Live Reading: “Cold Was the Ground” October 16, 2026

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Join us at the American Writers Museum for a special live reading of a new play in production from Painted Pistachio Productions, Cold Was the Ground. Enjoy a full staged reading with the cast (80 mins), followed by a discussion and Q&A with playwright Doug DuBrin, director Eileen Tull, and Dr. Andrew Johnston, VP of Museum Experience at the Adler Planetarium.

About Cold Was the Ground:

The play’s title is derived from the seminal early 20th-century blues artist Blind Willie Johnson’s tune “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.” The song itself is one of the numerous cultural ambassadors from Earth to the cosmos engraved on both Voyager spacecrafts’ Golden Record.

In the play, a boy, Tanner, shortly after enduring extraordinary trauma, starts to mumble seeming gibberish in his sleep and elsewhere. His single, similarly traumatized father, Sean, frantically, gradually, begins to decipher that the “gibberish” has a legitimate source: The Golden Record of the Voyager II. What follows is the untangling of the mystery.

CAST:

Sean: Stef Brundage
Tanner: Aurie Henry
Dr. Roy: Rory Jobst
Monica: Amanda Winston
Chad: Jonathan Crabtree

Assistant Director: Jo Hoagland