Nathan is ditching class when he stumbles on Melody crying in a storage closet – he’s a white boy with family money and dangerous habits, she’s the lone Black girl on campus, excelling academically and grappling with isolation. Bite Me is a dark comedy that explores the drama (and trauma) of surviving high school, as Nathan and Melody find themselves tangled in an unexpected bond they’ll spend a lifetime unraveling.
Please note, this performance contains the use of herbal cigarettes and flashing lights.
“Why share things with them that they cannot understand?”
Childhood friends, Caroline and Alice reestablish contact after more than 20 years. As they begin to unravel shared memories, they discover the part that Caroline’s father, a renowned theater actor, played in both their lives and how it affects them to this very day. Corinne Jaber’s new play captures the wild vulnerability of youth and the heavy armature of adulthood in unsparing, theatrical detail, led by award-winning director Lee Sunday Evans (Oratorio for Living Things, Dance Nation).
MUNICH MEDEA: HAPPY FAMILY deals with sexual assault and its aftermath. Experiences are recounted, but not enacted onstage. We recommend this piece for people ages fourteen and up. Please email us at tickets@wptheater.org if you would like more information or details on content.
Malicious Compliance April 4 – 6
by Amara Janae Brady (she/they)
Directed by Julia Sirna-Frest (she/her)
Produced by Praycious Wilson-Gay (she/her)
Scenic Design – Jiaying Zhang (she/her)
Co-Costume Design -Ásta Bennie Hostetter (she/her) & Jules Kulaya (they/them)
Lighting Design – Megan Lang (she/they)
Sound Design – Christopher Darbassie (they/them)
Composer – Xander Browne (he/they)
Stage Manager – Kyra Bowie (she/her)
Asst. Stage Manager – Kacey Bradshaw (she/her)
Featuring…
Yuri/Cro…..Jade Jones (they/them)
Delores/AS CAST……Lorinda Lisitza (she/her)
Mo……Nora Schell (they/them)
Mo and Yuri sit under an almost non-existent potted tree named Beckett, waiting impatiently for the next phase of their career—the next part of their journey. Delores sings a song about the blood the land craves, a callous warning that the blood is the only thing that will allow them to ascend to the glory Mo and Yuri believe is possible. Inspired by Waiting for Godot, Malicious Compliance tells the story of two artists desperately waiting for a change that may cost more than they’re willing to give, or worse may never come.
O.K! April 11 – 13
by Christin Eve Cato
Directed by Jordana De La Cruz
Produced by Barbara Samuels
Scenic Designer – Brittany Vasta
Costume Designer – Somie Pak
Lighting Designer – Megan Lang
Sound Designer and Music By – Carsen Joenk
Asst. Director – Kiará Lauren
Dramaturg – Alisha Espinosa
Production Stage Manager – Sarah Samonte
Asst. Stage Manager – Diana Valeck
It’s 90 minutes until curtain for the non-union, Latine, bilingual, production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma, playing at a regional theater in Oklahoma when Melinda receives a call. The State has banned abortion and her upcoming appointment – canceled. With the performance approaching, the cast and crew band together (with some magical guidance!) to navigate a post-Roe America. Filled with tears, laughter and jokes that are just too soon, O.K! uncovers revelations about the company’s pasts, personal lives, and biases, and their relationship with a society desperate to discount their humanity.
Blackbirding April 18 – 20
by Queen Esther
directed by Lorna Ventura
produced by Alverneq Lindsay
Scenic Design – Brittany Vasta
Lighting Design – Paige Seber
Sound Design – Jessica Paz
Production Stage Manager – Jack Meister-Lopez
Featuring…
Queen Esther……Queen Esther
The Orchestra……Ayodele Maakheru
Narrator…..Synead Cidney Nichols
Accompanied by banjoist/guitarist Ayodele Maatheru (Paradise Square, Shuffle Along, Lackawanna Blues) Blackbirding – a solo show steeped in lost history, ephemera, ghost stories and folklore, storytelling and original reclamation driven Americana – is a requiem for America’s neverending Civil War and the promise of Reconstruction, tangled in a Southern Black feminist vernacular.
When the Other Mary Celeste Sank: A Strange and Umweltian Tale April 25 – 27
by Amina Henry
directed by Ran Xia
produced by Emma Orme
Scenic & Props Design – Jiaying Zhang
Costume Design – Olivia Vaughn Hern
Lighting Design – Paige Seber
Sound Design – Julian Evans
Production Stage Manager – Caroline Pastore
Assistant Stage Manager – Carter White
Featuring…
Elizabeth Marsh……Purva Bedi
Angela Pullman……Kate Benson
Valerie Marsh…..Maaike Laanstra-Corn
Sue Collins……Amber Reauchean Williams
Annie Beard……Avanthika Srinivasan
WHEN THE OTHER MARY CELESTE SANK: AN UMWELTIAN TALE is an anachronistic, theatrical fairy tale: after a shipwreck in 1894, five women are marooned on an island and must work together to survive in a strange, new world. As they hunt for food, battle insects and each other, and occasionally relish their unmoored reality (goodbye corsets!!!), the women also begin to develop sharper senses of self.
