Halcyon Theatre schedules 100 years of females!

June 6

I just got this on an e-list!  WOW!!!

Anybody with a sofa to spare in the Chicago area?  I'd seriously consider a trip to see Cowley and my "subject", Centlivre.

  (no immediate offers from ICWP sisters....)

In June and July, Halcyon Theatre in Chicago will present it's first annual

Alcyone Festival. This year we are presenting almost a thousand years of

early female playwrights in rotating rep.The line up includes:

*Aria da Capo* by Edna St. Vincent Millay;

*The Belle's Stratagem* by Hannah Cowley;

*A Bold Stroke for a Wife* by Susanna Centlivre;

*Callimachus* by Hrosvitha;

*La Hija de las Flores o Todos Están Locos *(The Daughter of the Flowers or

Everyone Is Crazy) by Gertrudis Gómez de  Avellaneda*; *Performed in Spanish

with projected supertitles.

*The Massacre* by Elizabeth Inchbald;

*Orra* by Joanna Baillie;

*Safe *by Georgia Douglas Johnson;

*Spreading the News* by Lady Augusta Gregory;

*Trifles* by Susan Glaspell;

*The Yellow Wallpape*r by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; adapted and performed by

Chicago DanzTheatre.

For more info: halcyontheatre.org/alcyone

American Repertory Theatre appoints a woman AD!

I confess to being stunned by this news.  I have long fulminated that there is not a single female in a decision-making position at ART/Harvard, and the evidence is in the male-and-gay centered stuff-- plays, directors, number and substantiality of acting roles--  that fill their seasons year after year.  I don't know why women buy tickets, except that women are so conditioned to be interested in "people" that they often don't notice when  story tellers treat females as not-quite.

The next season is already far more female-friendly than any in memory, and I'll be watching eagerly to see how this goes.  I fear, of course, that critics will be hostile, audiences dwindle, and the experiment in inclusivity pronounced a failure. Below is the announcement that went out to the ARt email list: 

... exciting news to share with you. Today we named Diane Paulus as our new Artistic Director, the third in our twenty-eight year history. Diane’s relationship with the A.R.T. began over twenty years ago as an undergraduate at Harvard, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. In her words, “I feel my perspective on theatre was shaped by my years attending the A.R.T.” Diane has gone on to direct a distinguished repertoire of work that fuses together the traditional with contemporary and popular culture across a variety of genres, including theatre, opera, rock, musical theatre, and innovative jazz-inflected pieces. Her work has drawn acclaim from remarkably diverse audiences and critics around the world. Diane’s body of work includes:

• The Donkey Show, a disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which ran for six years Off-Broadway and toured internationally

• Another Country, a stage adaptation of the novel by James Baldwin at Riverside Church

• Obie-award winning Eli’s Comin’, featuring the music and lyrics of Laura Nyro

• 40th Anniversary Concert Production of Hair in Central Park for the Public Theatre

• Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, Turn of the Screw, and Cosi Fan Tutte, all for the Chicago Opera Theater

• The upcoming Kiss Me, Kate at the Glimmerglass Opera

Diane has asked me to share this statement with you:

“I am deeply honored to be appointed Artistic Director of the A.R.T. When I was a student at Harvard, there was no question A.R.T. was the most exciting and vibrant theater in America.  I am thrilled to build on that legacy, and lead the A.R.T. into the future, creating a home for the next generation of outstanding theatre artists who will redefine and revitalize the meaning of theatre for our society.”

I am both excited and proud to have an artist we helped nurture take the organization into a dynamic new era. Please join me in welcoming Diane into our growing family, and supporting her as she leads us down new artistic paths and reaffirms our dedication to creating the most compelling, thought-provoking theatre in the country.   

On behalf of everyone here at the A.R.T., I want to thank you for your support over the past several years. Now more than ever, we need to hear from you!  So please let us know your thoughts and feelings as we move forward.  And please join us in welcoming Diane back to Cambridge, and in celebrating the start of what promises to be an era of renewed artistic exploration and creativity!

