UGA Theatre production: In The Blood by Suzan Lori-Parks

UGA Theatre presents “In the Blood” by Suzan-Lori Parks. Directed by guest artist Martin Damien Wilkins. Performances will be held February 15-16 and 19-23 at 8 p.m. and February 17 & 24 at 2:30 p.m in the Cellar Theatre in UGA’s historic Fine Arts Building. Tickets are $16 and $12 for UGA students. Tickets can be purchased online at www.ugatheatre.com/blood, via phone at 706-542-4400, or in person at the Performing Arts Center or Tate Center box offices.

Originally published in 1999, “In the Blood” is a modern reimagining of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” that transposes its own version of Hester Prynne to modern-day America. Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne is a puritan in seventeenth century Massachusetts Bay, and on the surface seems worlds apart from the play’s Hester, who is a homeless illiterate woman, struggling to survive in the looming metropolis of New York while trying to raise five children. In their different times and places, however, characters are forced to contend with the challenges presented by poverty, discrimination, and oppression.