The Cause May 2 – 4
by Else Went
directed by Dina Vovsi
Scenic Design – Brittany Vasta
Costume Consultant – Benjamin Strange
Lighting Design – Natasha Marie Rotondaro
Sound Design – Else Went
Production Stage Manager -Tyler Danhaus
Asst. Stage Manager – Olivia Mancini
Featuring…
Olivia Moretti……Olivia Rose Barresi
Jovan Michel……Jovan Davis
Yansa Sa’id……Yansa Fatima
Delaney-Jane Bishop……Delaney Feener
Felix Osman……Felix Teich
Esther Byrne……Esther Williamson
In this house of mirrors, a group of actors and a director gather at newly formed artist residency, The House Upstate, for a week-long workshop development of The Cause, a new play about a group of actors and a director who gather in a house upstate for a week to shoot The Cause, an experimental film adaptation of Othello. As daily rewrites from an absent playwright elevate coincidence to paranoia, jealousy and desire fill the rehearsal room thick as the nightly mist in this quiet, empty town.
Launched in 2016, WP’s 5th Biennial Pipeline Festival features the brilliant new voices of the WP Theater Lab cohort. This your chance to be the first to see the most exciting new works by the most brilliant artists in town! Festival artists regularly go on to be produced on the largest stages in the country and to win every award offered for the stage–you don’t want to miss your chance to see them here first!
Previous Festival works have included Martyna Majok’s queens, Sarah Burgess’ Kings, Sylvia Khoury’s Power Strip, Zoe Sarnak and Emily Kaczmarek’s Afloat, and MJ Kaufman’s Galatea.
Simmering between two Puerto Rican sisters is a family tension that finally comes to a boil. Forced to confront the reality of their father’s rapidly declining health, Renata and Caridad clash over cultural divides, unearth old wounds, and reveal long-buried secrets. As Caridad’s sancocho bubbles on the stove, will the two sisters reconcile their past resentments to face their uncertain futures – together? A searing Off-Broadway Premiere play by Christin Eve Cato.
Producers Latinx Playwrights Circle,WP Theater, andThe Sol Project are thrilled to announce the Off-Broadway Premiere of Sancocho, a new play by Christin Eve Cato (The Good Cop, DUAF 2022) directed by Rebecca Martinez(Miss You Like Hell; Theatre for One: Here We Are).
Sancocho will play a limited engagement from March 11 – April 23, 2023, at WP Theater. Opening Night is set for Thursday, March 23.
“RICH FAMILY FARE. Named for a type of beef stew, Sancocho highlights the significance of familia for the best or otherwise. The dialogue melds between English and Spanish sweetly as the sancocho literally simmers on the stove. The scent made me long to return to Puerto Rico to devour más mofongo y tostones.”
– The Chicago Reader
“A MULTI-SENSORY EXPERIENCE.The inspirational crux lies in what the sisters do with all this [family] baggage — they have the hard conversations, face down their generational trauma and find a path forward toward healing. The stew that they prepare throughout the evening serves as a metaphor for this process, as ingredients are sliced and crushed to create a meal “healing to the soul.”
-Chicago Tribune
Sancocho was produced by Visión Latino Theatre Company in October 2022, as part of Destinos, the fifth annual Chicago International Latino Theater Festival. The Chicago Tribune hailed the production as “inspirational” and “a multi-sensory experience…two strong [sisters]have the hard conversations, face down their generational trauma and find a path forward toward healing. The stew that they prepare throughout the evening serves as a metaphor for this process, as ingredients are sliced and crushed to create a meal ‘healing to the soul.’” The Chicago Reader described the show as “rich family fare. Named for a type of beef stew, Sancocho highlights the significance of familia for the best or otherwise. The dialogue melds between English and Spanish sweetly as the sancocho literally simmers on the stove. The scent made me long to return to Puerto Rico to devour más mofongo y tostones.” Originally developed at Latinx Playwrights Circle’s developmental programs, the play has also been selected as a featured play on #NewPlayExchange and developed atIngenio Festival & Playwrights Center Core Apprentice Workshop.
Arson. Affairs. Incest. Murder… are only the beginning of problems for the Whistler siblings. Mora’s gotta find her birth mother, Neel’s gotta find himself, and Illy’s gotta keep her piece of the sky… but the birds have other plans. Julia Izumi’s Regretfully, So the Birds Are is a wild, farcical tragedy that gleefully flips the human quest for self-discovery on its head.
“A formally adventurous play that uses absurdity to echo the discombobulation of transnational adoptees, adrift in a sea of uncomprehending whiteness.”
-Helen Shaw, The New Yorker
“Izumi offers a whimsical meditation on self-discovery — and a reminder to take stock of what (and who) you have in your life at this moment.”
Proclaim & Protest is a staged reading of four new 10-minute plays written by New York City high school students challenging mental health stigmas. The presentation is the culmination of the 2022 Pages to Stages playwriting cohort; Cyania Augustin, Nerfertiti Staton, Julia Jean Louis, and Vivianne Bednare; directed by WP’s Associate Artistic Director Rebecca Martinez. The viBePages to Stages program is directed by Phanésia Pharel, with playwriting mentorship by WP Lab alum Gethsemane Herron-Coward.
