Amanda Seyfried and More to Take Part in Colt Coeur & WP Theater's PARITY PLAYS FESTIVAL

Colt Coeur and WP Theater (formerly Women's Project Theater) announce casting for the fourth annual Parity Plays Festival reading series, celebrating the work of female and trans playwrights and directors.

Among those announced for the four plays by Rehana Lew Mirza, Lucy Thurber, Leah Nanako Winkler, and Catherine Yu are: Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia!, Les Miserables, The Way We Get By), Jennifer Carpenter ("Dexter", "Limitless", The Crucible) and Trudie Styler (The Seagull, A Dish of Tea with Dr. Johnson, Love Soup).

The festival will take place from November 13-20, 2017 at WP Theater, 2162 Broadway. Tickets are free, and can be reserved HERE.

In the spirit of promoting opportunities for female and trans playwrights and directors, Colt Coeur is partnering with WP Theater (the nation's oldest and largest theater company dedicated to developing, producing and promoting the work of female-identified and trans theater artists) on the company's Parity Plays Festival featuring four public readings of new plays. Inspired in part by advocacy groups including #MakeItFair, The Kilroys and The Lilly Awards, Colt Coeur and WP Theater are committed to gender parity in programming, staffing, and representation within narratives.

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Below are the four plays that will be presented:

HATEFUCK BY Rehana Lew Mirza

DIRECTED BY Pirronne Yousefzadeh

CAST: TBD

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13 at 4:00PM

GOD SAID THIS BY LEAH NANAKO WINKLER

DIRECTED BY Morgan Gould

CAST: Jeff Biehl, Satomi Blair, Ako Dachs, EMMA KIKUE MUNSON, Jay Patterson, Emily Kunkel

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16 at 3:00PM

PERRY STREET BY Lucy Thurber

DIRECTED BY TBD

CAST: Jennifer Carpenter, Glenn Davis, AMANDA SEYFRIEND, Trudie Styler, Michael Warner

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19 at 7:00PM

LE JETE BY CATHERINE YU

DIRECTED BY Adrienne Campbell-Holt

CAST: Molly Carden, Lauren Currie Lewis, Lynne Lipton, EDEN MARRYSHOW, Kate Cullen Roberts, Brian Wiles, TYLER WEAKS

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20 at 7:00PM

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Plays that previously debuted at Colt Coeur have gone on to great success and the company is thrilled to partner with WP for the 4th annual Festival. Steven Levenson's Seven Minutes in Heaven was selected by Ars Nova for Antfest and subsequently transferred to the Emerging America Festival in Boston before running at HERE. Lucas Kavner's Fish Eye was included in New York Magazine's "Best of 2011." Eliza Clark's Recall received rave reviews during its run at Wild Project. Nikole Beckwith's satire Everything Is Ours enjoyed an extended run at HERE. Ruby Spiegel's Dry Land made New York Post's "Top 10 of 2014" and was recently published in American Theater magazine. MJ Kaufman's How To Live On Earth was featured on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell". Cal In Camo, co-produced by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater was celebrated by Ben Brantley at New York Times as a "mystical cocktail of a play" and extended due to demand. Ana Nogueira's play Empathitrax premiered at HERE last September and is currently being adapted for a feature film.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Morgan Gould is a New York-based writer and director. Her play I Wanna F***Ing Tear You Apart, had its world premiere at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC in February 2017 (with Morgan directing). Morgan was the 2016 Beatrice Terry / Drama League resident, and is a resident playwright at New Dramatists, a 2017-18 Dramatist Guild Foundation Playwriting Fellow, a 2016-18 WP Theater Lab Member, a member at Ensemble Studio Theatre (where she recently directed Leah Nanako Winkler's Kentucky in a 2016 co-production with P73), and an alum of Playwrights Horizons Directing Residency Program. She has previously held staff positions at Playscripts, Inc., Lark Play Development Center, Cape Cod Theatre Project, and Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, where she co-created Untitled Feminist Show (BAC/PS 122). In 2012, Morgan started her own theater company, Morgan Gould & Friends (www.morgangouldandfriends.com), with 8 actors, 3 designers and a filmmaker. Their work has been featured in and at the New Ohio/ Ice Factory Festival, Dixon Place, The Brooklyn Lyceum, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, CAP21, BAX, New Georges, and The Culture Project. Morgan has a B.A. in Directing, Fordham College at Lincoln Center, M.F.A. in Playwriting, Brooklyn College. In fall of 2017, Morgan began the playwriting program at Juilliard, and this year she will direct the Bay Area Premiere of Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men at Marin Theatre Company, and complete work on her newest play All The Stupid Bitches.

