Centenary Stage's 2016 WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS SERIES Begins Tonight

The Centenary Stage Company announces the 2016 Women Playwrights Series (WPS) line-up, with the works of playwrights Patricia Cotter, Emma Stanton and Sonya Sobieski, and three distinctive new plays which will feature professional casts and directors and be presented in the Lackland Center Wednesday evenings, tonight, April 13, and April 20th and 27th at 7:30 PM.

Written with wit and poignancy, Emma Stanton's "No Candy" will open the series on April 13. Humor, art and absurdity continue to persist in the face of the unimaginable in this story of wry, resilient survivors of genocide. The playwright explores how trauma inhabits the body and shapes the community, and how a group of women running a gift shop near the Srebrenica memorial find their way forward, with dreams of Julie Andrews, late-night Karaoke and lingering ghosts.

Stanton is a Chicago and New York theatre artist with an interest in site-specific theatre and documentary work. She has worked with several theaters, including the prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre Company (Chicago) , EnGarde Arts (NY), About Face Theatre (Chicago) and Walkabout Theatre Company (Chicago), of which she is Associate Artistic Director. She is the recipient of a Civics and Arts Foundation Playwrighting Award, and has been a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award. Stanton holds an MFA in playwrighting from Columbia University .

The CSC Women Playwrights Series celebrates its 25th year in 2016, having featured the work of more than 60 emerging playwrights in the developmental WPS process, and having taken 15 plays to full production from the series, including "The English Bride" by Lucile Lichtblau, which transferred from CSC to New York City in 2013. The program offers playwrights the opportunity to work with professional actors and directors in a workshop rehearsal process, and to hear their work in front of a live audience -- a critical part of the development process. Lively talk-backs with the playwright and cast follow each presentation, and one play is selected each year as the winner of the Susan Glaspell Award, which promises a full production in the main-stage season at CSC. Centenary Stage Company is a professional AEA Regional Theatre in residence on the campus of Centenary College.

Admission to the WPS is by donation and reservations are requested. For information and reservations, call the CSC box office at 908 979 0900, or log on to www.centenarystageco.org.

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