Meet the Playwrights
Cyania Augustin
Vivianne Bednare
Julia Jean Louis
Nerfertiti Staton
viBePages to Stages is a collaborative program in partnership with WP Theater that takes teen writers through a series of weekly sessions to explore the many facets of theater-making with theater professionals from WP’s community (designers, writers, directors, dramaturgs) to develop original short plays and connect to mentors in the field.
Phase One: Playwriting (fall/winter) supports young theatermakers in the creation of new short plays, culminating in a staged reading at WP Theater.
Phase Two: Design (winter/spring) focuses on exploring theatrical design. Participants connect with professional design mentors to create their own conceptual designs, culminating in a virtual sharing of presentations.
viBe Theater Experience produces original theater, music, and media about real-life issues written and performed by teenage girls, young women, and non-binary youth of color from around the country. viBe’s intensive programming is free and engages, inspires, and empowers participants (ages 13-26) to write, create, publish, direct, and perform personal and truthful collaborative theater, music and media about the real-life issues they face daily. viBe provides a safe, creative space for girls, young women, and gender expansive youth to amplify their voices, take on challenges and gain the self-confidence necessary to succeed personally, artistically and academically. Since 2002, more than 75 viBe productions have brought free theater, live musical performances, music videos, and radio plays to thousands of diverse audience members, changing their perceptions about the kind of art that girls, young women and non-binary youth of color can create.
Sisterhood. Love. Vengeance. Flight. Inspired by a tale from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Weightless tells the story of two deeply devoted sisters, Procne and Philomela. Separated by circumstance, they must travel across worlds—facing devastating sacrifice and divine intervention—in order to reunite.
The Kilbanes’ Weightless is a theatrical concept album driven by a deeply moving narrative, which weaves ancient myth with indie rock. The band and the cast are one and the same, blurring the line between actors and musicians, as well as between musical theaterand rock concert.
Weightless will play a limited engagement from September 17 – October 16, 2022 at WP Theater with support from piece by piece productions.
“Weightless is “a sister-power rock concert, with indie-optimist effervescence and MUSIC THAT SOARS.” – The New Yorker
“ONE OF THE BEST NEW MUSICALS IN RECENT MEMORY! A thumpingly melodic score, with hooks that will be STUCK IN YOUR HEAD FOR DAYS.” – The Wrap
“IRRESISTIBLE MUSIC – better than Hadestown – that will keep your head bobbing throughout. The riff battles are THE STUFF OF LEGEND.” – Theatermania
The world premiere of Weightless was developed and produced by Z Space (Lisa Steindler, Executive Artistic Director) and piece by piece productions in March 2018 at Z Space in San Francisco. In 2019, it played at A.C.T. in San Francisco, and BRIC House in Brooklyn as part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival.
Following the piece’s extensive further development with director Tamilla Woodard, including at TheaterSquared as part of the Arkansas New Play Festival, WP Theater filmed the show at CalShakes, a spectacular outdoor amphitheater in the Bay Area, and streamed it online May-June of 2021. The Weightless Album can be heard on Spotify and other streaming services.
“Weightless has a well-crafted form, and its spoken dialogue melds beautifully with the propulsive score. Weightless is an accomplished work, and an entertaining one.” – The New York Times
“The Kilbanes could fly endlessly into space on a single, hypnotically executed chord…To watch this show is to be reanimated with a childlike sense that our choices have magical origins and magical ripple effects.” – San Francisco Chronicle
A note from the creative team:
Welcome Back! We, Ayana Katherine and Daaimah bonded in a shared vision of making purposeful theater that is highly responsive to current cultural conditions. We were curious about what we could add to the collective conversations. We were curious about notions of family, home, our origin stories. What exactly is the American Family? What do they look and sound like? Naturally, we chose Room Enough (For Us All) which centers an African American Muslim family dealing with Queerness.
African-American Muslims constitute 20% of the total U.S. Muslim population. Historically, an estimated 30% of slaves brought to the Americas from West/Central Africa were Muslims. Many of these Muslims were forced to become Christians during the era of American Slavery. In repeated efforts to break free from cultural supremacy, significant numbers of Black Americans have return to Islam.
In our development journey we planned to present a staged bare bones workshop of the full play. However, when we got into the rehearsal space, the company discovered so much embedded in the text that our writer charged forth with deep edits. We uncovered more complexities that needed examination. Thus, we offer you a highly produced excerpted reading of Room Enough (For Us All).
Special thanks to Sakeenah Mubashshir, AJ Muhammed, Chinia Hardy, Anton Floyd, Toni Ann DeNoble, Melissa Mickens, and The Conte Family.
This play has been developed by Fire This Time Festival, Playwrights Center in MN, Clubbed Thumb and Pride Plays.
The Actors and Stage Managers employed in this production are members of ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States
The Director is a member of the STAGE DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS SOCIETY, a national theatrical labor union
UNITED SCENIC ARTISTS, Local USA 829, is a labor union and professional association of Designers, Artists and Craftspeople.
