The 36 PlayGround playwrights will be given four and a half days to write their ten-minute plays for The Feminist Hall of Fame.  Six winning scripts will be selected by a blue-ribbon team of readers including WomenArts Executive Director Martha Richards; WomenArts board member, Christine Young; James A. Kleinmann, Artistic Director of PlayGround; and Annie Stuart, PlayGround’s Casting Director.  The six scripts will be presented as staged readings at the prestigious Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

The ten-minute play format gives the playwrights a wonderful opportunity to try out new ideas with skilled actors and directors, and it is fun for audience members to see these new plays in their earliest stage of development.

This is the third collaboration between WomenArts and PlayGround.  WomenArts approached PlayGround in 2015 because of the company’s long-standing commitment to gender parity, both on and off stage.  Half of PlayGround’s company of writers, actors and directors are women, and PlayGround has been recognized by the International Centre for Women Playwrights with a 50/50 Applause Award for its leadership in producing plays by women.  In 2014, women were 50% of the writers selected for PlayGround’s season while women were only 26% of the writers produced by all Bay Area theatres.

WomenArts’ Martha Richards and PlayGround’s Annie Stuart will co-lead a pre-show discussion with the playwrights.