Women's Voices Theater Festival 2018

Review: ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ at Spooky Action Theater (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Puppets, people, props, projections, and sci-fi pop up a lot on DC stages, but not often with the narrative verve, literary cred, and nonstop wit of The Lathe of Heaven. Adapted and directed by...

Dangereuse: The Two Noras: ‘Noura’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Noura, the story of a Chaldean Christian refugee from Iraq, is a magnificent production. The acting is first-rate, the technical aspects flawless, the whole experience complex and full of deep...

Review: ‘The Veils’ at Nu Sass Productions (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Written by Hope Villanueva, The Veils explores the dualities of identity and traverses the delicate terrain of PTSD. This show, produced by Nu Sass Productions, is enjoying its world premiere at the...

Interview: Julia Cho, ‘Aubergine’ Playwright (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

In the world of #MeToo and the #TimesUp movement, how important is the playwright of color’s voice to theater and entertainment world? The Women’s Voices Theater Festival? Do you try more to be...

Review: ‘No Word in Guyanese For Me’ by the Rainbow Theatre Project (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

No Word In Guyanese For Me challenges our social conditioning around gender norms, identity, immigration, religion, and sexuality. Rainbow Theatre Project remounts this award-winning play by Wendy...

Review: ‘Noura’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Imagine this: it is the night before Christmas. A silent snow blankets New York City, and inside a spare living room, a woman dozes in front of her Christmas tree. Her adolescent son snuggles into the...

Review: ‘Aubergine’ at Olney Theatre Center (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

There are certain meals that stay with you forever. It could be the pie that your mom makes every Christmas, the soup that you made for your son when he had the flu, or the casserole you made your...

Review: ‘Peepshow’ at dog & pony dc

“Who here is a feminist?” asked the Ring Announcer (Amelia Hensley). As she signed, wearing a bright red pantsuit and standing on a thick padded mat as used for a contact-sport match, a nearby hearing...

Review: ‘All She Must Possess’ at Rep Stage (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

An evening of wordplay on the meanings and messages of Modern art awaits audiences at All She Must Possess. This is another worthy world premiere from the venturesome Rep Stage Company at Howard...

Review: ‘Familiar’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

When the 2018 Women’s Voices Theater Festival comes to a close and the hits to emerge from it are tallied, Danai Gurira’s comedy Familiar will surely be on the shortlist. Gurira’s play Eclipsed—a...

In the Moment: Interview with Patrick Lord, Projection Designer

For regular theater-goers, we have seen that projection design is not a fad or an eye-popping, one-time visual effect. Projection design has become an integral part of many a production’s overall...

Review: ‘Handbagged’ by Round House Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Two powerful, verbally skilled women come together weekly for tea and talk for over a decade. They are locked in a power struggle about politics and cultural norms that affect a nation and the world....

Review: ‘Digging Up Dessa’ at The Kennedy Center (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Despite its off-putting (and overly-clever) title, Digging Up Dessa is a lively and often moving tale of two 12-year-olds who are lost in the middle of a strange new world and trying to find...

Interview: ‘Noura’ Playwright Heather Raffo, (Women’s Voices Theater Festival) at STC

Have you ever met someone who left you feeling as though there is nothing you can’t do? I got that feeling each time I sat down with four playwrights and a director who identify as women of color from...

Review: ‘Skeleton Crew’ at Baltimore Center Stage (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

As part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, to highlight the diversity and depth of new plays being written by women, Baltimore Center Stage showcases the fourth play of its 2017-18 season with...

Review: ‘The Trojan Women Project’ at Brave Spirits (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Brave Spirits Theatre adds its distinctive style to the Women’s Voices Theatre Festival with The Trojan Women Project. It is a singular event. The Trojan Women Project is packed with moments of...

Interview: Nataki Garrett, ‘Jefferson’s Garden’ Director (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Have you ever met someone who left you feeling as though there is nothing you can’t do? I got that feeling each time I sat down with four playwrights and a director who identify as women of color from...

In the Moment Part 2: Interviews with Playwrights Dominique Cieri, Wendy Graf and Hope Villanueva (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

This is the second part of a two-part series of interviews with Women’s Voices Theatre Festival playwrights. In this series, I asked the same questions to a number of Women’s Voices Theatre Festival...

Magic Time!: Katie Kleiger on Bonding and Being a Warrior in ‘The Wolves’ at Studio Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

The reason I asked to interview Katie Kleiger is that after I saw her in Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves at Studio Theatre, I realized I had seen her on the same fourth-floor stage in Lucy Prebble’s The...

Magic Time!: Gloria Steinem Talks About ‘Sovereignty’ at Arena Stage (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

“What Mary Kathryn Nagle has given us on stage tonight is the history we don’t learn,” said renowned feminist author and activist Gloria Steinem during one of the most buzzed-about talkbacks of the...

Interview: Kyla Garcia on Playing Sarah Ridge Polson in ‘Sovereignty’ at Arena Stage (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Kyla Garcia is starring as Sarah Ridge Polson in Sovereignty at Arena Stage. Sovereignty, by Mary Kathryn Nagle, tells two stories. One is of a modern Native woman (played by Garcia) fighting for her...