A Note from the Dramaturg/Producer: Interpreters and Immigration
In 2019, 89,000 Iraqi and Afghani nationals who served for the U.S. Armed Forces in the U.S.’s respective wars with their countries received Special Immigrant Visas to relocate post the conflicts. However, still roughly 100,000 Iraqis await from the U.S. State Department proper documentation to relocate to the U.S. and, in many cases, escape persecution in their homeland. Despite being thoroughly vetted through a rigorous security process to become interpreters, often those who wish to immigrate must wait an average of four years and undergo additional security screenings to receive visas. This past fall of 2021, when the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan, thousands of nationals, who worked with the U.S. military and government, urgently tried to flee the country out of fear that they and their families would be killed because of their affiliations with the U.S. 20,000 Afghan nationals, along with 53,000 of their family members, who were in a backlog for Special Immigrant Visas to immigrate to the U.S., were living in the country during the militaristic power transition. Since 2001, it’s been reported by the nonprofit No One Left Behind that over 300 Afghan interpreters and their family members have been killed because of their affiliations with U.S. military. In 2016, 325 Iraqi interpreters were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. In 2017, the number declined to 196. And for 2018, only two Iraqi interpreters received visas. This was a more than 99 percent drop over three years, according to statistics from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services collected by NBC News. A small number of Iraqi women served as interpreters and did so for personal, educational, and financial reasons, as you will observe in They Came in the Night by Zizi Majid. Its interpreter makes this journey, along with her family, of immigration and resettlement in the U.S.A. from Iraq.
-Kristin Leahey, Dramaturg and Producer
Special thanks to WP Theater, 2020-22 WP Theater Lab, Lisa McNulty, Carolyn Cantor, Rebecca Martinez, Michael Sag, Lilla Goettler, Gary Levinson, Roxanna Barrios, Nidia Medina, Boston University School of Theatre Alumni, Boston University College of Fine Arts, Adam Kassim, and all the folks watching the children.
The Actors and Stage Managers employed in this production are members of ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States
The Director is a member of the STAGE DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS SOCIETY, a national theatrical labor union
UNITED SCENIC ARTISTS, Local USA 829, is a labor union and professional association of Designers, Artists and Craftspeople.
WP Theater recognizes this space occupies the lands of the Lenape-Hoking, the Homeland of the Lenape people and other indigenous groups. This is unceded, stolen land.
We show gratitude to the many thousands of Native Americans who are living in and contributing to what is colonially known as New York City, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and future.
WP Theater is working to establish authentic relationships with the Indigenous peoples of Mannahatta, to listen to, honor and support the first inhabitants of this land.
Special thanks from Gethsemane Herron-Coward
I’m gonna thank Martine Green-Rogers and Amrita Ramanan from the Playwright’s Center; Eric Shethar and Emily Shooltz at Ars Nova; Sandra Daley-Sharif, Spencer Barros, and Bernard Tarver at the Liberation Theater Company; Jarvis Antonio Green at JAG; and Jill Rafson, Nicole Tingir, and Anna Morton at Roundabout for space to dream.
Big thanks to the writers that inspire me and put eyes on this piece– Malcolm Tariq, travis tate, Karen Chilton, Mara Velez Melendez, Gracie Gardner, Guadalis Del Carmen, Vichet Chum, Dylan Guerra, Serena Berman, and the peers that have yet to read. Big thanks to Katherine Wilkinson, Brenda Crawley, Mikayla Bartholomew, Princess Jacob, David Glover, Lauren Alcindor, Javier Padilla and Tamera Tomakili for letting me hear this out loud.
Thank you to Nidia, Rebecca, Lisa, and Cori Thomas! Team WP! Thank you to Nambi and Daaimah and Haruna and Zizi! These two years with you all went by too quick and I love you all.
Thank you to David Henry Hwang for Avatar inspiration.
Thank you to my amazing team- ugly babies cute hedgehogs (Cynthia Tong and Chika Ike) for support, genius, and high quality memes. I adore you!
Thank you to my amazing team, part 2- Katie Gamelli and Kelly Miller. I’m so lucky to work with you.
Also, thank you to my therapists, the both of them, doing the work with me.
Thank you to every survivor, living and dead, that kept going.
You are warriors, every one of you. Your stories, our stories…are safe with me.
Special thanks from Cynthia J. Tong
Many thanks are in order and apologies if I forget someone (I am now officially running on fumes):
To Ireland Schultz and Erin Yong;
To the team at TKP: Tom Kirdahy, Sam Myers, Richard Brighi, Santino DeAngelo;
To my support system throughout this journey: John Albert Harris, Dana Leib, Rachel Sussman, and Katherine Wilkinson;
To my fellow Producers: BJ, Ayana, Kristin, and Iyvon + Roxanna;
To the WP Theater: Lisa, Michael, Gary, Lilla, Nidia, & Rebecca;
To my pod: (the ugly hedgehogs) Chika and Gethsemane;
Finally, to every person listed on that program — thank you for your artistry, grace, laughter, and generosity.
The Actors and Stage Managers employed in this production are members of ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States
The Director is a member of the STAGE DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS SOCIETY, a national theatrical labor union
UNITED SCENIC ARTISTS, Local USA 829, is a labor union and professional association of Designers, Artists and Craftspeople.
