Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre Reveals Lineup of Women-Led Classic Theatre For Next Year

Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre has announced the company's 2024 season, providing 8 monthly opportunities to celebrate great female and non-binary playwrights. This year's programming includes partnerships with august New York and regional theater companies as well as a live podcast event.

This is A Classic, Live! 36 Plays By Women You Should Know

Monday, January 22 @ 7pm, streamed & in person - Caveat, NYC

"This is A Classic, Live! 36 Plays By Women You Should Know" at Caveat (21 Clinton St. in lower Manhattan) will celebrate the fourth annual Expand the Canon list, bringing the total number of plays in Expand the Canon to thirty-six. The event will include curator discussions about the plays and the process of making a list, and a panel of changemakers in the classics theatre community. Tickets can be obtained at https://caveat.nyc/events/this-is-a-classic-live---36-plays-by-women-you-should-know-1-22-2024

A New System of Freedom

Monday, February 26 @ 8pm ET, streamed & in person - Langley WA

Island Shakespeare Festival, who has committed to produce three years of Expand the Canon plays including a successful run of A Bold Stroke for a Husband this past summer, hosts a live and streamed reading of Charlotte Von Stein's A New System of Freedom. Charlotte Von Stein was a prominent figure in the Weimar Court and had a decade-long affair with Goethe.

Sons of Erin

Tuesday, March 19 @ 7pm, in person - Irish Repertory Theatre, NYC

Irish Repertory Theatre Partners with Hedgepig to highlight the first Irish writer on the Expand the Canon list: Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu, who hailed from two major artistic families in Dublin in the 1800s. Sons of Erin features self-assured women, disguises, class commentary, and a relevant look at our knee-jerk reactions to certain groups we believe we don't align with.

The Verge

Monday, April 8 @ 7pm, in person - Classic Stage Company & Fiasco Theater, NYC

Two renowned Off-Broadway companies, Classic Stage Company and Fiasco Theater, who are partnering on Pericles this season, join forces with Hedgepig to celebrate a haunting, undersung American classic: The Verge by Susan Glaspell. Known for her short play Trifles, founding The Provincetown Players, and winning a Pulitzer Prize, Glaspell goes deeper and darker into questions of otherness, womanhood, and life's driving force in this play about madness, love, and plantlife.

Adelinda

Monday, May 20 @ 7pm, in person - American Shakespeare Center, Staunton VA

American Shakespeare Center, known for its historic recreation of Shakespeare's indoor theatre in the Shenandoah Valley, hosts a reading of Hannah Brand's late 1700's gritty comedy Adelinda. The play opens with our heroine taunting and spooking a nosy maid (who, it turns out, is in love with Adelinda's beau) and closes with questions about social class and nature vs. nurture.

Mother of 1084

Saturday, June 22 @ 7pm, in person - Bay Area Drama Company at City Lights, San Jose CA

Bay Area Drama Company, founded in 2014 to serve the Bay Area South Asian community, hosts a reading at City Lights Theater Company of legendary Indian writer Mahasweta Devi's Mother of 1084. Also known by its original Bengali title, Hajar Churashir Maa, this tale of a mother whose son was brutally killed by the state for his revolutionary activity has frighteningly relevant echoes across the world today. Mahasweta Devi was a famous award-winning writer and activist who advocated for rights for tribal peoples and lower castes.

Day of the Swallows

Thursday, July 18 @ 7pm, in-person - INTAR, NYC

INTAR Theatre hosts a reading of eminent Chicana dramatist Estela Portillo-Trambley's Day of the Swallows. This play is a beautiful and devastating portrait of Josefa, a respected, formidable member of her small rural community - and the ways her secrets begin to seep through the cracks of her well-constructed life. Portillo-Trambley, a teacher and writer from El Segundo Barrio of El Paso, TX, established the first bilingual theatre there and wrote 11 plays, hosted a talk show, and was the first woman to receive the Premio Quinto Sol Award.

Spell #7

September, in-person - The Acting Company, NYC

Pulling from their illustrious alumni base, The Acting Company hosts a reading of celebrated playwright Ntozake Shange's Spell #7. Though best known for For Colored Girls..., Shange's engaging and challenging portrait of the entertainment industry in Spell #7 still echoes across today's cultural landscape.

Want to read these plays yourself? Hedgepig provides access to these works through the subscriptions available on the website: www.expandthecanon.com. Subscriptions are available starting at a free membership level. Through these subscriptions, members can access information on playwrights, titles, summaries, full scripts, and producing information. Moreover, the subscriptions help support the continued efforts of the Expand the Canon initiative and its call to action to bring more attention to these great works written by women and non-binary playwrights.

Let the Reading Begin! The 2024 reading committee has been assembled with thirty-seven theatre artists and intellectuals committed to uncovering and analyzing great plays written by women and non-binary people that can be considered for the 2024 Expand the Canon season. The committee includes professors and educators Conrad Cohen (Royal Shakespeare Company), Gwen Kelso (Adelphi University), Julia Moriarty (Millikin University), Katherine Bischoping (York University), and Molly Seremet (Mary Baldwin University); directors Alex Brinkman-Young, Chika Ike (Hamilton, Hadestown), Ioana Litra, Melody Erfani (LES Shakespeare Co.), Natalie Kane, Rebecca Maxfield (Head Trick Theatre), and Seonjae Kim (Riot Antigone, KPOP); dramaturgs Caitlyn Piccirillo, Chad Dexter Kinsman, Karina Batchelor (Silver Palm Award), Sierra Rosetta, and Zhe Pan; playwrights Alle Mims, James La Bella, and Rhiannon Ling; producers Roshni Lavelle and James Hyett; and actors Aamira Challenger (The Comedy of Errors, The Great Gatsby), Aziza Gharib, Daniel Light, Desirée Baxter, Dorothea Gloria, Erica Dilworth, Erick González (Valor Agravio y Mujer), Gilbert Cruz, Karen Lee, Madeline Egan Addis, Nazlah Black, Rachel Schmeling, Royston Scott, Shubhra Prakash (Fontwala), and Tia Cassmira (Broken Box Mime). Read their bios here: https://www.hedgepigensemble.org/reading-committee.

Skye Pagon, a 2024 curator for Expand the Canon describes the process as, " the best scavenger hunt - you read hundreds of plays, scraping together footnotes and academic references until you find a goldmine. Every single one of these 36 plays deserves to be produced, studied, interrogated. Every one of these authors deserves to be celebrated, and it's so inspiring to see their work get the attention that it deserves!"

Her co-curator, Gagarin, echoes those sentiments and "It's absolutely exhilarating to be able to work with such a dedicated team of artists. Reading these plays feels like a beautiful way to commune with our theatrical past. To find plays that move me on such a deep level from writers who were writing for their own love of the work is so inspiring!"

Hear more about the Expand the Canon plays through the This is A Classic: The Expand the Canon Podcast. New episodes will be released throughout the year, timed with each reading. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-is-a-classic-the-expand-the-canon-theatre-podcast/id1580756672

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