Sur
❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

Adapted from the short story by beloved science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin, Sur follows a 1909 expedition to the South Pole by a group of women driven by a passion to see Antarctica with their own eyes. The women travel in secret – theirs is a radical plan, considering the constraints placed by society and family. They travel by ship, set up camp on the ice, pull sledges, scale glaciers, and set out to reach the South Pole. What happens next, they promise never to tell. The story is presented as a report, a factual recounting of a journey. Could it have really happened? And if not, then why?

In 2025, a collective of women brought Le Guin’s fantastical but harsh Antartica to life, transforming the Ellen Stewart Theater into a living breathing world of icebergs, glaciers, blizzards, and horizonless expanses.

Production History
March-April, 2025
La MaMa (New York, NY)

Credits
Adapted from a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin
Devised by the company

Co-directed by Megan Paradis Hanley and Onni Johnson
Script Developed by Onni Johnson, Mattie Barber-Bockelman, and the company

Performed by
Rasheedat Badejo
Mattie Barber-Bockelman
Marina Celander
Katherine Paola De La Cruz
Sara Galassini
Allison Hiroto
Kim Ima
Onni Johnson
Amanda Reynoso
Qingan Zhang

Producer - Kim Ima
Outreach and Development - Maud Dinand
Production Stage Manager - Berit Johnson
Projection Design - Erato Tzavara
Set Design - Leah Ogawa
Costume Design - Gabriel Berry
Composer and Sound Design - Sara Galassini
Props - Kim Ima and Sabine Lola Stock
Associate Set Design - Qingan Zhang
Assistant Sound Designer - Bennett Lin
Associate Costume Designer - Caity Mulkearns
Seamstress - Meagan Woods
Wardrobe - Christiana Osborne
Sound Tech Team - Denis Zabiyaka and Sophie Yuqing Nie
Light Board Operator - Kevin Malloy
Social Media - Sabine Lola Stock

Press:
”Whimsy and fury hailing from Mother Nature herself sweep you off your feet in this dashing tale, SUR, of how, in 1909, nine brave women of great magnetism and fortitude search for the South Pole.” –Bianca Lopez, Theatre Beyond Broadway

Illustration by Ursula K. Le Guin, published in The New Yorker, January 24, 1982