Special thanks to National New Plays Network. Rebecca Martínez, Jasson Minadakis, Margo Hall, Danielle Ward, Shanesia Davis, Tahseen Aderman, Daaimah Mubashshir, Dr. Don Quinn Kelley. Carol Kelley, Jeannette Fay, John Quincy Adams Kelley, Materials for the Arts
The Actors and Stage Managers employed in this production are members of ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States
The Director is a member of the STAGE DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS SOCIETY, a national theatrical labor union
UNITED SCENIC ARTISTS, Local USA 829, is a labor union and professional association of Designers, Artists and Craftspeople.
With the short film plural (love), Jen Goma and Haruna Lee flirt with the boundaries of desire, power and responsibility, building an environment that feels akin to stepping into a soft BDSM roleplay. Originally inspired by auto-theorists such as Audre Lorde, Maggie Nelson and Roland Barthes, Goma and Lee layer political, cultural, and social theory with their own autobiographical stories, and their own experiences of desire and being desired. Their musings are a pastiche of intricate styles that include pop songs with lyrics by Sartre, femme rituals, live podcast, intimate humor, radical truth-telling, and community engagement.
“It should make your head spin in the best of ways!” –The New York Times on One Night Only at WP Theater
Monica Bill Barnes & Company team up with WP Theater to welcome audiences back to the theater with Many Happy Returns, an inventive and intimate new dance piece. Created by Robbie Saenz de Viteri and Monica Bill Barnes, Many Happy Returns combines language and movement that reflect back on the internal interactions that populated our pandemic minds and celebrate the awkward first steps as we move forward and decide again, who do we want to be now? Many Happy Returns is a work in progress, much like ourselves in this moment, and will change with each performance based on the audience each night.
The theater will be open to limited-capacity audiences, seated socially distanced. Proof of vaccination required for entry. Masks will be required at all times. Our company of five performers is fully vaccinated and will be performing without a face covering. Each performer will be tested daily before performances. All other staff are fully vaccinated and will be masked throughout the event. All tickets are $5.
Seating for MANY HAPPY RETURNS is extremely limited. If you are no longer able attend the performance, please email tickets@wptheater.org to change your reservation.
Welcome Home is an audio tour that invites up to four audience members at a time to explore what makes them feel at home in our theater space on the Upper West Side. This choose-your-own adventure journey of ten audio snapshots offers behind the scenes peeks to WP’s past, present and future. Featuring voices and stories from artists at the core of WP Theater’s work, including excerpts from founder Julia Miles, the installation takes you through spaces not typically accessible to the public, such as the backstage areas, dressing rooms, and the stage itself. Join us for this reimagining of the ways we connect to our physical spaces and the ways the WP community can grow. You are home.
This is a self-guided tour, you may be walking through the theater, on stage, backstage and will be climbing stairs. There will be places to sit along the way. Proof of vaccination required for entry. Masks will be required at all times.
Angela and Odessa are on a sandy search for something that might not be real but they are determined to make a way out of no way. When they stumble upon ADAH, that’s right THE Celebrity-turned-Wellness-Maven Adah, they decide to follow her lead not knowing that the journey could very well be the cure. sandblasted is a deeply stirring, funny, theatrically daring story of waiting and hoping, time and healing, from the award-winning playwright of Behind the Sheet.
Want to catch the best new work by the most exciting new artists in town? Wondering where to meet the next generation of incredible Women+ theatermakers? Don’t miss WP’s Pipeline Festival, a unique opportunity to see five new works, created by five collaborative teams from WP Theater’s celebrated two-year Lab residency. The Pipeline Festival gives audiences a unique opportunity to see five new works in various stages of development, ranging from staged readings, to streamed films, to full-length workshop productions – presented over a span of several weeks.
When we say Women+ we mean people who are cis women, trans, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming people, and all gender identities which have been systematically oppressed throughout history in the theater and beyond.
THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT
March 24-26
by Zizi Majid
Directed by Carolyn Cantor
Produced and dramaturged by Kristin Leahey
Lighting Design Liz Schweitzer
Sound Design Caroline Eng
Associate Sound Design Joe DiBernardo
Production Stage Manager Bea Perez-Arche
Featuring Hana Chamoun, Sarah Nina Hayon, and Lameece Issaq
After the sudden death of her mother, Zsa Zsa receives a visitor from Baghdad: an aunt, who served as an interpreter for the U.S. military and has finally been allowed to immigrate to the U.S. They Came in the Night is a distinctive play about a family sifting through the debris of America’s fraught War in Iraq.
ROOM ENOUGH (FOR US ALL)
April 14-16
by Daaimah Mubashshir
Directed by Katherine Wilkinson
Produced by Ayana Parker Morrison
Scenic Design Deilis Curiel
Lighting Design Judy Kagel
Sound Design Caroline Eng
Associate Sound Design Joe DiBernardo
Fatimah, a recently widowed mother, is determined to have it all. In an attempt to set things right by her queer daughter, Jamillah, she invites her to return home after a 10-year absence from the family. Fatimah plans to bring a new progressive Eid Holiday Festival to Masjid Al-Noor, but her son, Abdullah, feels that in order to protect the family legacy, he needs to fight against these changes. Room Enough (For Us All) is an insightful journey into the struggle of one contemporary African-American Muslim family to come together, despite everything trying to tear them apart.