Magic Time!: ‘Jefferson’s Garden’ at Ford’s Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

A portrait of George Washington hangs in Ford’s Theatre on the presidential box where Abraham Lincoln was shot. When you stop to think about it, this is an odd disconnect. Presumably faithful to what...

Review: ‘4,380 Nights’ at Signature Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

4,380 Nights is a raw, emotionally charged political theater production that makes the movie Zero Dark Thirty look timid. That is my trigger warning about a new play by Annalisa Dias that explores...

Interview: Annalisa Dias, ‘4,380 Nights’ Playwright (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Have you ever met someone who left you feeling as though there is nothing you can’t do? I got that feeling each time I sat down with four playwrights and a director who identify as women of color from...

Review: ‘Jefferson’s Garden’ at Ford’s Theatre

The Ford’s Theatre production of Jefferson’s Garden (by Timberlake Wertenbaker), which had its American premiere on January 24, tries to balance the oft-tread narrative of Thomas Jefferson’s role in...

Tributes to Ursula K. Le Guin, whose novel ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ will be staged at Spooky Action Theater (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

This year’s Women’s Voices Theater Festival features 24 plays, four of which are adaptations. Three are based on works by great male writers—Shakespeare, Congreve, Ibsen—and one is based on the work...

Interview: Tracey Conyer Lee, ‘Rabbit Summer’ Playwright (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Have you ever met someone who left you feeling as though there is nothing you can’t do? I got that feeling each time I sat down with four playwrights and a director who identify as women of color from...

Review: ‘This Is All Just Temporary’ at Convergence Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Convergence Theatre, as a part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, has produced a new play by Olivia Haller called This Is All Just Temporary. The original work focuses on college graduate Lauren,...

Review: ‘Waxing West’ at 4615 Theatre Company (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” So said F. Scott Fitzgerald, at the end of The Great Gatsby. Waxing West, by Saviana Stanescu, is the story of a...

In the Moment: ‘The Way of the World’ at Folger Theatre (Women’s Voices Theatre Festival)

There’s lots to like about Theresa Rebeck’s The Way of the World just as my DC Theater Arts colleague Sophia Howes points out in her review. The show is the Folger Theater’s Women’s Voices Theater...

In the Moment: Interviews with Women’s Voices Theater Festival playwrights – Part 1

This is the first part of a multi-part series of interviews with Women’s Voices Theater Festival playwrights. In this series, I asked the same questions to a number of Women’s Voices Theater Festival...

Review: ‘Imogen’ by Pointless Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Imogen, Pointless Theatre’s adaptation of Cymbeline, places one of Shakespeare’s most confusing heroines at the center of a battle for her independence. As in Cymbeline, Imogen has to contend with a...

Post-Play Palaver: ‘The Way of the World’ at Folger Theater (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Post-Play Palaver is an occasional series of conversations between DC Theater Arts writers who saw the same performance, got really into talking about it, and decided to continue their exchange in...

Review: ‘The Way of the World’ at Folger Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

The Way of the World, a deft satire of the mating habits and financial vicissitudes of the 1%, arrived at the Folger Theatre last night. It was a hilarious evening. Theresa Rebeck’s comedy, very...

Erika Rose Lights Up the Stage in ‘Queens Girl in Africa’ (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

It’s no coincidence that Queens Girl in Africa—Caleen Sinnette Jennings’ semi-autobiographical one-woman play now at Mosaic Theater Company of DC—was chosen to kick off the Women’s Voices Theater...

Magic Time!: “Claim All of Your Selves”: Caleen Sinnette Jennings on Her ‘Queens Girl’ Plays (Womens’ Voices Theater Festival Productions)

Erika Rose’s performance in Queens Girl in Africa is awesome to behold. She plays the playwright’s teenage self, named Jackie, plus her parents, school friends, and others, with an incandescence that...

Diverse City: Interview with Artistic Director and Activist Elena Velasco

Welcome to the very first Diverse City column on DC Theater Arts. My name is Darby DeJarnette and I created this column to highlight, through interviews, the different experiences of individuals from...

Review: ‘Queens Girl in Africa’ at Mosaic Theater Company (Women’s Voices Theater Festival Production)

Playwright Caleen Sinnette Jennings serves up an ace with the world premiere of Queens Girl in Africa – a riveting, semi-autobiographical account of her experience living in Ibadan, Nigeria in the...

DC Theater Arts Kicks Off ‘Women’s Voices Theater Festival’ Coverage

The Women’s Voices Theater Festival kicks off this week, and DC Theater Arts is excited to cover this important event. For the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, 24 plays penned by female playwrights...

Report: Arena Stage’s Molly Smith and Playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle Discuss ‘Sovereignty’ and Why Plays by Native American Women Are More Vital Than Ever

In 1839, Mary Kathryn Nagle’s great-great-great grandfather, Cherokee statesman John Ridge, was assassinated for signing the Treaty of New Echota. In 2017, Nagle wrote a play about her family’s...