NewYorkRep 10-Year Anniversary Benefit To Celebrate Women Who Have Impacted Theatre, September 18

NewYorkRep celebrates 10 years of producing theatre that inspires social change with a dinner benefit event on September 18 at Harbor Lights Yacht - Skyport Marina (2430 FDR Drive, NYC).

Honoring five women who have impacted theatre, the benefit evening celebrates NewYorkRep founder Gayle D. Waxenberg, and producer and an theatre artist advocate Nan Barnett, playwright Michelle Kholos Brooks (War Words, H*tler's Tasters), playwright Gloria J. Browne Marshall (Shot: Caught A Soul, Dreams of Emmett Till), and director and NewYorkRep Artistic Director Sarah Norris (War Words, H*tler's Tasters). Benefit tickets, starting at $200, are available online at www.givebutter.com/NYR-10-Year-Celebration through Sept. 8.

The evening's entertainment celebrating the honorees and female theater artists will be hosted by female veteran comic Linette Palladino.

“The roster of women we are honoring are trailblazers, and have contributed to all different aspects of theater,” says NewYorkRep founder Gayle D. Waxenberg. “They deserve to be celebrated. Additionally, they have contributed to NewYorkRep's growth and have become a part of our family.” 

NewYorkRep  develops and produces new plays and musicals that inspire and compel social change by telling stories that expose our humanity. By illuminating social and ethical questions through art, we strive to create provocative theater that promotes empathy, compassion, and inclusion. In order to increase access to the stories we tell, NewYorkRep, produces content across artistic mediums.  NewYorkRep is a 501(c)(3) organization.

Nan Barnett is a new play developer and producer and an advocate for theater-makers and the theater they make. She is the Executive Director of National New Play Network, the country's alliance of theaters that collaborate in innovative ways to develop, produce, and extend the life of new plays. While on NNPN's Executive Committee she worked to create the organization's revolutionary Rolling World Premiere and Residency programs. She came to the Network full-time in 2013 and guided it through the development and launch of its field-altering database, the New Play Exchange, now home to more than 55,000 plays by living writers, and its recent planning process, which resulted in the organization's much-lauded new governance and membership structure and plan for leading the field towards a truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive new play ecosystem. Nan spent 24 seasons at Florida Stage, a LORT theater producing exclusively new and developing work, was a member of the inaugural Helen Hayes Awards' New Play Panel for the nation's capital region and Coordinating Producer for the 2015 and 2018 iterations of DC's Women's Voices Theater Festival. She serves on the Artistic Council of the O'Neill Theater Center and was inducted into The National Theatre Conference in 2017.

MICHELLE KHOLOS BROOKS is an award-winning playwright with productions staged internationally. Awards and distinctions include the Susan Glaspell Award for Hitler's Tasters, the Riva Shiner Comedy Award for Kalamazoo, co-written by Kelly Younger. Hitler's Tasters was also named Best of Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by Stage Magazine, and the filmed stage version of Hitler's Tasters was named as a Must-Watch by the L.A. Times. Hostage was a finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award, The Fratti-Newman Political Play Contest and a Showcase finalist for the National New Play Network. Chair received second place in the Firehouse Theatre Festival of New American Plays. Plays have been produced and/or developed at the Skylight Theatre (World Premier, Hostage) Centenary Stage (World Premier, Hitler's Tasters), Pacific Resident Theatre, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Bloomington Playwright's Project (Rolling World Premier, Kalamazoo), The Colony Theatre (World Premier, Family Planning) Florida Repertory Theatre, Boston Court Theatre, The Road Theatre Company, Wordsmyth Theatre, The Barrow Group, Bay Street Theatre, Venue 9 Theatre, Wings Theatre, Laurel Grove Theatre Company, Drama West, Vox Humana Theatre Ensemble, iTheatre Collaborative, New Light Theatre Project, 59E59th St. Theatre, Olive Theatre; Greenside at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Adobe Rose Theatre and the Electric Lodge. Publications include Dramatists Play Service, Room literary magazine and The Daily Beast. Brooks earned a B.A. from Emerson College and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Otis College of Art and Design. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, The Playwright's Center and Pacific Resident Theatre. In addition, she is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. www.MichelleKholosBrooks.com



