PlayMakers Celebrates Nationwide International Women's Voices Day

PlayMakers Repertory Company will present a private reading of "Jump" by Carly Evon Simpson, as part of a nationwide celebration of International Women's Voices Day. A play about flickering lights, vapes that fall from the sky, old homes, and a young woman who finds solace on a bridge, "Jump" was featured at the National New Play Network's National Showcase of New Plays.

What is International Women's Voices Day?

The Women's Voices Theater Festival, in partnership with National New Play Network (NNPN) and New Play Exchange (NPX), invites theaters and theater makers around the world to join them in advocating for gender parity by presenting unproduced works by women playwrights for International Women's Voices Day. These events are taking place take place on or about Sunday, January 21, 2018, in celebration of the anniversary of the revolutionary 2016 Women's Marches. Theaters or individuals have been invited to find a previously unproduced play by a woman and, with the writer's permission, read it aloud, then post photo of the event to social media with the #InternationalWomensVoicesDay.

A full list of participating theaters is available at WomensVoicesTheaterFestival.org

The social media handles for Women's Voices Theater Festival are @WomensVoicesDC (Twitter and Instagram) and @WomensVoicesTheaterFestival (Facebook). The official Festival hashtag is #WomensVoicesDC.

About PlayMakers Repertory Company:

PlayMakers is the professional theater in residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina's premier resident theater company for more than 40 years. PlayMakers has been named one of the "best regional theatres in America".

About Charly Evon Simpson

Charly Evon Simpson is a playwright from New York City. Her plays include "Jump," "Scratching the Surface," "Hottentotted," "Behind the Sheet," "While We Wait," and "who we let in". Her work has been seen, heard, and/or developed with National New Play Network at its Kennedy Center MFA Playwright's Workshop, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Ars Nova, The Flea, Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, FringeNYC, and others. She is a member of the 2017 Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm and the 17/18 Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers' Group. She is The Pack's current playwright-in-residence and is currently working on commissions from the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project and The Flea. Charly was a Philadelphia Dramatists Center Playwright-in-Residence at Plays & Players Theatre and is a former member of Ensemble Studio Theatre's Youngblood, Pipeline Theatre Company's PlayLab, and Fresh Ground Pepper's PlayGround PlayGroup. She graduated from Brown University and holds a MSt in Women's Studies from University of Oxford, New College, and an MFA in Playwriting from Hunter College.

About The Women's Voices Theater Festival

The Women's Voices Theater Festival is dedicated to highlighting the scope of plays being written by women and the range of professional theater being produced in the nation's capital region. The Festival's debut in 2015 featured world premiere plays by female playwrights on stages across Washington, D.C. and was heralded as a landmark in striving for gender parity in American theater. Led by seven of Washington's largest theaters-Arena Stage, Ford's Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Studio Theatre, Signature Theatre, Round House Theatre, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company-the Festival leverages collaboration among regional theater producers to create a platform for the nation's most talented and innovative female and female-identifying playwrights and their newest plays.

To learn more, visit WomensVoicesTheaterFestival.org

About National New Play Network and New Play Exchange

National New Play Network, America's alliance of nonprofit professional theaters dedicated to new works, launched New Play Exchange, the world's largest and smartest database of theater works by living writers, in 2015. NPX currently contains more than 16,000 new plays and musicals and profiles of theater-makers from 45 countries, including more than 2,500 full length, unproduced plays by women. Organizations and individuals can filter searches using 13 categories, such as genre, play length, cast size, playwright location, and more. Writers tag their plays with keywords to indicate subject matter and topicality, allowing theaters to narrow results to those scripts that meet their specific requirements or themes.

For more information, visit nnpn.org and newplayexchange.org

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