Women’s Project Theater Announces New Season in a New Home
On the slate are Sarah Ruhl’s epistolary play about Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, and a co-production with Rattlestick of Martyna Majok’s ‘Ironbound.’
BY AMERICAN THEATRE EDITORS
NEW YORK CITY: Women’s Project Theater announced their 2015–16 season of plays, which will run in their new Upper West Side home at the McGinn/Cazale Theater. Producing artistic director Lisa McNulty and managing director Maureen Moynihan announced the beginning of a three-year residency at the theatre on Broadway at 76th Street.
“I’m thrilled for WP Theater to set down roots in this wonderful space with such a storied theatrical history, and to bring all of these brilliant women together in one season,” said McNulty in a statement. “This is the essence of what WP Theater does—create a theatrical home where female-identified artists are welcome at every point in their careers, a place where women’s voices are central.”
The season will begin with the New York premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s play Dear Elizabeth(Oct. 26–Dec. 5). The play, which will feature a rotating cast, examines the relationship between the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell through letters they wrote to each other.
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and WP will then partner to present Ironbound by Martyna Majok (March 2–April 10), in its New York premiere. The play follows a woman for whom love is luxury.
Closing the season will be the first WP Pipeline Festival, running March 24–April 23. The festival will feature five new plays developed during the WP Lab’s two-year residency. The artists involved are Sarah Burgess, Money Hurst-Mendoza, Martyna Majok, Riti Sachdeva, Susan Soon-He Stanton, Adrienne Campbell-Holt, Lee Sunday Evans, Sarah Krohn, Danya Taymor, Tamilla Woodard, Rachel Karpf Reidy, Pearl Kermani, Kristen Luciani, Liz Olson, and Rachel Sussman.
WP Theater will also produce a series of events with other gender-focused theatre and advocacy groups, including the Kilroys and the Lilly Awards. Details of these events are yet to be announced.
For more information on WP’s New Season click here.
Director Kate Whoriskey most recently directed Lynn Nottage’s Sweat at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Other productions include Ping Pong and Manahatta at the Public through Public Studio, Ruined and Tales from Red Vienna at Manhattan Theatre Club, How I Learned to Drive at Second Stage, The Piano Teacher at the Vineyard Theatre, Oroonoko at Theatre for A New Audience, the world premiere of Fabulation and Inked Baby at Playwrights Horizons, and Massacre by Jose Rivera at the Labyrinth Theatre Company (of which she is a member). Internationally, she directed Magdalena at the Chatelet theatre in Paris and Teatro Muicipal in Sao Paolo. Regionally, she directed Ruined, Vigils, Heartbreak House, The Rose Tattoo and Drowning Crow for The Goodman, The Tempest at Shakespeare Theatre, the world premiere of Intimate Apparel, The Piano Teacher, Life is a Dream, Caucasian Chalk Circle, Antigone, and The Clean House at South Coast Repertory, and Master Builder at the American Repertory Theatre. Nominated for a Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel for her work on Ruined, she has also directed at the Huntington, The Geffen, Baltimore Center Stage, Perseverance Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Sundance Theatre Lab, The Fisher Center and The Eugene O’Neill Center.
The BIG + EXCITING NEWS is OUT! Women’s Project Theater will Present its 2015-16 Season in a New Home on Broadway & 76th Street
By JONATHAN WOLFE AUGUST 24, 2015 5:04 PM
The Women’s Project Theater will begin its coming season in a new home, at the McGinn/Cazale Theater on Broadway, at 76th Street. This Off Broadway company dedicated to promoting female artists announced its three-year residency at the theater along with its 2015-16 season, which includes two New York premieres.
“Dear Elizabeth,” written by Sarah Ruhl and directed by Kate Whoriskey, is based on the correspondence between the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, and will be the Women’s Project Theater’s inaugural production at the McGinn/Cazale Theater. The play, a New York premiere, will be performed with a rotating cast and is scheduled to open Oct. 26.
“Ironbound,” another New York premiere, is a tragedy about a Polish maid living in the United States. Written by Martyna Majok and directed by Daniella Topol, the play, a co-production with the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, will open at Rattlestick on March 2.
The Women’s Project Theater also announced on Monday that its season will be capped by the new WP Pipeline Festival, which will feature five new plays by participants in the company’s artist residency program. It will run from March 24 to April 23.
The three-year residency at the McGinn/Cazale Theater will be the company’s longest stretch at one home since it sold the Julia Miles Theater in 2011, said Lisa McNulty, the company’s artistic director. “It’s so powerful that there is a marquee,” Ms. McNulty said, for a company that is dedicated to women. She added, “That feels very powerful and appropriate to the moment we’re in.”
The lack of diversity and women’s participation in New York City theater recently led to an outcry on the Internet after the Manhattan Theater Club’s roster for its 2015-16 season revealed that the majority of its plays were written by white men.
A version of this article appears in print on 08/25/2015, on page C3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Women’s Project’s New Season and Home.
For more information on WP’s New Season click here.
