Swarm Cell
Twenty-five years from now, Tomasina — pregnant and undocumented — forges an unlikely alliance with a deaf homeless woman inside an exploitative online-retailer warehouse. A loose retelling of The Grapes of Wrath, for the age of same-day delivery.
Tomasina doesn’t see herself as a leader. But the voices she hears and the injustice she sees compel her to lead. Following Steinbeck’s migrants into the machinery of modern fulfillment, Swarm Cell asks what has actually changed in ninety years of American labor — and what a person is worth when the algorithm is counting.
Production history
World premiere at Greenway Court Theatre, Los Angeles, January 30 – February 28, 2016 — presented by Greenway Arts Alliance and written with contributions from students at Fairfax High School. Directed by Robert Castro, with an all-women company of nine: Maritxell Carrero, Raquel McPeek, Bianca Lemaire, Diana Elizabeth Jordan, Caro Zeller, Tania Camargo, Cheryl Ann Gottselig, Sheresade Poblet, and Mariana Montes.
Scenic and costume design by Victoria Petrovich — her set storyboards are in the gallery below — lighting by Jose Lopez · sound by John Zalewski · production stage manager Matthew Sanchez · producing director Jason Bruffy.
Reviewed in the Los Angeles Times and Stage Raw; HuffPost’s preview called it “one of the first must-see events in the Los Angeles 2016 theatrical calendar.”
