The Plays
DON'T/DREAM by Saviana Stanescu
On election day, an undocumented immigrant housekeeper, burdened with endless chores, fantasizes about voting and tries to make sense of her entitled employers' obsessions.
IN THE PARLOUR by Judy Tate
On the eve of the historic 1913 Women's March, young Howard University student and sorority member, Edna Brown, is stitching up walking skirts for her Delta Sigma Theta sorors to wear. But when she learns that the march's famous white organizer, has other plans, she gets some formidable help. It becomes a battle of wit and will in this original imagining of a true story.
MRS. SATAN & THE NASTY WOMAN
by Alice Eve Cohen
A darkly comic, time-traveling two-hander. Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president, with Frederick Douglass as her running-mate is arrested and jailed right before the 1872 election. On the eve of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton wakes up in Ludlow Street Jail, sharing a cell with Woodhull. Will Hillary be radicalized by Victoria's revolutionary politics? The play examines two women's roles in the long path to a woman president.
Women Who Dare
A 90-minute, 3-play collection that questions, critiques, reimagines and honors the Centennial of Women's Suffrage and the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
The three plays tackle racism, classism and misogyny in the Suffrage movement and today.
The collection of plays, under the title Women Who Dare, will be available nation-wide to theatres, schools and community groups in honor of the Centennial of Women's right to vote.
It is the playwrights' hope that Women Who Dare will promote political action in communities around the country.
The Playwrights
ALICE EVE COHEN
Alice Eve Cohen is a playwright, solo theatre artist and author, whose plays have been presented on four continents. She won the 2019 Jane Chambers Playwriting Award for In the Cervix of Others. Her solo play What I Thought I Knew, adapted from her memoir—winner of Elle’s Lettres Grand Prix for Nonfiction and Oprah magazine’s 25 Best Books of Summer—has been presented at theatres nationally. Her plays have been produced and developed by the Kitchen Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, New Georges, Minnesota Jewish Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Galway Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Trinidad’s Astor Theatre, Jerusalem’s Theatre Bama, and many more. A member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, NY Theatre Workshop Usual Suspects, and Honor Roll, she has written television for Nickelodeon and CBS and has received fellowships and grants from NYSCA, NEA and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She received her MFA from The New School and BA from Princeton. Cohen teaches playwriting and creative writing at The New School and at Augsburg University MFA program.
SAVIANA STANESCU
Saviana Stanescu is an award-winning Romanian-born playwright, poet, ARTivist based in New York/Ithaca/Bucharest. Her US plays include "Aliens with Extraordinary Skills", "Ants" (both published by Samuel French), "Bee Trapped Inside the Window", "Lenin’s Shoe", "Useless", "Toys", "Bechnya", "Hurt", "Hobo-Jungle", "Waxing West" (2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award), "What Happens Next", developed/produced at Women’s Project, La MaMa Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, EST, HERE, New Georges, Lark, Cherry, Teatro La Capilla, Odeon, etc. Other honors include: Indie Theater Hall of Fame, Indie Theater Person of the Year 2010, 2007-2008 NYSCA playwright-in-residence with Women’s Project, writer-in-residence for East Coast Artists, the inaugural Audrey residency with New Georges, Women's International Leadership fellow, Marulic Prize for Best European Radio Drama, UNITER Award for Best Play in Romania. Saviana holds an MA in Performance Studies and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, Tisch. She teaches Playwriting and Contemporary Theatre/Performance at Ithaca College and is the founder of Immigrant Artists and Scholars in New York.
JUDY TATE
Judy Tate, was an actor for 25 years until dragging her daughter around the country to regional theatres was not an option. So she started writing because the goal is to live a creative life. Now she is a four-time Emmy Award winning writer and WGA award recipient. She’s written scripts and story for several TV shows. She was a Manhattan Theatre Club Playwriting Fellow, winner of the New Professional Theatre's Playwriting award, member of Playwright’s Horizons’ Black Ink, the Women’s Project and is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre. Her full-length plays "Fast Blood", "Slashes of Light" and "Sex in the Kitchen" have been presented around the country. She’s Producing Artistic Director of The American Slavery Project, www.americanslaveryproject.org, a theatrical response to revisionism in American discourse around enslavement and its aftermath. She is also Founding Artistic Director of Stargate Theatre, www.manhattantheatreclub.com/education/stargate/ a work-readiness program developed at MTC in which justice involved young men, write, rehearse and perform an original work on one of MTC’s stages. She teaches acting, directing and playwriting at NYU, Drew University, MTC and TDF.