Horizon Theatre Company to Present Regional Premiere of THE LIGHT

Recipient of the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Play, Loy Webb's debut work, The Light, hits the Horizon stage from March 19th-April 17th (Press Opening March 25th). Horizon's regional premiere of The Light is an intimate, funny, and powerful look at love today in all its complexity, featuring two of Atlanta's most dynamic actors, Enoch King and Cynthia D. Barker.

A surprise marriage proposal takes an unexpected turn that upends the world of Genesis and Rashad, forcing them to confront secrets from the past. The Light is a roller coaster journey of laughter, romance and reckoning that unfolds in real time, peeling away layers of truth, doubt, pain and ultimately, the power of love.

Horizon Theatre Company's performances start March 19, 2022 (Press Opening March 25, 2022) and run until April 17, 2022, at Horizon in Little Five Points/Inman Park (1083 Austin Avenue N.E., Atlanta, GA 30307, at the corner of Euclid and Austin Avenues). Performances are Wednesday through Friday at 8 pm, Saturdays at 3 and 8 pm, Sundays at 5 pm. Tickets and information are available at www.horizontheatre.com or 404-584-7450.

"The Light is a present-day love story complicated by the many things that go unsaid," explains co-director Marguerite Hannah, Horizon's Associate Artistic Producer. "The characters explore many questions about love universally and the Black community in specific. They unearth the questions we have been taught not to ask: Is surviving our past enough? Is a Black woman's accomplishments and personal strengths a strong enough salve for emotional wounds? Is gender bias a tangible issue for a community historically defined by racial discrimination?"

"Genesis and Rashad are each doing their best in a relationship based on love and mutual respect, but together they will find that actively making an effort to love and understand each other, including their pasts, with the cultural spotlight of the "Me Too" Movement will lead to a deeper level of honesty and commitment that will change them both forever."

In addition to her sixteen-year tenure on Horizon's staff, Ms. Hannah is producer/director of Horizon's groundbreaking play development project: New Georgia Woman Project: Black Women Speak, and a veteran actor with credits nationwide. At Horizon, audiences have seen her in Night Blooms, Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery (Suzi Award for Outstanding Production of a Play), The Waffle Palace, and Freed Spirits. Marguerite is sharing directing duties for The Light with co-director Lydia Fort, currently an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Emory University. Fort holds an MFA in directing from the University of Washington and has directed professionally at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Gable Stage (FL), Actor's Express (GA), Perseverance Theatre (AK), Urban Stages (NY), Classical Theatre of Harlem and more.

Inspired by the sexual assault allegations surrounding Nate Parker during "Birth of a Nation," The Light sparks a necessary conversation not only between the couple in the play but among its audience members about sexual violence and the treatment of women in male-dominated spaces. It is a play about the intricacies of truth, and how to take a leap of faith when you don't know who or what to believe. When asked about her writing, Loy Webb responded, "I write to point toward hope. I want my work to be a neon sign in the darkness: This way out. This way to hope."

Loy Webb is a Chicago-born playwright, attorney, and theatre journalist, now also working as a television writer on the series NOS4A2 (2020) and The Ms. Pat Show (2021). The Light premiered in 2018 at the New Colony in Chicago and had its Off-Broadway Premiere in January 2019 at MCC Theater in NYC. It was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play and received a Chicago Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Play.

Horizon and Atlanta favorites Enoch King and Cynthia D. Barker star as loving partners Rashad, a firefighter and single dad, and Genesis, an elementary school principal. Suzi Bass award nominee Cynthia D. Barker has been seen at Horizon in Citizens Market, How to Use A Knife, Uprising, Elemeno Pea, Third Country, and Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery. Other recent regional credits include Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous (Alliance Theatre and Hartford Stage-CT), Paradise Blue (True Colors Theatre), The Royale (Theatrical Outfit), A Christmas Carol (Alliance Theatre), and The Mountaintop (Aurora Theatre). Atlanta native and film star Enoch King has been part of Horizon for nearly two decades, with credits including Sweet Water Taste, Constellations, The Waffle Palace, and many years of The Santaland Diaries. He has also been seen recently in Toni Stone (Alliance Theatre), The Bluest Eye (Synchronicity Theatre), Skeleton Crew (True Colors Theatre, American Stage-FL), The Christians (Actor's Express), The Canterbury Tales (Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse) and on screen in Drumline, House of Payne, and BET's Let's Stay Together.