Preview: A series of solo shows at Synchronicity explores ‘women’s adventuring spirits’

Earlier this year, staff at Synchronicity Theatre learned they would be losing their primary space at One Peachtree Pointe in Midtown — the home where they had remained a dozen years, staging “smart, gutsy, bold” plays to uplift women’s voices. At that point, the company needed to leap without a net, says co-founder and Producing Artistic Director Rachel May.

“We knew we were facing at least a year in transition as we were finding a new space,” she says. “We really started to think about what that looked like and where we would be.”

The predicament pushed them to think creatively, as challenges often do. The company had an annex space with offices and a rehearsal stage.

“We said, ‘Well, what happens if we turn our rehearsal room into a little salon-style theater? What sort of projects would be a good fit for that?’ It’s very intimate, close and fun and just a really different experience.”

The answer was to seek out local women who had solo projects in development which could be finished, fully staged and premiered in the 40-seat space. The result is Served Solo @ The Annex, four one-woman shows, each running for one weekend in November, March, May and June.

All the writers have a connection to Synchronicity, but some came as a surprise — a board member (Laura King), a former managing director (Lee Nowell), a director and actor (Dawn V. Eskridge) and the company’s own patron services manager (Suehyla El-Attar Young).

“Some of these folks, they’re writers, but they haven’t performed in a long time, and they’re performing, or they’ve performed but haven’t done a one-woman piece,” May says.

Each writer came on board with a project at a different stage of development, but May stresses all four will be full productions (not readings or workshops) by the time they open. And all of them, she said, complement one another.

“They’re about women and identity … about finding themselves in new roles and what kind of bravery and imagination it takes to confront these new roles,” she says. “They’re all about discovery and … courage and kindness and exploration … [about] women’s adventuring spirits within their own lives.”

The first in the series of four, The Black-and-White Widow, opened November 12 and runs through November 15.

Written and performed by Laura King, The Black-and-White Widow is a semi-autobiographical solo performance about King’s sometimes comical, sometimes tragic struggle to navigate widowhood after losing her husband. Stumbling through the process in real life, she discovered that society holds narrow options for widows: Either they are to be the kind that walks around in all black, forever grieving, or the kind that pushes through with their wit and their spunk.

Despite the heavy subject matter, May insists, “There’s just a lot of humor in it.” The piece dives into “all the ways that grief is ridiculous and insane.”

The second in the series, Kindness: An Instruction Manual (March 18 through March 21), written and performed by Lee Nowell, draws on stories from Nowell’s own life, including the day a dog saved her family. By revisiting seemingly unrelated memories, Nowell traces the threads between them to show how kindness can alter a life.

Dawn V. Eskridge’s Rip Current (May 20 through May 23) emerges from a traumatic childhood experience in which Eskridge was caught in a rip current. She learned an important lesson from the experience: Sometimes surrendering to the current is wiser than thrashing against it. That wisdom took on new meaning for Eskridge when she became a caregiver for an aging parent while trying to juggle her own life.

“I think, in a lot of ways, [the production] speaks to a particularly female experience of being a caregiver and being the one who holds things together,” May says.

The last in the series trades lyricism for laughs with a play that borders on a stand-up comedy. Nope. That’s Just My First Name (June 17 through June 20) by Suehyla El-Attar Young uses humor to revisit her upbringing in Mississippi as the daughter of two Egyptian-Muslim parents. Moving from kindergarten roll call to a traffic stop in the deep South, Young recounts the moments when her name, religion, politics and identity became things to hide or soften.

“Suehyla has always had a very sardonic sense of humor, and she’s always been outspoken,” says May, who has known Young for 25 years. “It’s really funny … she really takes you on that journey of what it was like to have grown up [like that].”

The play, produced in collaboration with Horizon Theatre Company, doesn’t follow a chronological order or even a consistent one. Its format is to let the audience decide which stories to tell and in what order.

Taken together, the four shows offer a range of voices in a room with just 40 seats built for intimacy.

“I really love that they’re all so distinct,” May says. “It’ll be like a flight of wines — a flight of stories.”

Where and When

The Served Solo series at Synchronicity Theatre’s Annex begins this week and runs through June 2027; check the website for exact dates and times. Tickets, $25. 1586 Piedmont Ave. NE.

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Danielle Charbonneau is ArtsATL’s senior editor of art + design and dance. She joined ArtsATL following her time as an arts reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She holds an MA in specialized journalism in the arts from the University of Southern California. She is known for her curiosity, craft and wanderlust.