Image: The Mellon Grant for Building Southern Intersectional Futures and Maria Chryssopoulos present Yesterday is Dead, an original one-woman show. Written by, directed by, and starring Maria Chryssopoulos. The first performance will be held in the Cellar Theatre of the Fine Arts Building at 255 Baldwin St. in Athens GA on Sunday, April 27 at 6:30 p.m. The second performance will be held at Out Front Theatre at 999 Brady Ave NW, Atlanta, GA 30318 on Monday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m. The show will be featured at the Lavender Festival from July 16-20. All performances are free and open to the public. Maria Chryssopoulos, a graduating senior at the University of Georgia, is bringing history, humor, and queerness to the stage with her new one-woman show, Yesterday is Dead, premiering April 27 in Athens and April 28 in Atlanta. Funded through a Mellon Grant for Building Southern Intersectional Futures via the UGA Institute for Women’s Studies, Chryssopoulos created the piece to examine the parallels between her life as a modern-day lesbian and that of a young queer woman in the 1920s. The show draws inspiration from an unpublished manuscript titled Yesterday is Dead by Ellen Lois Frazar, discovered by Chryssopoulos in the UGA Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The manuscript follows Joel, a romantic and curious college student in the 1920s, as she discovers her love of literature, pants, and other women. “Through the themes of loneliness, grief, and hope, Maria and Joel’s intermingled lives become a comical escape to discovery, leaving audiences questioning what really has changed in over a hundred years,” Chryssopoulos said. “When Maria excitedly spoke to me about finding this unpublished 1920s lesbian manuscript in the UGA Special Collections Library, I knew it was ripe for her to build a performance piece examining the arc of history that connected Frazer's journey as a lesbian to Maria's,” said George Contini, UGA professor of theatre. “The Mellon Grant offered the perfect opportunity to develop a meaningful project as she entered her final year at UGA.” Chryssopoulos, who recently worked with Out Front Theatre as an assistant stage manager for its production of Kinky Boots and as a performer in Xanadu as Calliope, aims to challenge societal norms around gender and sexuality through her work, often finding humor in the contradictions of identity. More information can be found at mariachryssopoulos.com and via her UGA Senior Showcase profile: ugatheatre.com/chryssopoulos-maria. Contact: Maria Chryssopoulos, maria.chryssopoulos@gmail.com
