THE FUTURE IS FEMALE FESTIVAL to Celebrate Women Nationwide This March

The FUTURE IS FEMALE FESTIVAL kicks off with a Flagship Event in New York City at the University Settlement's Speyer Hall, 184 Eldridge St. (corner of Rivington), on Friday, March 3rd at 7:30pm.

This flagship event features award-winning and produced playwrights such as Sara Cooper (THE MEMORY SHOW), Georgina Escobar (SWEEP), Amina Henry (THE ANIMALS), Geraldine Inoa (FRAGMENTS), Winter Miller (IN DARFUR), Riti Sachdeva (THE RUG DEALER), and Caridad Svich (12 OPHELIAS, OBIE for lifetime achievement), as well as festival creator M.M. Kagan who is best known for her popular blog on gender in the entertainment industry, SubmittingLikeAMan.com. Distinguished directors Emily Mendelsohn, Illana Stein, and Mo Zhou will each helm two or three of the event's short works.

Theaters, playwrights, directors and actors throughout the US and Canada have united during Women's History Month to present THE FUTURE IS FEMALE FESTIVAL, a series of staged readings and productions of 10-minute plays written by women of all backgrounds on the subject "The Future is Female" and what that means to them. The Festival will showcase work by over 130 women to 2,000 audience members.

"Instead of spending March celebrating women's history, we'll celebrate women's futures," says festival creator and writer Mya Kagan.

Nationwide, the festival will have 27 outposts in 18 cities across the US and Canada. Most outposts will donate a portion of their proceeds to charities of their own choice. Others offer free or pay-what-you-can tickets. Each outpost produces and selects plays and actors using the criteria of the festival.

In addition to the 27 official outposts and their curated short plays, the Festival also offers a simpler way to participate, in which anyone can create a "pop-up" outpost using different short plays submitted in an open call, and made available online.

"It's a way for people to be involved throughout the festival month even if there isn't an outpost event near them. They can sign up on our website and invite friends over to have a casual play reading in their own living rooms, community center, or college dorm," says Kagan.

The festival was built by three women: Creator & Producer Mya Kagan, Co-Producer Lauren Orkus, and Social Media Manager Sarah Cosgrove. The trio volunteered their time out of the desire to do something actionable and positive for fellow women artists and women themselves, at a time when it seemed more necessary than ever.

For reservations to the NYC flagship event, visit Eventbrite: The Future is Female Festival. All proceeds will benefit charity.

Complete list of participants: 29th Street Playwrights Collective and Goddard Riverside (NYC, NY), Arts Intersect (Rhinecliff, NY), Broken Mirror at The Rose Theater (Omaha, NE), Clamour Theatre Company (Clay County, FL), Collective 48 in association with Mildred's Umbrella Theatre (Houston, TX), Dark Matter Productions (NYC, NY), East End Fringe Festival (Riverhead, NY), FM Productions and The Gender Empowerment Project/Chicago Dramatists (Chicago, IL), Grace and Grit Women's Theatre Collective (Minneapolis, MN), The Greenfield Collective (Philadelphia, PA), Handsome Alice Theatre (Calgary, AB Canada), Houston's Theatre Women Present (Houston, TX), Keegan Theatre (Washington D.C.), Lost Girls Theatre (Miami, FL), Milton G. Bassin Performing Arts Center at York College (NYC, NY), MultiStages (NYC, NY), Nifer Honeycutt (Chicago, IL), Nu Sass Productions and Aprilis (Washington D.C.), Onion Man Productions (Atlanta, GA), Pretty Shrew Productions in partnership with the Playwrights' Center (Minneapolis, MN), The Punk Theatre of Allentown (Allentown, PA), San Francisco Stage & Film (Santa Maria, CA), San Francisco State University School of Theatre & Dance (San Francisco, CA), Southern Illinois University Playwriting MFA & PhD Programs (Carbondale, IL), The Future Is Female Festival (New York, NY), Women's Center for Creative Work (Los Angeles, CA).

For further information, see TheFutureIsFemaleFestival.com.