GLORIA J. BROWNE-MARSHALL is an award-winning legal correspondent, columnist recently selected for a Pulitzer Center grant for her enhanced virtual stage-play SHOT: Caught a Soul. SHOT depicts a Black teen haunting the White police officer who shot him. She is working on Dreams of Emmett Till a play updating that tragic encounter as well as CLASS the racial fight over the American Dream. Gloria attended the MFA program in playwrighting at Sarah Lawrence College and the Commercial Theater Institute's Broadway Producing program. Gloria is a Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College (CUNY). She teaches constitutional law, race and politics, gender and justice, and evidence classes. Prof. Browne-Marshall was a civil rights attorney full-time prior to joining the faculty at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Gloria litigated cases for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, and the NAACP LDF. She was a law clerk in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania as well as in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia. She studied Political Science at the University of Ibadan, in Ibadan, Nigeria. Prof. Browne-Marshall's books include the most recent She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power as well as The Voting Rights War: The NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice, and a textbook The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts. Her seminal book Race, Law, and American Society connects 400 years of American legal racial history. Gloria has provided Supreme Court commentary on CNN International, MSNBC, France24, BBC, NPR and WBAI radio and newspapers nationally. “Law of the Land” is the title of her radio show and podcast. Prof. Browne-Marshall has received many awards for her work on equality under law. She speaks nationally and internationally on constitutional and human rights issues. She has addressed audiences in France at the American Library in Paris. She met with the Secretary of State and Secretary of Culture in Luanda, Angola, while conducting research there on Queen Nzingha. Gloria was an exchange scholar to England's Bramshill Police College. Prof. Browne-Marshall presented an Intervention before the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on racial injustices in the American criminal justice system. She has raised concerns about police brutality and criminal in-justices in the United States for over 20 years, speaking across America, and in France, England, Wales, and Canada. Twitter: @GBrowneMarshal

Sarah Norris (Director) [she/her] is a theater artist and producer based in New York. Her work has been seen around the country including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and around the world in Scotland, Australia, England and Ireland. Select producer and production credits: Playwrights Horizons (I Am My Own Wife, Off-Broadway and Tony Winning Broadway transfer), Disney Theatrical Productions, Bisno Productions (Hughie on Broadway w/ Forest Whitaker; My Report to the World w/ David Strathairn). She served as the Artistic Director of Access Theater from 2016-2018, creating an Artist Residency program and Access Association Series program, which provided subsidized and free performance space to NYC artists including Primitive Grace (Paul Calderon & David Zayas), Elevator Repair Service, & Bedlam. As a theater director, select credits include: Everything is Super Great (TimeOut NY Critics Pick), This Wrestling Place (w/ Executive Producer Ben Folds), Picture Ourselves in Latvia (Best of Theater, The L Magazine), H*tler's Tasters (Best of the Edinburgh Fringe; featured in the Chicago Tribune, LA Times and the BBC). Other highlights include: Guild Hall of East Hamptons, Pleasance Theatre (Edinburgh), Greenside Theatre (Edinburgh), Bottom Dog Theatre (Ireland), Adelaide Fringe Festival (Australia), 59E59 Theaters, LAByrinth Theatre, Working Theater, Electric Lodge (LA), Chicago Dramatists, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, The Flea Theater, Zeiders American Dream Theater, Calliope Stage, Forestburgh Playhouse, and Pendragon Theatre. Member of SDC and AEA.

GAYLE D. WAXENBERG's career began on Wall Street where she managed the marketing and corporate communications for a premiere investment bank. During her 11 years there, she won a multitude of awards for the creative and strategic campaigns she directed. She later started her own marketing consulting firm, Waxenberg & Associates, working with advertising, public relations and direct marketing firms servicing the financial industry.  A born advocate, she left the for-profit sector and committed her self to raising awareness for those less fortunate. Combining her extensive business experience and philanthropic work, she began giving “voice” to the different communities she served, and continues to serve; domestic abuse victims, hospice patients, substance abuse victims, immigrants, at-risk children and mental health patients. Gayle has been repeatedly honored for her service by the organizations she serves.Recognizing the power of the stories she captured, she launched the Telling Company in 2012 as a forum for telling real-life stories influencing social change through art. She has now brought The Telling Company to NewYorkRep. Her first play, A Bitter Pill, premiered in 2016 at the Hudson Guild Theater, as part of the Venus/Adonis Theater Festival. Gayle also produced the mulit-award winning film Influence, and the London production of Stalking the Bogeyman, which received an Off-West End (Offie nomination) for best production and direction. Produced readings included Ben Elton's Olivier award winning play, Popcorn, starring Sharon Stone and Stacey Keach. She is proud to have launched and produced a community based program of readings, Thought Bubbles, to bring new theatrical work free to people who may not otherwise have access. Gayle is also a Founder/Past President and currently a Board Member of The Graham School Education Foundation, which serves New York City's most at-risk, underserved children, a Board Member of Danza Espanza, The American Spanish Dance Theater, and was an elected official.  She is also a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, the Off Broadway Alliance, Theater Resources Unlimited and a member of the League of Professional Theater Women.

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