Saint Sylvester's Day in many countries, is the evening or the entire day of the last day of the year, on 31 December. The last day of the year is commonly referred to ...

1999 in

Northern Uganda The Northern Region is one of four regions in the country of Uganda. As of Uganda's 2014 census, the region's population was . Districts As of 2010, the Northern Region had 30 districts A district is a type of administrative division tha ...

. Chris, the daughter of American

Christian missionaries A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such as ...

, meets Adiel, a Ugandan teenager, secretly in her parents' church. The two have gathered to get married and they record their marriage vows on a tape recorder. They are interrupted by Pika, a thirteen-year-old child soldier running from his overseer. The girls tend to Pika, as his ear was recently cut off. Soon, a soldier arrives. Pika hides, but the encounter goes badly. Pika emerges from his hiding place and smashes the soldier's head in with a rock. Relieved to be alive, Chris and Adiel kiss. Believing homosexuality to be a sin, Pika shoots and kills Adiel. The second act takes place in 2014 in the same church as Act 1. Paul, a Ugandan pastor, and his wife Ruth are celebrating their wedding anniversary. Chris arrives to visit the church her parents built and bury her father's ashes there. As Ruth tells Chris about her husband and eventually reveals that Paul is Pika. Paul and Chris argue but are interrupted by the arrival of Francis, a young gay man whom Paul has turned away from the church for his homosexuality. They all fight, leading to Paul leaving the church. The next morning, Ruth returns the wedding tape from 1999, which Pika has kept, to Chris before she leaves the country.

Characters

* Christina "Chris" Englewood - a sixteen-year-old white American * Adiel Nakalinzi - a sixteen-year-old Ugandan girl * Pika - a child soldier * Soldier * Paul - a pastor, later revealed to be Pika, grown-up * Ruth - Paul's wife * Francis - a young gay man Jung specifies that Adiel and Ruth, Francis and Pika, and Paul and Soldier should be played by the same actor.

Development

Jung wrote ''Cardboard Piano'' during a residency at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. She was inspired to write the play after 2013 news stories about

Joseph Kony Joseph Rao Kony (likely born 1961) is a Ugandan militant who founded the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Christian fundamentalist organization, designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Peacekeepers, the European Union and various ...

as well as Uganda's anti-homosexuality legislature passed in that year.

Production history

''Cardboard Piano'' premiered on March 25, 2016

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

. It was directed by

Leigh Silverman Leigh Silverman is an American director for the stage, both off-Broadway and on Broadway theatre, Broadway. She was nominated for the 2014 Tony Award, Best Direction of a Musical for the musical ''Violet (musical), Violet'' and the 2008 Drama Desk ...

and starred Briana Pozner as Chris, Nike Kadri as Adiel and Ruth, Jamar Williams as Pika, and

Michael Luwoye Michael Luwoye (; born December 19, 1990) is an American actor of Nigerian descent, known for playing the title role in the Broadway musical ''Hamilton''. In 2022, was nominated for the Children's and Family Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice Perfor ...

as Paul. In 2018, Jacole Kitchen directed the West Coast premiere of ''Cardboard Piano'' with Diversionary Theatre in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

. The play was also put on by Park Square Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota. In May of the same year, Caryn Desai directed it at the

International City Theater The International City Theatre (ICT) in Long Beach, California, is a professional, non-profit theatre company located in the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. Shashin Desai Shashin Desai was the founding artistic director of ICT. He was educate ...

. In 2019, the play was performed with

TimeLine Theatre A timeline is a display of a list of events in chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events. Timelines can use any suitable scale representin ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

under the direction of Mechelle Moe. Later that year, Benny Sato Ambush directed ''Cardboard Piano'' at the

New Repertory Theatre The New Repertory Theatre (New Rep) is a Boston-area regional theater company founded in 1984, it has produced more than 70 East Coast, US, or World premieres. Since 2005 New Rep has been the resident company at the Mosesian Center for the Arts i ...

Watertown, Massachusetts Watertown is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and is part of Greater Boston. The population was 35,329 in the 2020 census. Its neighborhoods include Bemis, Coolidge Square, East Watertown, Watertown Square, and the West End. Watertown ...

References

{{Authority control 2016 plays LGBT-related plays Plays set in Uganda English-language plays Plays set in the 1990s Plays set in the 21st century