Directors Set for La Femme Theatre Productions' WOMEN IN AGENCY FESTIVAL

La Femme Theatre Productions will feature four new works created through three developmental initiatives celebrating emerging and established women artists: A Woman’s Storyland, The Corner Nest Lab, and Women on the Verge: The Gladys and Mary Dohmen Reading Series.  The playwrights will be mentored by Theater Masters’ 2025 Visionary Playwright Award recipient, Jenny Lyn Bader. These new works will be presented as part of La Femme’s Women in Agency Festival, running August 3–17, 2025, at The Linney Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center (480 West 42nd Street). The festival is FREE to the public, and tickets can be reserved by visiting Eventbrite. 

This festival showcases the power of storytelling, mentorship, and artistic agency through new works that respond to this year’s thematic prompt: “Agency.” These original plays interrogate power and autonomy in personal, professional, and socio-political spheres. The two-week event is a vibrant forum for discovery, conversation, and the centering of women’s voices across all theatrical disciplines.

Additionally, La Femme has revealed the title and director of each show.

A WOMAN’S STORYLAND: Mentorship Through Storytelling

Mentor Playwright
Jenny Lyn Bader — Buy Nothing, Remember Everything, Directed by Ina Marlowe

Mentee Playwrights
Zoë Geltman — A Safe Business, Directed by Julia Sirna-Frest
Abigail Duclos — VENGEANCE,  Directed by Britt Berke
Tess Inderbitzin — Deja Deja Vu, Directed by Mikayla Gold Benson

CORNER NEST LAB:

La Femme proudly introduces the Corner Nest Lab, a new platform for current or recent college students to experiment and create original theatrical work under professional mentorship.

In Time, written by Yahney-Marie Sangaré, directed by Will DeVary

WOMEN ON THE VERGE:

This year’s honorees include:

Britt Berke – Director (Becomes a Woman, Mint Theater), a rising star whose work investigates love, power, and spectacle.

Kyra Bowie - Production Stage Manager is a NY-based stage manager and co-founder of Transcend Streaming. Projects that excite Kyra are new works, technically challenging productions, and stories that bring up questions that might not always be easy to grapple with. 

Together, they represent the next generation of women making ambitious choices and paving the way for innovation.
La Femme Theatre Productions is a nonprofit organization committed to showcasing classic and classically inspired plays by and about women. With initiatives like A Woman’s Storyland, Women on the Verge, and now the Corner Nest Lab, La Femme continues to empower women to shape the stage—and the future.

Jenny Lyn Bader is a playwright and essayist. Her plays include Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (59E59), Equally Divine (14th Street Y), Manhattan Casanova (Hudson Stage), and None of the Above (New Georges). Her short works have appeared at the Humana Festival, Symphony Space, and the NY Int’l Fringe Festival (“Best of the Fringe”). Her audio productions include Tree Confessions (w/ Kathleen Chalfant) (TINATC) and Communal Table (Broadway Podcast Network). Her work has been published in The New York Times, Lincoln Center Theater Review, and Plays International & Europe. A Harvard alumna and recipient of the O’Neill Center’s Edith Oliver Award, she is a member of the Dramatists Guild, LPTW, and Honor Roll. She is a recent recipient of Theater Masters’ 2025 Visionary Playwright Award.

Zoë Geltman – a Brooklyn College MFA candidate and recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship. Her acclaimed solo work and comedic performances have been featured in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Her play A(U)NTS! opens this May at The Brick.

Abigail Duclos – a playwright, performer, and puppeteer whose interdisciplinary work explores bodily autonomy, Southern folklore, queer desire, and the dance between horror and comedy. A Barnard College graduate, her plays (Honeysuckle, Greenhouse, Blood Orange, and more) have been produced by Re/Venue, Et Alia Theater, The Elif Collective, and The Tank. She currently works at New York University.

Tess Inderbitzin is a Barnard College graduate who majored in theatre, concentrating in playwriting. They were a production/management intern at Soho Playhouse, a summer production intern with Clubbed Thumb, and spent a semester training at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Ireland. You may have seen them as Molly in A People at the Minor Latham Playhouse or Stevie in Possession at the Tank. You also may have seen their playwriting/directorial debut with CUPAL's special project Camp Cattywampus in Fall 2022, and their playwriting thesis reading of Snoopy Stands on Her Head until She Sees the Stars, directed by Mikayla Gold Benson.

Yahney-Marie Sangaré is a playwright, writer, and creative based in New York and D.C., originally from Alexandria, Virginia. Director and playwright: Femme Noire, Nuit Blanche (Columbia University Black Theatre Ensemble, 2025), Harlem's Very Own Boy Icarus (Woolly Mammoth & Strathmore's Arts & Social Justice Fellowship, 2024). Playwright: Autumn, 1968 (Princeton University Ten-Minute Play Contest, 2023), Femmes, Femmes, Femmes (NOMADS staged reading, 2025), Everything Happens at Night (Alexandria City High School, 2023). Screenwriter: myopia (2023), Chioma (2025).

Britt Berke is a director of theatre and film whose work interrogates love, power, intimacy, and taboo through delight and spectacle. She made her Off-Broadway directorial debut with Becomes a Woman at Mint Theater Company (Outer Critics Circle nomination), praised by The New Yorker as "remarkable." Her credits include projects at SoHo Playhouse, The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Chautauqua Theater Company, and Berkeley Rep. A member of the WP Lab and the Drama League Directors Project, Britt is an alum of programs with Roundabout, La MaMa, MTC, and more. She received A.R.T. NY’s Funds for Anti-Oppression Work, a City Corps Artist Grant, and is an Associate Member of SDC. Her first short film SHIPS premiered at the SOHO International Film Festival; she is currently in post-production on The Skin of the Water. Britt graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College.

Kyra Bowie is a NY-based stage manager whose select credits include Our Class (PSM | MART Foundation), See What I Wanna See (PSM | Out of the Box Theatrics), Basement, I(PSM | NYSAF), Just Tell No One (SM | Lincoln Center), The Orchard with Mikhail Baryishnikov (PSM | Arlekin Players Theatre), Happy Life (PSM | Walkerspace). Grateful today and every day. www.KyraBowie.com

Casting by Stephanie Klapper, CSA, artwork by Esther Wu, and general management by LDK Productions.  

La Femme Theatre Productions: 2025 Women in Agency Festival Schedule
All performances begin at 7PM

AUG 3 – The Corner Nest Lab
In Time by Yahney-Marie Sangaré | Directed by Will DeVary

AUG 7 – Buy Nothing, Remember Everything
By Jenny Lyn Bader | Directed by Ina Marlowe

AUG 8 – A Safe Business
By Zoë Geltman | Directed by Julia Sirna-Frest

AUG 9 – Deja Deja Vu
By Tess Inderbitzin | Directed by Mikayla Gold Benson

AUG 10 – VENGEANCE
By Abigail Duclos | Directed by Britt Berke

AUG 12 – VENGEANCE (Encore)
By Abigail Duclos | Directed by Britt Berke

AUG 13 – Deja Deja Vu (Encore)
By Tess Inderbitzin | Directed by Mikayla Gold Benson

AUG 14 – A Safe Business (Encore)
By Zoë Geltman | Directed by Julia Sirna-Frest

AUG 15 – Buy Nothing, Remember Everything (Encore)
By Jenny Lyn Bader | Directed by Ina Marlowe