Cops and Hello Out There presented by American Century at Gunston Arts Center

The American Century Theater begins the new year and its final season with two tense one-act plays in an evening that echoes the explosive issues emanating from Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Oakland and beyond. In Cops by Terry Curtis Fox, police find themselves in a shoot-out with a young African-American male, and in William Saroyan’s classic Hello Out There, a wrongly imprisoned young black man tries to find the best of humanity while trying to survive in a small Texas town. Both are encore productions: Hello Out There garnered the company’s first Helen Hayes nomination in its second season, and Cops was among the company’s best-received shows, placing the audience in the middle of violent action as only a black box theater can.