Ludmila Anselm's Russian Master Class

Photos June Lewin as Olga Chekhova in Ludmila Anselm's Russian Master Class (I directed)

More about gendered writing-- form

are experiments in form a female trait?
Lyn Gardner - The Guardian
March 15, 2007 08:55 AM
The premieres last week of Alexandra Wood's debut play The Eleventh Capital at the Royal Court and Debbie Tucker Green's Generations at the Young Vic are a reminder - if it was needed - that it is women who are often in the forefront of experiments in form and style in British theatre. Over the last 20 years Caryl Churchill has proved herself a tireless seeker after new form and it seems that her creative, rumbustious successors are increasingly taking up the baton with enthusiasm and confidence too....Yet it still seems to be the case that when women experiment in form they
are more likely to be shot down by critics and told that they don't know how to
structure a play properly....
Back in the mid-1980s when both women theatre critics and playwrights were
in pretty short supply, accusations that women didn't know how to write proper
plays were commonplace. Jack Tinker dismissed Churchill's now-classic Cloud
Nine because of its "sloppy construction" while another male critic
complained: "The play, if I may use the term of a work that is almost totally innocent of any formal structure, may be about nothing at all." Reviewing Sarah
Daniels' Byrthrite at the Royal Court, Mark Lawson declared: "Ms Daniels has a
gift for provocative invective but she is a poor storyteller: perhaps linear
narrative is too phallic." Well perhaps it is. I've certainly heard it suggested that the well made play in Aristotelian mode corresponds closely to the male orgasm in the way it reaches its climax, release and post-coital conclusion. But maybe choosing not to write a traditionally structured play doesn't mean that you don't know how to write one, simply that you want to find different ways to tell your stories.....
Times fortunately have changed, and there is now an entire army of women
playwrights marching out there in the direction of the future who will not be
stopped by a bit of critical sniping. But when I hear people saying about
Green's Generations: "Oh, it's very interesting, but it's not really a play, is
it?" I know that we've still got a long way to go before women's experiments in
form are accepted without qualification.

I clinked the link to Rona Monro, whom I met in London after I played the juicy role of the mother in her wonderful "Bold Girls" at the Sugan Theatre. I liked Rona very much: don't know how I missed reading about this play of hers while it was happening.....

Murder, rehab, prison - Rona Munro rarely shirks the dark side. But she really wants to write a fluffy play, she tells Samantha Ellis

Thursday January 23, 2003
The Guardian

'I always have this dream that I'm going to write something very soft and happy, and it never seems to happen," says screen and stage writer Rona Munro. She certainly hasn't lived her dream with Iron, a play set in a grim women's prison where a murderess is reunited with her estranged daughter - the child of the man she killed. "Rarer than a unicorn" is how Munro's antiheroine describes herself; of the 70,000 people imprisoned in Britain today, 5,000 are lifers, but only 165 of those lifers are women.
When researching the play, which transfers this week from Edinburgh to London, Munro was struck by "the ordinariness of it. Lifers tend to have a prison routine. So when you visit, you're going into someone's room. It's like a bedsit. It's not like going into an iron-bars environment. The kind of conversations we had were very, very ordinary. We'd never talk about what they had done."

Opening Night of ICWP Celebrations!

Went wonderfully!
A full house-- the Ruth Nager Theatre had to bring out extra chairs.
Excellent acting; when moderating the director's panel Norah Hussey said that the script in hand no set no props performances were so effective that it reminded her that theatres often get smothered in design and tech. All that is really needed is "2 boards and a passion".
Lovely smoozing and Mutual Admiration.
Kelley Dumar is great! I nominate her for Secretary of State!
More when I get the info: they ran out of programs before I got one, so I'll have to see if I can get people to email me the text.

ICWP in the Globe (barely)

A brief meention by Cathrine Foster in the Goble's Stages column today

Notes
The International Centre for Women Playwrights is sponsoring a series of events during Women's History Month. Tomorrow at 7 p.m., a "Celebration of Women's Voices" at Wellesley College will feature eight short plays by local women writers. On Thursday at 7 p.m., the Boston Playwrights' Theatre will host a "Celebration of Monologues by Women," featuring short monologues by 16 local writers. More events to come. . .