KIN
April 21-23
by Gethsemane Herron-Coward
Directed by Chika Ike
Produced by Cynthia J. Tong
Costume Design Alexis Carrie
Lighting Design Kat C. Zhou
Sound Design Caroline Eng
Fight Choreographer & Intimacy Director: Rocio Mendez
Stage Manager Tyler Danhaus
Associate Sound Design Joe DiBernardo
Assistant Stage Manager Jessica Dell Beni
As GHC’s family members come together to celebrate the return of an imprisoned relative—a son, father, and partner—she reveals her worst secret via the internet. With each click of the keyboard, the ties that bind the family are threatened, as well as the impending reunion. KIN is the first part of a three-part work, and an investigation of the ripple effects of sexual trauma, memory, and the temporality of violence.
PLURAL (LOVE)
May 5-8 (on demand)
by Haruna Lee & Jen Goma
Directed by Sophiyaa Nayar
Produced by B.J. Evans
Director of Photography Helena Gruensteidl
Production Designer Deilis Curiel
Costume Designer Karen Boyer
Editor Kate Freer
First Assistant Director Lauren La Melle
Sound Engineer Mariya Chulichkovoa
Assistant Production Design Katherine Gaunche
Production Assistants Morgaine Gooding-Silverwood, Penzi Hill, Shane Mendoza
With the short film plural (love), Jen Goma and Haruna Lee flirt with the boundaries of desire, power and responsibility, building an environment that feels akin to stepping into a soft BDSM roleplay. Originally inspired by auto-theorists such as Audre Lorde, Maggie Nelson and Roland Barthes, Goma and Lee layer political, cultural, and social theory with their own autobiographical stories, and their own experiences of desire and being desired. Their musings are a pastiche of intricate styles that include pop songs with lyrics by Sartre, femme rituals, live podcast, intimate humor, radical truth-telling, and community engagement.
RE/MEMORI (Of Hair Land & Sea) – Working Title
May 12-14
by Nambi E. Kelley
Directed by Machel Ross
Produced by Iyvon E.
Scenic Design Patricia Marjorie
Lighting Design Cheyenne Sykes
Sound Design and Original Compositions Christopher Darbassie
Production Stage Manager Caren Celine Morris
A powerfully poetic one-woman show, RE/MEMORI (Of Hair Land & Sea) – Working Title asks the questions: Who is the dreamer? Are the ancestors dreaming you, are you dreaming them, or are we dreaming each other? A meditation on how dreams affect consciousness, agency, and personal power in the construction of a Black woman’s understanding of her connection to her ancestors through time. Commissioned by National New Play Network, RE/MEMORI (Of Hair Land & Sea) – Working Title spans American history from slavery to Black Lives Matter through the lens of one family across generations.
Don’t miss out on our extraordinary 20-21 season as we lift up the work of Women+ theater artists in creative new ways that reflect these unprecedented times. Our work is more focused, active, and innovative than ever—the WP virtual stage is humming with monthly presentations of new work, expanded development programming, timely conversations, social media engagement, and more. In this year of change, we’ll focus on supporting the brilliant community of Women+ theater artists that has made WP Theater a national powerhouse since 1978. We can’t wait to share their work with you.
We hope you’ll join us this season. And if you’re in a position to give, please consider making a contribution of any size. Your gift will support the work of WP Theater and Women+ theater artists, as together we persevere, percolate, and produce boldly in this time.
The Nourish Project explores the idea of how we feed ourselves. Using music, dance, and poetry curated through a framework of the five senses and four natural elements, The Nourish Project hosts a space for audiences to follow their curiosity and explore their own paths during the experience. The event hopes to offer replenishment for the soul and invites people to find a moment of rest in a weary world.
Conceived and directed by current WP BOLD Associate Artistic Director Rebecca Martínez (Here We Are – New York Times Critics’ Pick). Created in collaboration with a multidisciplinary cast of musicians, dancers, storytellers, writers, and cultural organizers from around the country, including playwright Jaisey Bates (the day we were born), international touring artist Edna Vazquez, Bessie Award-winning choreographer Joya Powell and performers from her dance company Movement of the People, organic farmer and artist Nikiko Masumoto, theatermaker Latrelle Bright (The Water Project), performer, teacher and heritage holder Siobhan Juanita Brown, award-winning performing artist Joaquin Lopez, performer Jono Eiland (Miss You Like Hell), NYC Youth Poet Laureate Camryn Bruno, Lighting Designer Jennifer Fok (I Am My Own Wife), Sound Designer & Composer Christopher Darbassie (The Black Exhibition), theatermaker and director Madeline Sayet, Virtual Designer Sara Sawicki (Manual Cinema’s Frankenstein), and Dr. Michelle Tom.
Through a generous grant from The Jenna and Paul Segal Foundation, Broadway Producer Jenna Segal will sponsor a world premiere by a female playwright with a female director through The Heidi Thomas Writer’s Initiative/ This program is named after acclaimed British playwright and screenwriter Heidi Thomas. Miss Thomas is the creator and executive producer behind the BBC’s Call the Midwife series. Heidi’s award-winning theatrical work has been performed at the Liverpool Playhouse, the National Theatre Studio, The Almeida, Chichester Festival and Royal Court Theatres, the National Theatre of Norway, by the Women’s Playhouse Trust and by the Royal Shakespeare Company and on Broadway. Her screenwriting has been acknowledged and awarded by BAFTA, the Emmys, The Writers Guild of Great Britain, Women in Film and Television UK, and the Royal Television Society.
