Theatre and English Professor Featured on Philadelphia’s NPR Affiliate
WHYY highlighted Gabriel Jason Dean’s play “Rift, or White Lies,” which tells the story of two brothers, one of whom is incarcerated. The actors playing the brothers switch roles each time the show is performed.By: Meghan Kita Wednesday, April 16, 2025 02:33 PM
Assistant Professor of English Literatures and Writing and Theatre Gabriel Jason Dean and Associate Professor of Theatre Leticia Robles-Moreno teach a workshop in Lima, Peru, in May 2024.The WHYY article “Brother vs. brother: InterAct Theatre’s ‘Rift’ experiments with radical empathy in Philadelphia” highlights the Philadelphia run of “Rift, or White Lies,” a play written by Assistant Professor of English Literatures and Writing and Theatre Gabriel Jason Dean.
The play has two characters: “Inside Brother,” an incarcerated man who joins a white supremacist gang while in prison, and “Outside Brother,” his liberal sibling who is a novelist and a professor. The work is loosely autobiographical, based on Dean and his own incarcerated brother.
“I wrote the first lines toward this play 21 years ago and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to crack this story,” Dean told WHYY. “I started it as — I wouldn’t have described it this way then, but as therapy. Once I realized I was a writer, well, maybe there’s a story here.”
At Muhlenberg, Dean is the artistic director of the ’Berg New Works play series, which showcases new works by Muhlenberg playwrights each spring. He teaches Introduction to Playwriting, Introduction to Screenwriting, Advanced Playwriting, Advanced Screenwriting, Writing for Musical Theatre, Playwriting for Youth, and numerous theatre dramatic literature scholarship courses.
“Rift, or White Lies” debuted last year in West Orange, New Jersey, but this is the first run that has the actors who play the brothers switching roles each time the show is performed. The Philadelphia performances continue through April 27.
At Muhlenberg, Dean is the artistic director of the ’Berg New Works play series, which showcases new works by Muhlenberg playwrights each spring. He teaches Introduction to Playwriting, Introduction to Screenwriting, Advanced Playwriting, Advanced Screenwriting, Writing for Musical Theatre, Playwriting for Youth, and numerous theatre dramatic literature scholarship courses.
