Get on your snow boots and scarf! Tonight’s the opening night for NOplays’ second 365 Women a Year event, featuring the works of Bennington College students and alumni. What do Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Bishop, Stella Adler, and Pina Bausch all have in common? They’re going to be on stage tonight at Hubbard Halls’ Freight Depot at 8pm! Don’t miss out! Buy tickets here.
2015 was a huge year for NOplays!
365 Women a Year at Bennington College, our first production, happened this March. We had an excellent turnout both locally with audience members who attended the event live, and an international audience who tuned into the live-stream. We introduced four new works by female playwrights Shellen Lubin, Maia Villa, Catherine Weingarten, and Natalie Osborne. Their plays celebrate the achievements of extraordinary women such as Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Bishop, Stella Adler, Slyvia Gassel, and Gloria Anzaldua.
LADIES FIRST, a newsletter for new productions, workshops, readings, and publications by female playwrights, launched it’s first two issues this November and December. The goals of LADIES FIRST are to create greater gender parity in theatre by highlighting the works of female writers and the organizations that promote and produce their works.
None of this would be possible without support from our communities, from the many theatre-makers who have given their time and talents to our projects, and from our followers. Thank you for an amazing year, and we hope 2016 will be an even bigger one!
So What’s Next for 2016?
365 Woman a Year is Back!
NOplays, in collaboration with Hubbard Hall, will be presenting another production of the 365 Women a Year, Bennington plays. The production will be part of Hubbard Hall’s Winter Carnival this January.
Featuring three returning plays; Making Frankenstein by Natalie Osborne, Feelin’ Lonely by Catherine Weingarten, and After the Thin Man by Shellen Lubin.
The production will also feature one world premiere, Pina by Emma Plotkin.
En El Medio, by Maia Villa, one of the four original 365 Women a Year plays, is currently being workshopped by Chicanas Cholas y Chisme in Los Angeles, and will have a production in March 2016.
The 365 Women a Year performances will take place the evenings of Friday, January 29th and Saturday, January 30th.
Hope to see you there, and have a safe and happy New Year!
The Barbara Newhall Follett Project is presenting tomorrow night at 6:30pm in the Visual and Performing Arts Center at Bennington College. Don’t miss it!
Where in the world in Natalie Osborne? She’s back up in sunny Vermont working on a new theatre piece! The Barbara Newhall Follett Project is a devised work based off of the life and writings of Barbara Newhall Follett. Barbara was a writer and a child prodigy who published her first book at the age of twelve. The House Without Windows received raved reviews by critics and readers alike. After her father left the family, Barbara and her mother became destitute. Barbara continued writing, but none of her works were published. At the age of twenty-five, and after a fight with her husband Nick, Barbara left her home with 30 dollars and a notebook. She was never seen again.
Throughout Barbara’s work, there is a theme of escaping into nature and the imagination. In our work, we’ve tried to balance both aspects of Barbara’s life, the real and the fantastic, the romantic and the mundane.
We’ll be presenting the piece July 10th, 2015, at 6:30pm on Bennington’s Campus. The event is free and all are welcome!
THE ENSEMBLE:
Megan Hill
Natalie Osborne
Molly Kirshner
Patrick Harret Marshall
For more on the project visit:
Tonight, I will be performing Stories from the Gurukalam, a 15 minute solo piece about Kattaikkuttu performers. I’m very excited to present this play, which is an accumulation of my work at Bennington in both theatre and anthropology. The piece will be performed as part of the Solo Performance Class showings, starting at 7 in Margot Tenney theatre at Bennington College. I also wanted to take this opportunity to give a thank you to everyone who has made this work possible, my friends and mentors at the Kattaikkuttu Gurukalam, the faculty in both the drama and anthropology departments, and my fellow performers in the Solo Performance class. I’ve very excited to be presenting this work as my last performance at Bennington College.
Do you need some musical theatre in your life? Come to the Downcafe at Bennington College tonight at 8 for some swacky show tunes! 15 songs, 14 shows, 13 composers, one night only! See you there!
There a new show in the President’s Gallery at Bennington College. Come see reinterpretations of classic children’s stories including Alice in Wonderland, Little Red Ridding Hood, the Snow Queen, and others, in these wild and fun illustrations by a variety of talent young artists! Including two pieces by yours truly. Hurry, the exhibit will only be up for a few more days!
As part of Wellness Week, BeWell and the Bennington Drama Collective will be hosting “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby!” an open mic night on consent, safe sex, and sex positivity. There will be new student works ranging from music to poetry to drama, including Me, Myself, and I, a new play by yours truly! Tonight at 10pm in Bennington College’s Downcafe. Hope to see you there!
Check out these awesome pics from the 365 Women a Year Festival! Photos were taken by the lovely Ayesha Raees
If you missed NOplays first production in collaboration with 365 Women a Year, then you’re in luck! Here’s a video of the event. The reading series took place on March 27th in the Bennington College Student Center and features the work of four new plays by Bennington Students and Alumni. Enjoy!
Special thanks to HowlRound and NiteCorp for making the livestream possible. Be sure to check out videos of the other play reading events that were a part of 365 Women A Year’s first festival in the HowlRound archive.
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