WP THEATER Announces The 2022 Pipeline Festival
The Festival, true to its name, serves as a pipeline to funnel the work of talented Women+ artists to the forefront of American theater.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Feb. 23, 2022
WP Theater has announced the 2022 lineup for The Pipeline Festival, the fourth biennial showcase of the artists in its celebrated WP Lab residency for playwrights, directors, and producers. Returning live and in-person from March 24 - May 14, 2022 at WP Theater (2162 Broadway, at 76th Street), with one production to be streamed, the festival is the culmination of the renowned two-year WP Lab residency, providing a unique opportunity for audiences to see five new works in various stages of development, ranging from staged readings, to streamed films, to full-length workshop productions - presented over a span of several weeks.
The Festival, true to its name, serves as a pipeline to funnel the work of talented Women+ artists to the forefront of American theater. Each play is created and produced by collaborative writer/director/producer teams from the WP Lab residency program.
The 2020-2022 WP Lab artists are:
PLAYWRIGHTS: Gethsemane Herron-Coward (she/her), Nambi E. Kelley (she/her), Haruna Lee (they/them),
Zizi Majid (she/her), Daaimah Mubashshir (she/her)
DIRECTORS: Miranda Haymon (she/her they/them), Chika Ike (she/her), Sophiyaa Nayar (she/her),
Machel Ross (she/her), Katherine Wilkinson (she/they)
PRODUCERS: Iyvon E. (she/her), B.J. Evans (she/her), Kristin Leahey (she/her),
Ayana Parker Morrison (she/her), Cynthia J. Tong (she/her)
The WP Playwrights Lab is led by WP Producing Artistic Director Lisa McNulty and Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence Cori Thomas; the Directors Lab is led by WP BOLD Associate Artistic Director and Lab Alum Rebecca Martínez, Tony Award-nominated director Leigh Silverman, and Working Theater Co-Artistic Director and Lab Alum Tamilla Woodard; and the Producers Lab is led by Lab Alums Roxanna Barrios (Producer of Artistic Programs, Public Theater) and WP's BOLD Artistic Development Consultant Nidia Medina.
Previous Festival works have included Pulitzer Prize recipient Martyna Majok's queens (subsequently produced at LCT3), Sarah Burgess' Kings (produced at The Public Theater), Sylvia Khoury's Power Strip (produced at LCT3), and Jonathan Larson Grant recipients Zoe Sarnak and Emily Kaczmarek's Afloat. Charly Evon Simpson's sandblasted, initially slated for the 2020 Pipeline Festival, is currently in performances at The Vineyard Theatre in a co-production with WP Theater.
Tickets for The Pipeline Festival are now on sale via WWW.WPTHEATER.ORG/ 888.811.4111. Festival passes are available for $60. The performance schedule is as follows: Thursday at 7:00pm, Friday at 3:00pm & 8:00pm, and Saturday at 8:00pm. Streaming details for plural (love) will be announced shortly.
WEEK 1: MARCH 24 - 26
THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT
By Zizi Majid
Directed by Carolyn Cantor
Produced and Dramaturged by Kristin Leahey
After the sudden death of her mother, Zsa Zsa receives a visitor from Baghdad: an aunt, who served as an interpreter for the U.S. military and has finally been allowed to immigrate to the U.S. They Came in the Night is a distinctive play about a family sifting through the debris of America's fraught War in Iraq.
WEEK 2: APRIL 14-16
ROOM ENOUGH (FOR US ALL)
Directed by: Katherine Wilkinson
Produced by: Ayana Parker Morrison
Fatimah, a recently widowed mother, is determined to have it all. In an attempt to set things right by her queer daughter, Jamillah, she invites her to return home after a 10-year absence from the family. Fatimah plans to bring a new progressive Eid Holiday Festival to Masjid Al-Noor, but her son, Abdullah, feels that in order to protect the family legacy, he needs to fight against these changes. Room Enough (For Us All) is an insightful journey into the struggle of one contemporary African-American Muslim family to come together, despite everything trying to tear them apart.
WEEK 3: APRIL 21-23
KIN
By: Gethsemane Herron-Coward
Directed by: Chika Ike
Produced by: Cynthia J. Tong
As GHC's family members come together to celebrate the return of an imprisoned relative-a son, father, and partner-she reveals her worst secret via the internet. With each click of the keyboard, the ties that bind the family are threatened, as well as the impending reunion. KIN is the first part of a three-part work, and an investigation of the ripple effects of sexual trauma, memory, and the temporality of violence.
WEEK 4: APRIL 29 - MAY 1 (STREAMING)
PLURAL (LOVE)
By: Haruna Lee & Jen Goma
Directed by: Sophiyaa Nayar
Produced by: B.J. Evans
With the short film plural (love), Jen Goma and Haruna Lee flirt with the boundaries of desire, power and responsibility, building an environment that feels akin to stepping into a soft BDSM roleplay. Originally inspired by auto-theorists such as Audre Lorde, Maggie Nelson and Roland Barthes, Goma and Lee layer political, cultural, and social theory with their own autobiographical stories, and their own experiences of desire and being desired. Their musings are a pastiche of intricate styles that include pop songs with lyrics by Sartre, femme rituals, live podcast, intimate humor, radical truth-telling, and community engagement.
WEEK 5: MAY 12 - 14
A NEW PLAY BY Nambi E. Kelley
By: Nambi E. Kelley
Directed by: Machel Ross
Produced by: Iyvon E.
A powerfully poetic one-woman show, Kelley's play asks the questions: Who is the dreamer? Are the ancestors dreaming you, are you dreaming them, or are we dreaming each other? A meditation on how dreams affect consciousness, agency, and personal power in the construction of a Black woman's understanding of her connection to her ancestors through time. Commissioned by National New Play Network, the play spans American history from slavery to Black Lives Matter through the lens of one family across generations.
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