Adrienne Campbell-Holt is the Founding Artistic Director of Colt Coeur, a Brooklyn-based theatre company. Current: What We're Up Against by Theresa Rebeck (WP Theater). Upcoming: The Big and the Small by Amelia Roper (Colt Coeur/NTYW) and Afterwords, a new musical by Zoe Sarnak and Emily Kaczmarek (Village Theater, Seattle). Adrienne has recently directed the world premieres of Downstairs by Theresa Rebeck starring Tyne Daly and Tim Daly (Dorset Theater Festival), Empathitrax by Ana Nogueria (Colt Coeur @ HERE, 2016), the world premiere of Cal in Camo by William Francis Hoffman (co-pro Rattlestick & Colt Coeur), a workshop production of Kings by Sarah Burgess starring Larry Pine and Quincy Tyler Bernstine (WP Theater, NYC), Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl (Dorset Theater Festival), Theresa Rebeck's The Nest (Denver Theatre Company), One Child Born (Oberon at American Repertory Theater), How to Live on Earth by MJ Kaufman (Colt Coeur @ HERE, September 2015), Chiara Atik's 52nd to Bowery (EST Marathon), Dry Land by Ruby Rae Spiegel (Colt Coeur @ HERE, NYC), Greg Moss' REUNION (South Coast Rep), Everything is Ours by Nikole Beckwith (Colt Coeur @ HERE), Recall by Eliza Clark (Colt Coeur @ Wild Project), Fish Eye (Colt Coeur @ HERE). Other productions: Red starring Tim Daly (Dorset Theater Festival), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Yale), world premiere of Seven Minutes in Heaven by Steven Levenson (Emerging America Festival, Huntington Theatre Company and Colt Coeur @ HERE). Adrienne is a New Georges Affiliated Artist and an alum of the Time Warner/Women's Project Lab, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and a Foeller Fellow (Williamstown). She has developed work with La Jolla Playhouse, Roundabout Theater Company, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights' Center and EST. She is the Associate Director on the Broadway production of Dear Evan Hansen and the director of #makeitfair. BA Barnard College, Columbia University.

Rehana Lew Mirza is currently a resident playwright (w/ Mike Lew) at Ma-Yi Theater as part of the Mellon National Playwright Residency. She is also a 2017 HBO Access Fellow. Additional honors include: 2016 Rita Goldberg Playwrights' Workshop fellow at the Lark, 2016 Lilly Award (Stacey Mindich "Go Write A Play"), Rhinebeck residency with collaborators Sam Willmott and Mike Lew for Bhangin' It, TCG Fellowship with New Georges. Productions: Soldier X (Ma-Yi; Brooklyn College; 2015 Kilroy); Lonely Leela (LaGuardia Performing Arts Center); Barriers (Desipina and Asian American Theater Company). Commissions: NNPN/InterAct for Neighborhood Watch; E.S.T./Sloan for Particles of Pakistan; La Jolla Playhouse for The Colonialism Trilogy (w/ Mike Lew); NYSCA/Lark for Soldier X; Kennedy Center commission (w/ Mike Lew.) MFA: Columbia University; BFA: NYU Tisch.www.rehanamirza.com

