FIGHTING WORDS FESTIVAL and THE DUCHESS OF MALFI Set For Babes With Blades Theatre Company's 2023 Season

Babes With Blades Theatre Company's (BWBTC) has announced its 2023 season. Now in its 26th year, the Babes With Blades latest season includes an extended run of its new works festival, the Fighting Words Festival, June 17 - 25 at The Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa, and The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster and directed by Artistic Director Hayley Rice from September 8 - October 21 at The Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard St.

"Babes With Blades Theatre Company has expanded our free, new works festival to allow for more of our audience to contribute to developing the new stories we are telling," states Artistic Director Hayley Rice (she/her/hers). "New works are essential to our company and audience feedback is critical to any new script's development. For this round of Fighting Words, BWBTC is presenting three incredible scripts that run the gamut of representation for marginalized voices such as cultural, gender and socio-economic status and their intersectionalities. We are also taking a queer look at Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. While that script might seem like an unusual or even antiquated selection for BWBTC, telling a story about a femme identified person overcoming toxic masculinity captures why BWBTC was founded more than 20 years ago."

FIGHTING WORDS FESTIVAL

JUNE 17 - 25

Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

The Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa

Select performances will be available for live streaming.

FREE

Tickets available: Thursday, June 1

The Fighting Words Festival is Babes With Blades's script development program and in 2023 is expanded to two weekends. Each season, three scripts are chosen for development and read three times; first within the company, then with a small group of invited guests and finally as part of this annual festival that includes all three plays. In 2023, the scripts include The Gatekeepers by Jillian Leff (she/her/hers); Sin Agua by Desi Moreno-Penson (she/her/hers) and Rich B*tch by Rachel Lynett (she/her/hers/they/them/theirs). Discussions after each reading provide feedback for the playwrights, assisting them in developing their scripts further. Fighting Words' plays have been given full productions by the company as with Cat McKay's Plaid As Hell from the 2020 Fighting Words Festival that was produced by BWBTC during its 2021 - 2022 season.

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI

SEPTEMBER 8 - OCTOBER 21

By John Webster

Directed by BWBTC Artistic Director Hayley Rice (she/her/hers)

Previews: Friday, Sept. 8 and 15 at 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 9 at 8 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 10 at 2:30 p.m. and Thursday, Sept. 14 at 8 p.m.

Opening: Saturday, Sept. 16 at 8 p.m.

Regular Run: Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m.

The Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard St.

Select performances will be available for live streaming.

Ticket Price: $28 - $35

Tickets on sale: Monday, August 21

When the widowed Duchess of Malfi chooses to love again, honestly and defiantly, the men in her family do everything in their power to break those that would dare to flout the unspoken rules of a "traditional" society. "Despite the 407 years between the premiere of Duchess of Malfi and today, in some ways very little has changed," states director Hayley Rice. "This production will focus on the theme of the power held, and desperately clung to, by a patriarchal society, and how something as simple as two people openly loving each other outside of that dichotomy is an inherent threat to those in power, then and today." Rice continues, "Toxic masculinity is still an insidious disease. It lashes out at marginalized communities. It also eats away at some men, making them feel, to paraphrase a section of the text, like they're wearing a wolf-skin that is hairy on the inside."

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