Seattle Rep Presents 9th Annual Women Playwrights Festival

Seattle Repertory Theatre and Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers, are will present the ninth annual Women Playwrights Festival. This year's Women Playwrights Festival runs from April 20-23 in the PONCHO Forum at Seattle Rep, and features the work of Laurie Carlos, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Julie Marie Myatt and Alva Rogers. Seattle Rep audiences are invited to experience readings of these plays as they emerge fresh from the imaginations of the writers, and to witness their growth from the earliest stages of development.

Tickets are $10 for each reading or a four-play pass for $30 and are available exclusively through the Seattle Rep Box Office, 206- 443-2222, or toll-free at 877-900-9285. For more information about Hedgebrook please visit their website at www.hedgebrook.org or call 360-321-4786.

Established in 1998 by Leslie Swackhamer, then-interim artistic director of ACT Theatre, and Janice Kennedy of Hedgebrook, the Women Playwrights Festival was created to acknowledge and nurture the talents of women playwrights. Festival participants are selected from a highly competitive pool of nominees from throughout the country, and provided with an opportunity to further their plays through intensive work with actors, dramaturgs and directors. Each play is given a public reading at Seattle Rep, following which the playwrights adjourn to Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island/> for a week-long retreat. Ensconced in their own private cottages and armed with feedback from their directors and dramaturgs as well as the audience, the playwrights are given something which for many writers is a rare commodity – solitude, time and space to focus on and further develop their work. Past participants include such playwrights as Naomi Izuka, Lynn Nottage, Theresa Rebeck, Sarah Ruhl, Julia Cho and Tanya Barfield.

The Pork Chop Wars by Laurie Carolos. The Pork Chop Wars (April 20th) explores family and food and the conflicts that arise in those hot-button arenas. Springing from the reflections of an African-American woman as she reviews a life of art, activism, and spirit, The Pork Chop Wars is challenging and uplifting, musical and fierce.

My Wandering Boy by Julie Marie Myatt (April 21st). A young man with wanderlust disappears into the American landscape, leaving behind in his travels across the country objects, memories, and words for his family and friends to find, remember, question, and define him.

One Hundred Songs by Quiara Alegria Hudes (April 22nd). In abuela's modest kitchen, crammed into the row home landscape of North Philadelphia/>, amazing recipes are being prepared: rice to rid the neighborhood of violence, beans to help her grandson pass his history midterm and platanos to cure her neighbor's cancer. Back in her native Puerto Rico/>, songs are disappearing. Her troubadour husband, who she abandoned decades ago for a better life in Philadelphia, journeys to abuela's urban stoop in search of love, and in an attempt to save the remaining one hundred songs.

Scooping the Darkness Empty by Alva Rogers (April 23rd). A young woman grieves her mother's death by breeding roses. The distraught young woman seeks solace in an untended garden on Houston Street. Under moonlight and stars, she encounters a plaque to Fred Rosensteil, the son of Dutch Jews who perished in the Holocaust, who sublimated his grief into guerilla gardening that spanned three decades. The play is a magical journey scooping into the dirt of New York City/>/> to discover history and scooping out her own heart.

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