Lucy Thurber Lucy Thurber is the author of ten plays: Where We're Born, Ashville, Scarcity, Killers and Other Family, Stay, Bottom of The World, Monstrosity, Dillingham City, The Locus and The Insurgents. The Insurgents was commissioned by Contemporary American Theater Festival and produced at their 2011 Festival. Bottom of The World opened the 2010/11 season at The Atlantic Theater. A reworking of Killers and Other Family played Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2009, directed by Caitriona McLaughlin. Lucy wrote the text for QUIXOTE, conceived and directed by Lear deBessonet, a site-specific performance with the Psalters made for and with The Broad Street Community; also with Lear deBessonet and produced by 13P, Monstrosity. The Atlantic Theater Company opened its 2007/08 season with Scarcity. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater has produced three of her plays, Where We're Born, Killers and Other Family and Stay. Monstrosity was workshopped at Encore Theatre Company (San Francisco). She was the recipient of the 2000-01 Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellowship. She was a guest artist at Alaska's Perseverance Theatre twice, where she helped to adapt both Desire Under The Elms and Moby Dick. She has had readings and workshops at Steam Boat Springs, Manhattan Theatre Club, The New Group, Primary Stages, MCC Theater, Encore Theatre Company, PlayPenn, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The O'Neill with WET, New River Dramatists and Soho Rep. She was one of three playwrights in residence at The Orchard Project, summer 2007. Scarcity was published in the December 2007 issue of American Theatre magazine. She is published by Dramatists Play Service. Thurber is a member of New Dramatists, 13P, MCC Playwrights' Coalition. She has been commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, and she is currently writing a new play under a commission from Yale Rep. She is the recipient of the 1st Gary Bonasorte Memorial Prize for Playwriting 2008 and a proud recipient of a Lilly Award. Lucy currently teaches at NYU and Sarah Lawrence College.

LEAH NANAKO WINKLER is an Award-Winning NYC based playwright from Kamakura, Japan and Lexington, Kentucky. She is the author of Kentucky (Kilroys List, World Premiere with EST & Page 73, Radio Drama Network, West Coast Premiere with East West Players), Death For Sydney Black (Kilroys Honorable Mention, TerraNova Collective), God Said This and more. Two Mile Hollow (2017 Kilroys List) will be seen this season at Ferocious Lotus in San Francisco, Artists at Play in Los Angeles and Mixed Blood Theatre/Mu Performing Arts in Minneapolis. She a member of the Dorothy Streslin New American Playwrights Group at Primary Stages, a labbie at Ma Yi, a 2017 Sundance Ucross Fellow, a 2016-2018 Time Warner Fellow at WP Theater, and a proud member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Commissions include Sloan, Jerome, Theater Mu, Keen Theater, 2G and more. Publications include Sam French, Smith and Krauss, Dramatists Play Service and American Theatre Magazine. www.leahwinkler.org

Pirronne Yousefzadeh is a Brooklyn based director, writer, and educator. Recent projects include Utopia, Minnesota by Meg Miroshnik (2016 Sagal Fellowship, Williamstown Theatre Festival), That High Lonesome Sound (Actors Theatre of Louisville; 2015 Humana Festival) and We Are Proud To Present A Presentation... by Jackie Sibblies Drury (InterAct Theatre Company), And If You Lose Your Way, or A Food Odyssey (Invisible Dog). Her productions of The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane by Jen Silverman (InterAct Theater Company) and In The Blood (Theatre Horizon) together received a total of fifteen Barrymore Award nominations, including Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Overall Production. She has directed/developed work at The Public, New York Theatre Workshop, Ars Nova, Soho Rep, Playwrights Horizons, Atlantic Theater Company, Ma-Yi Theater Company, Rising Circle Theater Collective, Woodshed Collective (The Tenant: Best of 2011, L Magazine), Partial Comfort, Noor Theatre, Rising Phoenix Rep, HERE Arts Center, New York Musical Theatre Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Wild Project, Dixon Place, Living Theatre, Lark Play Development Center, New Dramatists, Juilliard, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Cleveland Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Geva Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Two River, Milwaukee Rep, On The Boards, Perseverance Theatre, Berkshire Fringe Festival, Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, and Hangar Theatre, where she was a 2006 Drama League Directing Fellow. M.F.A. in Directing from Columbia University, (Shubert Presidential Fellow). Current and upcoming: Mad Forest by Caryl Churchill (Columbia), Veil'd by Monet Hurst-Mendoza (Astoria Performing Arts Center), The Invisible Hand (Cleveland Playhouse). Member, SDC. www.pirronne.com

CATHERINE YU's plays include Le Jeté, Stargaze, The Sun Experiment (FringeNYC 2014 Award for Excellence in Playwriting; Time Out New York's Top Ten Music and Nightlife Events of The Week, published by IndieTheaterNow), and The Day Is Long To End. Her short plays have been commissioned by the 52nd Street Project, UglyRhino, and Culture Project. Her short play A Sand Romance was a 2016 Heidman finalist. Her poem "To the Movement" was featured in a recent Planned Parenthood fundraiser. She has been a NYTW Emerging Artist of Color and Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab writer, a 2016 NYSCA/NYFA Playwright Fellow, and a MacDowell Colony Fellow. She is currently working on a play set in Mexico City and a libretto for a Chinese opera. BA: Stanford University. MFA: NYU.

