Tashera Pravato
Tashera Pravato is a Columbia-based actor and designer with a love for bold storytelling and theater that creates connection. A company member at Trustus Theatre, she recently made her assistant directing debut with Clyde's and has appeared in People, Places & Things, Down in the Holler, and Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play. Her work also includes costume design for Blues for an Alabama Sky and producing the short film It Takes a Village. A U.S. Army veteran, Tashera is passionate about stories that make space for voices, experiences, and joy too often pushed to the margins. She is proud to support new work through Jasper's Play Right Project and Columbia's vibrant arts community. Offstage, she's mom to two brilliant daughters who remind her why stories matter.
Bonita Peeples
Bonita Peeples had the great fortune of sharing the stage earlier this year with our esteemed playwright in The Nia Co./Columbia Children's Theatre collaboration of Wiley and the Hairy Man. In 2019, they also worked together on Harlem South: A View Through The Lens (Live at the CMA), a jazz and theatrical celebration of photographer, Richard Smauel Roberts.
Over the years, Bonita has been an actor of stage and screen, singer, forensic actor, teaching artist, and adjudicator for the Richland One Visual and Performing Arts Dept. However, her greatest role is that of Momma to Bryce and Braylen.
The Counting Table
A Play by DK Turner
Premiere Staged Reading
Sunday September 13th at 4 pm
Columbia Music Festival Association
914 Pulaski Street
Reserve your seat now!
In this sixth installment of the Jasper Play Right Project, 2026’s winning playwright D. K. Turner invites the reader and the viewer into one of the most intimate settings in the life of a family—the dinner table. But like most tables sitting in kitchens throughout the American South, this table serves many functions, one of which is a place to reconcile expectations and interpretations of the past and the future. The Counting Table is the story of how one extended Carolina family comes to terms with the legacy of both responsibilities and worldly possessions. Pull up a chair to Mama Rut’s table. The cornbread is cooling and the rice is starting to steam.