Bechdel Project Announces Recipient Of One Year Writers Residency

Bechdel Project has announced Jeanne Dorsey as the recipient of the inaugural Room of One's Own (ROO) Writer's Residency. During the residency, Ms. Dorsey will fully develop her new play "The Kit: Made by Martha," which was a 2021 Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan Commission.

The play is inspired by Martha Goddard, whose sexual assault evidence collection kit revolutionized how cases against sexual assault perpetrators were built and standardized the compassionate treatment of rape victims without revictimizing them.

This inaugural year the ROO Residency was open to feminist writers (of any intersection) looking to develop a new work based on women from history. Ms. Dorsey was selected for the ROO Residency from over 100 applicants from around the world.

Jeanne Dorsey is a New York based writer of plays, screenplays, teleplays, and essays. Her work has been published by Seal Press, Smith and Krauss, Heinemann Press, and Applause Books and produced by Ensemble Studio Theater, New Georges, Soho Playhouse, and others. She is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Dramatists Guild, Honor Roll, and is a New Georges Affiliated Artist.

Throughout the year-long residency, she will have writing retreats in Berlin, Germany, and Brooklyn, NY, and unlimited access to Bechdel Project's studios and staff to help her develop her new play, both in collaboration with other artists and in solitude. According to Dorsey, "Artistic guidance, feedback, production assistance, moral support, studio space to both write and hear my work -- these are all the things that a playwright dreams about while working in isolation on a new play. This is what the ROO Residency is providing."

The ROO takes its name from the 1929 book by Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, in which Woolf wrote, "fictitious women are too simple - contrary to the living, breathing, complex women of real life, (they) are almost always depicted only in their relation to men."

Bechdel Project supports the creation of stories with complex women who are not depicted only in relation to men. Co-creative director Jens Rasmussen says, "We're excited to work with Jeanne because we believe The Kit can do more than teach about a woman who has impacted the lives of millions. We believe it has the power to change the way people think."