Colt Coeur is a Brooklyn-based theater company founded in 2010. We contemplate questions that inspire us and devise theater pieces that respond to and engage with the world in which we live. We address the ambivalence, terror and exhilaration of our age on the scale of person-to-person through theater that utilizes a simplicity of means to achieve richness of expression. Our original, story-driven, visceral theater straddles the line between mainstream and experimental, elevates design while valuing strong storytelling, and pulls you close and doesn't let go.

Artistic Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt leads a 14-member ensemble of actors, playwrights and designers to nurture the next generation of theater artists through the development and production of new plays and by providing arts education to students from underserved NYC public schools. Over 7 years, Colt Coeur has produced 8 world premieres; developed 30 plays; and provided free arts education for over 100 students. All 8 of Colt Coeur's world premieres explored themes of resonance to our times while ranging in subject matter from teen pregnancy, to postpartum depression and the struggle to make ends meet for a working-class family, to the underlying appetite for new frontiers that is manifest in applicants looking to travel on a one-way mission to Mars. All of the productions received rave reviews and have enabled us to build a loyal audience base. Steven Levenson's Seven Minutes In Heaven was selected by Ars Nova for Antfest and subsequently transferred to the Emerging America Festival in Boston before running for 3 weeks at HERE. Lucas Kavner's Fish Eye ran for 3 weeks at HERE and was included in NY Magazine's "Best of 2011" list. Eliza Clark's Recall had a 4-week run at the Wild Project and also received rave reviews. Nikole Beckwith's satire Everything Is Ours ran for 4 weeks in 2013 at HERE and extended due to demand. Recently, Ruby Spiegel's Dry Land made NYPost's Top 10 of 2014 list. How To Live On Earth by MJ Kaufman was mentioned on "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell." William Francis Hoffman's Cal In Camo was co-produced with Rattlestick Theatre, Colt Coeur's first co-production, and was named a Time Out NY Critic's Pick. Most recently, Empathitrax by Ana Nogueira played to critical acclaim at HERE Arts Center.

WP THEATER (Formerly known as Women's Project Theater) is the nation's oldest and largest theater company dedicated to developing, producing and promoting the work of female-identified and trans theater artists at every stage in their careers. For nearly four decades we have served as leaders at the forefront of a global movement towards gender parity, and the example we set and the artists we have fostered have grown into to a robust and thriving community of female writers and directors in theater and beyond. WP empowers female-identified artists to reach their full potential and, in doing so, challenges preconceptions about the kinds of plays women write and the stories they tell. As the premier launching pad for the most influential women working in theater today. WP has had a significant impact on the field at large. Nearly every prolific female theater artist has been through our doors, including Eve Ensler, María Irene Fornés, Katori Hall, Pam MacKinnon, Lynn Nottage, Leigh Silverman, and Anna Deveare Smith. WP artists work regularly on and off Broadway, and collectively, have won all of the awards currently given for achievement in the field, including multiple Tony, Lortel, OBIE, Drama Desk, Drama League, Lilly, and Whiting Awards; an Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama; and multiple Pulitzer Prizes. These powerful female artists found an early artistic home at WP, and are a testament to our role as a driving cultural force. WP was founded in 1978 by visionary producer, Julia Miles, to address the significant under-representation of women in theater. today, WP accomplishes its mission through several fundamental programs, including: the WP Lab, a two-year mentorship and new play development program for female-identified and trans playwrights, directors, and producers; the Playwright In Residence commissioning program; the Developmental series; and the Main Stage series, which features a full season of Off-Broadway productions written and directed by extraordinary theater artists.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos