Mountain Xpress

 

April 25, 2024

From Mountain Xpress:

UNCA professor writes play 

A God in the Waters, a new play by award-winning playwright, poet, memoirist and fiction writer David Brendan Hopes, will run Thursday-Saturday, May 9-18, 7:30 p.m., at the Bebe Theater.

Hopes teaches literature at UNC Asheville and is known to theatergoers for his plays Washington Place and Ben & Angela, which ran at the Bebe Theater last fall.

A God in the Waters follows an egocentric maestro whose family life is upended at the reception for his final performance, exploring themes of family and the making of art. “I’d been working with the Asheville Symphony for a while, and the two things blended together,” says Hopes. “What surprised me most was to discover, through the course of writing, that I really do have strong opinions about what makes good art and bad art. I’d thought that doing it and having opinions about it were somehow inimical.”

Hopes has been an Asheville resident for over 40 years, and the region is responsible for his turn as a writer. “I never wrote plays or prose until I came here, but whether that was in the air here or just a natural progression is difficult to know. My recent novels The Falls of the Wyona and The One with the Beautiful Necklaces have a fully Appalachian setting, so certainly in the sense of scenery it has made a whole lot of difference.”

A God in the Waters is produced by the Sublime Theater. Seating for the six performances is limited.

The Bebe Theater is at 20 Commerce St. For information visit avl.mx/dlz.