Keep Moving is a theatrically innovative and heartfelt look into how one group of women preserve their identities as artists and dancers during a time when there are no studios or theaters to move in. Structured in chapters, the visual podcast merges choreography from the cancelled premiere of Monica Bill Barnes & Company’s The Running Show (due to COVID restrictions) with performance footage, recorded interviews, self-taped personal reflections, at-home rehearsals, and phone conversations. The chapters vary in length from a 4-minute video to a 22-minute audio clip that could be paired with a walk outside or preparing dinner. Each chapter responds to the underlying and challenging question of how dancers, women who work so hard to keep moving, find a way forward while live performance is on pause.
The Keep Moving team includes Editorial Adviser Robyn Semien (This American Life), Associate Producer Elizabeth Furman (Days Go By), Web Designer and Creative Consultant Indah Walsh (Indah Walsh Dance Company), and Rehearsal Director Flannery Gregg (Little Women).
Keep Moving was originally presented and commissioned by American Dance Festival with the support of Jody and John Arnhold/Arnhold Foundation.
Keep Moving is made possible with generous support from Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, NYC COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund in The New York Community Trust, SHS Foundation, Dance/NYC, Harkness Foundation for Dance and Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, The WP Theater, Maira Gerlich and the entire staff of New York Physical Therapy, Carol Walker and the dance department at Hunter College.
Written by rising star Stefani Kuo and directed by Mei Ann Teo (SKiNFoLK: An American Show), Final Boarding Call tells the stories of the current Hong Kong protests. The play revolves around the interconnected stories of seven characters whose backgrounds and perspectives run the spectrum – a protesting brother and flight attendant sister struggling to keep her job; a Mainland Chinese mother and her estranged Hong Kong daughter; a non-Cantonese speaking reporter and her Indian partner; and an American expat CEO and Hong Kong lover living in the shadows. Final Boarding Call begins and ends with a flight, an entrance into the Hong Kong protests and how the politics we see on the news every day affects the citizens of Hong Kong in their day-to-day lives. It gives the audience a window into China’s grip on global capitalism. How far will they go to fight for family, freedom, and the right to be heard?
WP Theater is thrilled to team up with the acclaimed Ma-Yi Theater Company—one of the country’s leading incubators of new works shaping local and national conversations about what it means to be Asian American today—to share a story as current as the headlines in today’s news.
For more information about Ma-Yi Theater Company and their work, go to ma-yitheatre.org.
Galatea is a trans love story set against the backdrop of a climate crisis. Loosely based on John Lyly’s 1585 play Gallathea, Galatea tells the story of two young people who escape a virgin sacrifice by dressing up as boys and running away to the woods where they meet and fall in love.
Presented in collaboration with Red Bull Theater, Galatea is written by WP Playwrights Lab Alum MJ Kaufman (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, How to Live on Earth), and directed by Will Davis (India Pale Ale, Men on Boats). The cast includes Grammy Award winner Ty Defoe, Esco Jouléy(High Maintenance), Jo Lampert (Hundred Days, Joan of Arc), Pooya Mohseni (Madame Secretary) Aneesh Sheth (Netflix’s Jessica Jones), Futaba Shioda (Rent 20th Anniversary tour), and TL Thompson (Is This a Room).
Julie Crawford of Columbia University on Galatea by MJ Kaufman
MJ Kaufman’s Galatea or Whatever You Be, a genderqueer translation of an already pretty queer Elizabethan play by John Lyly, is set in an unnamed village terrorized by the god Neptune – the “one with the big pitchfork-like thing” – who demands the sacrifice of the villagers’ most beautiful virgin every five years in order to save the village from destruction. Read more…
“Gorgeous music, ferocious performances and a dazzlingly original structure! The Kilbanes could fly endlessly into space on a single, hypnotically executed chord… To watch this show is to be reanimated with a childlike sense that our choices have magical origins and magical ripple effects.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Weightless has a well-crafted form, and its spoken dialogue melds beautifully with the propulsive score. Weightless is an accomplished work, and an entertaining one.” —NY Times
Sisterhood. Love. Betrayal. Flight. Weaving together ancient myth and indie rock, Weightless tells the tale of two deeply devoted sisters, Procne and Philomela, separated by circumstance, who must travel across worlds and make devastating sacrifices in order to reunite, and the god who shapes and is shaped by that journey. Inspired by a tale from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Weightless is a visual concept album—the band and the cast are one and the same—blurring the line between actors and musicians, between musical theater, video art, and rock concert, and between the virtual world and a world in which we can all hold and feel one another again.
