Fourth Annual She NYC Arts Summer Theater Festival To Play The Connelly Theater

She NYC Arts will present the fourth annual She NYC Arts Summer Theater Festival, a festival featuring eight new full length shows by women writers and composers, June 19-30 at The Connelly Theater (220 E 4th St, New York, NY 10009). Tickets ($20) will go on sale Monday, May 6 at www.shenycarts.org. The performance schedule for the festival will be announced in May. 

Now in its fourth year, the 2019 She NYC Arts Summer Theater Festival is the city's premiere spot for presenting the best work by up-and-coming women writers and composers. The 2019 Festival will showcase 8 new full-length plays and musicals, including a New Play Residency in which a returning writer will build an entirely new piece from scratch. In addition, She NYC Art's new educational program, CreateHer, will present staged readings of 4 new short plays written and produced by high school students.

Swim Before You Drown Written by Ciara Kay Swim Before You Drown is a dramatic comedy about recent college graduate, Harper, coping with the magnitude of life after college. Her and her best friend, Sam, can't stand living in their small, "beige" hometown in the Midwest and both dream of escaping, even if that means losing each other. With everything in her life changing and on the brink of losing the one person she loves, Harper must deal with how to accept who she is in a world that fails to respect her and a Korean family that judges her even more.

Exposed Conceived by Kristin Heckler, with Jacob Sebastian Philips, Sara Raimondi & Pauline Sherrow Lauren, a college freshman chooses to do adult films to pay for her tuition. When Lauren's secret is discovered she is bombarded with harassment from fellow students, social media and talk show hosts. She defends all of these criticisms with grace and intelligence, but are the consequences worth it?

The Bachelor Girls Written by Caroline Wigmore & Jen Green 1919, London: the dawn of the 'modern girl'. In a generation where only 1 in 10 women will get married, what do the other nine do? Glamorous Molly, bookish Gertie and sweetly naive Cecily are thrown into the world of flappers, dances, equal voting rights, love and loss. What happens when everything you have aspired to is taken away by war? Can their friendship survive as they fight to achieve their dreams? The Bachelor Girls uses 1920s style music and dance to tell a story of friendship and solidarity in extraordinary circumstances.

Immersion Written by Courtney Bailey Parker, Directed by Sandy Doria Megan asks her Mexican boyfriend, Domingo, to only speak Spanish with her to help her improve her beginner language skills for their upcoming trip to Mexico City. The experience of speaking his native language with the woman he loves prompts him to start telling her some big secrets. Alternating between English and Spanish, this bilingual play restricts subtitles in performance. This forces the audience to alternate between being insiders and outsiders, depending on how much they speak of each language.

Dancing Girl Written by Elinor T. Vanderburg & Drew Venderburg, Directed by Jenny Beth Snyder When the Parisian police inflict tragedy on her community of Outcasts, Esmeralda--a resilient and fierce-hearted immigrant--vows to emancipate her people from a prejudiced system. But unlikely alliances, and impossible attractions, blur the boundaries between the oppressed and their oppressors, and Esmeralda soon finds herself at the heart of a passion-driven conspiracy. Expressively told through dance, spoken language, and sign language, Dancing Girl re-presents the themes from Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, revitalizing the beloved tragedy for a new era.

Beautiful Pasadena Written by Jen Rudin Beautiful Pasadena tells the story of a marriage in crisis at the start of the economic collapse in 2008. As Will begins an extensive remodel on their apartment at The Castle Green, a historic building in Pasadena, he and his wife, Rachel, up for a promotion at her law firm, clash over politics, family and world values. As they wait for an expensive bathtub to arrive from overseas, their marriage, the economy, and their bathroom begin to crumble around them.

The Shoebox Written by Kate Brennan It's 2007 and four high school best friends Hannah, Lauren, Emily, and Kristen gather in suburban New Jersey to write letters to their future selves. Unbeknownst to Hannah, the other three girls are planning to leave the night early to go to a party. When the girls reunite ten years later to open their letters, they are forced to reconcile with their relationships to the past, each other, and themselves.

Created by artists, for artists, the She NYC Arts Summer Theater Festival is New York City's premiere festival devoted to producing full-length plays, musicals, and adaptations by women writers annually. In 2018 She NYC Arts brought its mission to the West Coast by launching the inaugural year of the She Arts LA Summer Theater Festival. She NYC's commitment to an open submissions process allows it to discover and cultivate the best up-and-coming talent in the industry, while providing an environment where artists are mentored in how to produce their work in full for a paying audience. www.shenycarts.org

Photo of playwright Jen Rudin Photo Credit: Douglas Gorenstein

 

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