Mad Cow Theatre Announces Finalists For 1st Annual Women's Voices Festival

Next week, Mad Cow Theatre will be launching the first annual Women's Voices Festival of new works by emerging and established female-identifying playwrights. Five plays by playwrights from around the U.S. will be featured in a week-long new play reading series from Aug 12-16, kicking off with the Women's Voices Roundtable on Aug 11th, moderated by Arlene Hutton (Last Train to Nibroc). Featured playwrights include Diana Burbano, Kathleen Cahill, Alice Hakvaag, Melissa Leilani Larson, and Laura Rohrman.

Out of 140 submissions submitted nationwide, a group of readers narrowed the field to nearly 30 plays. Then, the fun began! Narrowing these scripts down to only 5 was an impossible task. One that made us say, "well, why do we have to narrow the field completely?" We decided, choose 5 plays to make the August festival happen, but welcome the others to be included in Women's Voices mini-fests once a month through November and possibly beyond.

The initial festival will create a virtual space to highlight and lift up unproduced work by female-identifying playwrights. Playwrights will be supplied with a professional director, dramaturg and actors to work through their script in an engaging and fruitful rehearsal process. Each play is at a different stage in its development and this experience will support what the playwright needs to take the play to a future stage possibly at Mad Cow Theatre. Some plays have been workshopped previously and some will be read for the first time. This is the exciting process behind new play development that audiences will be thrilled to experience. The audience will have the chance to make a valuable impact on the play's development via a structured talkback following each reading.

Registration info, a full listing of events and more about the playwrights and plays selected can be found here.