Kilbane (Procne/Bass) and Moses (Keyboards/Vocals) are joined onscreen by fellow performer/band members Lila Blue (Philomela), Kofy Brown (Iris/Percussion), Joshua Pollock (Tereus/Guitar), and Dan Harris (Percussion). The creative team includes Video Editor Katherine Freer (Lifespan of a Fact, The Band’s Visit), Title Designer Yee Eun Nam (The Fall of the House of Usher), Cinematographer Peggy Peralta (award-winning documentaries Harana, and A New Color), Production & Costume Designer David Israel Reynoso (Sleep No More) and Sound Editor Gregory T. Kuhn (Horizon, Lortel Award). Weightless was line produced by WP BOLD Special Projects Producer, Nidia Medina.
Filmed under strict COVID guidelines at CalShakes’ Bruns Amphitheater, a spectacular outdoor performance space in the Bay Area, Weightless intertwines animation, live rock performance, and storytelling into a musical experience like no other.
The world premiere of Weightless was developed and produced by Z Space (Lisa Steindler, Executive Artistic Director) and piece by piece productions in March 2018 at Z Space in San Francisco. The show was developed at TheaterSquared as part of the Arkansas New Play Festival.
OLE WHITE SUGAH DADDY
by Obehi Janice
directed by Caitlin Sullivan
in partnership with AYE DEFY
Live Broadcast Reading October 23 8PM ET | Rebroadcasts of recording 10/24–10/27
In Ole White Sugah Daddy, a young Black female coder and MIT grad wrestles with love, identity, and the tension between striving and thriving. Lynne is struggling to get her new app noticed when an unexpected investor appears in the form of an older white man. Set amidst Boston’s startup culture, Ole White Sugah Daddy asks, ‘What do you do when you don’t want the attention you’re getting and you’re not getting the attention you want?’
LOCKDOWN
by WP’s Mellon Playwright In Residence, Cori Thomas
directed by Kent Gash with Lillian Andrea De León, Reynaldo Piniella,Travis Raeburn, Heather Alicia Simms, Keith Randolph Smith
in partnership with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
Live Broadcast Recording December 3 at 7PM ET | Rebroadcasts of recording from 12/4 at 10am ET to 12/7 at 6pm ET
Inspired by her conversations with people serving life sentences at San Quentin Prison, the reading of this searing and beautiful play by Cori Thomas (When January Feels Like Summer) will reunite the cast and director of the acclaimed Rattlestick Playwrights Theater production. Lockdown is an authentic, intimate, and powerful examination of what life in prison is really like, and an exploration of the possibilities for transformation through human connection.
In Ole White Sugah Daddy, a young Black female coder and MIT grad wrestles with love, identity, and the tension between striving and thriving. Lynne is struggling to get her new app noticed when an unexpected investor appears in the form of an older white man. Set amidst Boston’s startup culture, Ole White Sugah Daddy asks, ‘What do you do when you don’t want the attention you’re getting and you’re not getting the attention you want?’
Written by Obehi Janice (Hulu’s Castle Rock) and directed by Caitlin Sullivan (Hundred Days, The Lucky Ones), Ole White Sugah Daddy was originally commissioned by SpeakEasy Stage Company and subsequently developed at SPACE on Ryder Farm, WP Theater, Colt Coeur, The Lark Play Development Center and AYE DEFY. The play was selected to be a part of the 2019 Parity Plays Festival reading series, produced by WP Theater in partnership with Colt Coeur at HERE Arts Center. AYE DEFY, founded by Mirirai Sithole (School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play), has been creating new models of partnering and producing work in the virtual space. Leslie Roth (co-creator of AYE DEFY) produced the July 24th 2020 benefit reading of Ole White Sugah Daddy with this same cast and creative team as part of AYE DEFY’s Kilroys Series.
For more information about AYE DEFY and their work, go to ayedefy.com.
“Lockdown is capaciously compassionate, with excellent performances. A rare night at the theater, and a valuable one.” – The New York Times
“Directed with nuance and empathy by Kent Gash for the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Cori Thomas’s beautifully structured play is a resonant demonstration of the inseparability of the personal from the political. Thomas has a great ear for prison folkways without ever seeming sociological about it.” – The New Yorker
Inspired by her conversations with people serving life sentences at San Quentin Prison, the reading of this searing and beautiful play by Cori Thomas (When January Feels Like Summer) will reunite the cast and director of the acclaimed Rattlestick Playwrights Theater production. Lockdown is an authentic, intimate, and powerful examination of what life in prison is really like, and an exploration of the possibilities for transformation through human connection.
For more information about Rattlestick and their work, go to rattlestick.org/.
PANEL: A conversation responding to LOCKDOWN
Friday, December 4 at 4PM ET
Join playwright Cori Thomas and two incredible social justice activists and writers James King and Robbie Pollock for a discussion about Lockdown and its resonance for those with lived experience with incarceration and the criminal justice system.
Additional Events:
WP Theater and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater are partnering with the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought (CCCCT) on events surrounding Lockdown, including the CCCCT’s Abolition 13/13 project, featuring blog posts written by men at San Quentin who have participated in the writing and research of Lockdown.
The mission of CCCCT is to nourish the critical examination of our present and to achieve a critical praxis for our future. The CCCCT is the home of the Initiative for a Just Society (IJS), and it is a joint project of the Columbia Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Columbia Law School. Professor Bernard E. Harcourt, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, founded the CCCCT in 2014.
