Marcus Gardley, poet-playwright was born and bread on the rolling hills, lively churches, and moody-blue streets of Oakland, California. He is a professor of Creative Writing at Columbia University and works extensively at middle schools and high schools in New York. He has received commissions from the Yale Repertory Theatre, Playwright’s Horizon, The Shotgun Players, South Coast Repertory and Second Stage Theatre. He is the recipient of the Bay Area playwrights Fellowship Foundation Award, the Eugene O’ Neil Memorial Scholarship and the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize. He graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 2004. Mr. Gardley’s new play Every Tongue Confess .

Conceived as a hall for the birthing of new plays, Arena Stage’s newest space, the Kogod Cradle, warmly embraces that essential function with its inaugural presentation: the world premiere of Marcus Gardley’s folkloric exploration of hate crimes in the American South, “every tongue confess.”

The symbolic importance of this moment in Arena’s evolution should not go unstressed: The company is pursuing a hyper-ambitious path as it stretches its legs in its gloriously re-engineered surroundings in Southwest Washington, courtesy of a $135 million makeover. So perhaps it is fitting that the first original work in this beautiful Cradle feels as if it’s still finding its way, too.

Gardley’s play, bolstered by a top-notch cast that includes Phylicia Rashad, Jason Dirden and Leslie Kritzer, tries through lyrical speeches, magical spirituality and densely interlocked subplots to locate the redemptive potential in a horrific set of circumstances: the serial burning of black churches in the Alabama of the mid-1990s. Read More