The Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival returns

It’s back for a second year: the Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival (PWTF) is bringing a variety of new and developing works to the Caplan Studio Theater at UArts from August 3-7. (Here’s our WNWN look at the inaugural fest.)

Helmed by artistic director Polly Edelstein and managing director Christine Petrini, this year’s Philly celebration of women’s voices in theater includes three “presented works” performances, and a look at four pieces still in development.

Nukes, Simone de Beauvoir, and ‘Satisfaction’

Playwright Tammy Ryan’s Molly’s Hammer kicks off the staged readings. It’s a fictionalized retelling of the true story of Pittsburgh mom of six and activist Molly Rush, the only female member of the Plowshares Eight. In 1980, this radical Catholic group burst into a General Electric Company plant in King of Prussia and protested America’s nuclear arms race by whacking a nuclear warhead with a hammer. Rush spent 78 days in jail. Ryan’s play weaves the story through the lens of Rush’s marriage to a steel worker who is decidedly opposed to his wife’s actions. It’s coming up on August 5 at 8pm.

A reading of Nandita Shenoy’s Satisfaction (co-produced with the Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists), is happening August 5 at 6pm. “Four straight women of a certain race raised in the era of women’s rights and ERA” learn how hard it is for women to get what they want. Courtney Boches’s Sure As A Star is a story about “musical theatre divas, mothers and daughters, and living a private life in public,” within the frame of a sitcom actress and her assistant embroiled in “yet another Broadway revival of Gypsy.” It’ll be read on August 6 at 2:30pm. Simone, a “developing work” from Amanda Coffin, is coming up on August 6 at 12pm. “Biography collides with movement and found text in this devised theater piece that explores the life of Simone de Beauvoir.”

Presented works

Sarah Gafgen and Meredith Beck’s Together Off-Broadway launches the festival’s full productions on August 4 at 8pm. It’s a musical performance inspired by Ethel Merman and Mary Martin’s Ford Concert, featuring many favorite songs from these theater stars’s careers. On August 6 at 7pm, the fest presents BuzzFeed, Donald Trump, and Dead Black Kids, written by Haygen Brice Walker and directed by Elaina Di Monaco. Two Millennials sit on the couch, talking politics while enmeshed in social media: “Everything will be just fine….”

Things finish off with Solo Sunday! August 7 at 2pm. Lauren Fanslau’s ReCalculating is about a Girl who explores how ordinary objects can represent or replace the people in our lives. It’s about “not only the comfort and curse of ‘stuff,’ but the struggle against becoming stuck by prescribed notions of what an object or person is intended for.” Polly MacIntyre’s She Moved Through The Fair examines growing up, romance, and revenge for a contemporary Irishwoman, inspired by and adapted from the works of Edna O’Brien.

PWTF’s mission is to create opportunities for women in theater, and it’s sponsored under the umbrella of the nonprofit arts service organization Fractured Atlas. (For more about other events associated with the fest, check out Mark Cofta's August theater picks.)

The 2016 Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival performances are running August 3-7 the Caplan Studio Theater on the 16th floor of Terra Hall at 211 South Broad Street. The August 3 opening night cabaret at 7:30pm will benefit the Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia. For the full festival line-up, including workshops and panels, visit PWTF online.