Women's Project Announces 2011-2012 Season; Begins With Milk Like Sugar

Women's Project, the 34-year-old non-profit theater dedicated to producing plays written and directed by women, will present its 2011-12 season of new American plays featuring 20 women theater artists, Julie Crosby, Producing Artistic Director announced.

Collectively, the 20 women theater artists have been produced on stages around the globe, garnered countless awards, and brought to life over 200 productions. They are Women's Project's present and its future, and they include Catherine Trieschmann, who received acclaim for her drama Pulitzer Prize short-listed crooked at Women's Project three years ago; Kirsten Greenidge, a Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellow; Obie-winning director Rebecca Taichman; and Princess Grace Award-winning director Daniella Topol.

Milk Like Sugar by Kirsten Greenidge (above left), directed by Rebecca Taichman will grace the stage of The Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, October 13 through November 20. Ms. Greenidge finds savage humor and gritty poetry in one sixteen-year-old, inner-city girl's struggle between the pregnancy pact she made with her friends and her need to carve out a life beyond the only one she knows. Milk Like Sugar is presented by Playwrights Horizons, Women's Project and La Jolla Playhouse.

Acclaimed playwright Catherine Trieschmann (below right) returns to Women's Project with her new play How The World Began. Directed by Daniella Topol on her third go-round at the helm of a Woman's Project main stage, How The World Began will grace The Peter Jay Sharp Theater December 28 through January 29. Following the stellar success of her play crooked at Women's Project in 2008, Ms. Trieschmann returns with a new play about a high school biology teacher who leaves Manhattan for a job in rural Kansas unprepared for the firestorm after she makes an off-handed comment about the origins of the universe. Ms. Trieschmann and her director, Ms. Topol, will mount a production of How The World Began on the left coast at South Coast Rep in association with Women's Project before its premiere in New York at Women's Project. How The World Began is a Women's Project production in association with South Coast Rep.

Inspired by the words of the late Ellen Stewart, "We play for the gods and in return the gods play for us," Women's Project's third production of the season will connect theater history, current impulses and the unique vision of the 16 artists of the Women's Project Lab in a collaborative theater event entitled We Play for the Gods. This event will be presented in June 2012 in theater with a working heating and air-conditioning system, the location of which will be announced soon.

Twenty Women Theater Artists 

Kirsten Greenidge was recently a Huntington Theatre Playwrighting Fellow. Her work includes Milk Like Sugar (commissioned by La Jolla Playhouse/TheatreMasters), Bossa Nova (world premiere at Yale Rep and recipient of a 2010 Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award), The Luck of the Irish (world premiere at Huntington in 2012, originally commissioned by South Coast Rep and recommissioned by Huntington), Rust (Magic Theatre Company) and Sans Culottes in the Promised Land (Humana Festival). She was recently NEA/TCG playwright in residence at Woolly Mammoth, and is also playwright in residence at CompanyOne, which has produced many of her plays, including "Grimm" (nominated Best New Play, Independent Reviewers of New England), 103 Within the Veil (Best New Play, Independent Reviewers of New England), A More Perfect Union and The Gibson Girl. She is currently working on commissions from Yale Repertory Theatre and Denver Center Theatre.

Director Rebecca Taichman Off-Broadway work includes Orlando (adaptation by Sarah Ruhl, CSC), Second Stage: The Scene by Theresa Rebeck (starring Tony Shalhoub and Patricia Heaton); The Ohio Theatre: Menopausal Gentleman (Special Citation Obie Award). Regional: Oregon Shakespeare Festival: She Loves Me; Shakespeare Theater Company: currently Cymbeline, Twelfth Night, Taming of the Shrew; McCarter Theatre: Twelfth Night; upcoming world premiere musical Sleeping Beauty Wakes book by Tachel Sheinken, music and lyrics by Groove Lilly; ACT: At Home at the Zoo by Edward Albee; Woolly Mammoth: Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl (world premiere), The Velvet Sky by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (world premiere), The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl (2006 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Resident Play); Yale Repertory: The Evildoers by David Adjmi (world premiere), Iphigeneia at Aulis by Euripides; The Huntington: Mauritius by Theresa Rebeck (world Premiere); The Humana Festival: The Scene by Theresa Rebeck (world premiere); and Round House Theatre: The Diary of Anne Frank adapted by Wendy Kesselman (winner of three Helen Hayes awards).

Catherine Trieschmann's plays include the widely-acclaimed crooked, The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock (recipient of the L. Arnold Weissberger Award), Before the Fire, The World of Others, and Hot Georgia Sunday. Her work has been produced and/or developed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Atlanta's Theatre in the Square, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, LARK, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and LAByrinth, among others. Originally from Athens, Georgia, she received her M.F.A. from the University of Georgia but currently resides in a small town in western Kansas. Her screenplay Angels Crest, from a novel by Leslie Schwartz and directed Gaby Dellal, premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival last month.

Daneilla Topol's New York credits include Sheila Callaghan's Lascivious Something and Trista Baldwin's Sand at Women's Project, Sheila Callaghan's Dead City (New Georges), Judith Thompson's Palace of the End (Epic Theatre), Susan Yankowitz's Night Sky (Baruch Performing Arts Center/Power Productions), Nicki Bloom's Tender (Summer Play Festival), Leslie Ayvazian's Carol and Jill (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Jakob Holder's Housebreaking (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), Zakiyyah Alexander's Sick? (Summer Play Festival), Peter Gil-Sheridan's Topsy Turvy Mouse (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), and Stanton Wood's Snow Queen (Urban Stages).

The Lab is the artistic heart of Women's Project, and a free, two-year, artistic residency program for playwrights, directors, and producers.

The artists of the 2010-2012 Lab and creators of We Play For the Gods are:
Playwrights:
Charity Ballard, Alexandra Collier, Andrea Kuchlewska, Dominique Morisseau, Kristen Palmer, Melisa Tien, Stefanie Zadravec
Directors:
Tea Alagic, Jessi D. Hill, Sarah Rasmussen, Mia Rovegno, Nicole A. Watson
Producers:
Elizabeth R. English, Manda Martin, Roberta Pereira, Stephanie Ybarra

Background on 34 Years of Presenting Women Theater Artists

Founded in 1978 by Julia Miles, and now under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Julie Crosby, Women's Project provides a stage for women playwrights and directors, who even today receive fewer than 20% of professional production opportunities nationwide.

Women's Project produces theater created by women, providing a forum for women's perspectives on political, social, and cultural topics. During its 33 years, countless artists have achieved significant recognition through WP productions, including Anne Bogart, Eve Ensler, Maria Irene Fornes, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Leigh Silverman, and Anna Deavere Smith, among the many. Women's Project has produced staged over 600 mainstage productions and developmental projects, and published eleven anthologies of plays by women.

Recently acclaimed plays include Freshwater, Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, crooked, Sand, Or, Smudge, Lascivious Something and Apple Cove.

Box Office

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