HEDGEBROOK WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL.

The annual Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival celebrates the work of women writing for the theatre. Since 1998, the festival has supported the work of an impressive array of women playwrights and served an important role in the development of new plays by women. Five extremely talented playwrights have been selected to be part of the festival in 2011, which culminates in readings on Whidbey Island and Seattle. Excerpts from their work will be performed by local actors and include a talk back with the playwrights, their dramaturgs and Hedgebrook's Executive Director, Amy Wheeler

Hedgebrook announces the 14th Annual Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival (HWPF), a celebration of women writing for the theatre. This May, playwrights Radha Blank, Lisa Loomer, Molly Smith Metzler, Alva Rogers, and Susan Soon He Stanton join dramaturgs Liz Engelman and Christine Sumption for a two-week residency at the famed Whidbey Island writers retreat, capped off with public presentations of excerpts from the playwrights’ latest works. Public readings for the 2011 Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival take place at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts in Langley and at ACT Theatre in Seattle. These events include readings of excerpts from each of the writers’ latest plays and an opportunity to talk with the playwrights, their dramaturgs, and Hedgebrook’s Executive Director, Amy Wheeler.



(l-Rr :Molly Metzler Smith, Radha Blank, Susan Soon He Stanton, Lisa Loomer, Alva Rogers

This year’s festival participants represent a wide array of theatrical styles and dramatic voices. Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Lisa Loomer (Distracted, Living Out, The Waiting Room) is writing a new play about homeless teens in small town Oregon. Molly Smith Metzler’s sister comedy Elemeno Pea just received its world premiere at the 2011 Humana Festival of New American Plays, and Metzler will begin work on a new play at Hedgebrook. Playwright and solo performer Radha Blank brings her hip hop sensibility to HappyFlowerNail, a celebration of a Brooklyn neighborhood in flux.  In maya in the cities, Alva Rogers tells the tale of an African American woman getting lost and found in Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Susan Soon He Stanton, a recent graduate of the Yale School of Drama MFA playwriting program and the Resident Playwright at Honolulu Theatre for Youth, writes a dark mystery about Honolulu’s underbelly.

Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival participants are selected from a highly competitive pool nominated by prominent theatre professionals nationwide. In a “pre-retreat” weekend, the playwrights will have the opportunity to get to know one another, hear each other’s plays read aloud, and share responses with an intimate group of theatre professionals. This is followed by a two-week retreat at Hedgebrook, where each playwright has her own private cottage, a dramaturg on-call, and the opportunity to work in Hedgebrook’s unique combination of solitude and community. Since the festival’s inauguration in 1998, the Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival has supported the work of an impressive array of women playwrights, including Danai Gurira (Eclipsed), Ellen McLaughlin (Helen), Theresa Rebeck (Mauritius), Sarah Ruhl (The Clean House), and recent Pulitzer Prize recipient Lynn Nottage (Ruined) along with many others, and has served an important role in the development of new plays by women.

For more information about Hedgebrook and the Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival, please visit www.hedgebrook.org.



_____