Project Y Theatre Company presents the 8th Annual Women in Theatre Festival. The award winning Project Y Theatre Company is an outside-the-box theatre company that supports the creation, development and production of new works for the stage in New York City. 2023 marks their 23rd year as a company committed to supporting playwrights and their plays, with a focus on experimenting with new technologies while centering women and LGBTQ voices. Project Y positions new plays and new voices to be part of the theatrical conversation.
The Women in Theatre Festival seeks to broaden the opportunities for women in the entertainment industry by producing new work by women with more than 50% female representation of all artists involved. Selections from the 8th Annual Festival include:
Yoga With Jillian
By Lia Romeo
Directed by Andrew W. Smith
Performed by Michole BIancosino
In this immersive play, yoga teacher Jillian plans to take the audience through an amazing, incredible, fantastic, one hour yoga journey. But the past couple years have been tough, am I right? As Jillian tries to teach again in our changed world, the shiny, happy yoga teacher attempts to keep the class, and herself, from completely imploding.
All Hands on Deck
The All Hands on Deck series is back with a new session! The festival shares new works by Female Playwrights of the African Diaspora. Featuring work by award winning playwrights Judy Tate, Marie-Françoise Theodore and Shamar White, the short plays are directed by Tonia Anderson and Noelle LuSane. Conceived by Antu Yacob, the series explores different perspectives of the Black experience in America. This session's theme is "On Womanhood: Surrendering to the Goddess Within". What does it mean to be a woman in 2023? What does it mean to surrender to yourself?
The Hroswitha Project
Aimed at reclaiming and celebrating the history of women in theatre, these plays are commissioned adaptations of a play by the first woman playwright, 10th century abbess, Hrosthwitha of Gandersham. This is part of a 5 year project to adapt all 6 of these historical plays and bring more awareness to this unknown female writer who deserves a place in theatre history. This year, 5 playwrights are commissioned to write free adaptations of the play, Paphnutius or The Conversion of the Harlot Thaïs. Playwrights Liz Appel (Bells Like Hooves, Roundabout Underground reading series), Enid Graham (Ruth, O'Neill National Playwrights Conference), Ying Ying Li (Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theatre), Colleen O'Doherty (Missing Ingredient, Project Y Theatre) and Deepa Purohit (Elyria, Atlantic Theatre) are writing new short plays to be staged in readings as part of Women in Theatre Festival 2023.
The Real Girls
The Real Girls is a sci-fi, musical-comedy satire about celebrity culture and the entertainment industry, set in the not-so-distant future, and inside the audience’s brain. In this world, it is the norm to have a brainial implant called "The BOX", which directly feeds perfectly customized content into your mind, giving you what you want before you know you want it. Through our "feed" we follow the careers of "The Real Girls," a girl group made up of four sisters/former humans turned algorithmically programmed celebrity persona. This audio play explores our society’s relationship with celebrities and the culture that creates and defines them.
Momentary Exchange - in-person, participatory digital theatre
Created by Michole Biancosino and Todd Anderson
Leave your cellphone on for this unique theatre event. In this app-driven performance piece, you are invited to take a 50 minute journey - through memory, relationships, songs and weather – as we take a road trip together. Audiences co-write the story in real time by using your phone and responding to prompts in real-time. It’s going to be a wild ride. Join us for this interdisciplinary new piece which brings together performance and coding/theatre and computer science to create a totally new, totally exciting event.
...and more!
