HEDGEBROOK WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL

The Women Playwrights Festival was founded in 1998 to nurture and support the work of women playwrights. Working in partnership with major regional theatres, Hedgebrook selects playwrights from a group of highly accomplished writers nominated by a national committee, presents public readings of the playwrights’ latest work, and then invites the writers to a residency at Hedgebrook for further work on their new plays.

A list of alumnae of the Women Playwrights Festival reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary women playwrights, including Tanya Barfield (Blue Door), Lynn Nottage (Intimate Apparel), Theresa Rebeck (Mauritius), Sarah Ruhl (The Clean House), Kathleen Tolan (Memory House), and many more.

2009 Women Playwrights Festival

The Playwrights

Eugenie Chan’s work has been produced or developed at the Public Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Ma-Yi Theatre, Pan Asian Rep, Perishable Theatre, Centenary Stage, Duke, and Columbia; in the Midwest at PlayLabs; on the West Coast at the Magic Theatre, Cutting Ball Theater, Thick Description, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Brava! For Women in the Arts, Opera Piccola/StageBridge, the Exploratorium, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Northwest Asian American Theatre, Group Theatre, and East West Players. Bone to Pick was listed as a Best of 2008 by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Last August, her libretto debuted in Byron Au Yong’s opera, Kidnapping Water, in galleries and waterways in Seattle. Eugenie has been commissioned by Cutting Ball, the Magic Theatre, Sloan Science Foundation,  Z Space New Works Initiative, the San Francisco and Wallace Foundations; and has received grants from the New Works Fund, CA$H, and the San Francisco Foundation. Her work is published in Alexander Street Press’ Asian American Drama and North American Women Writers and Lexington Books’ Embodiments of Asian/American and Pacific Islander/American Sexualities.  She is a Resident Playwright at New Dramatists, the Playwrights Foundation, and the Asian American Theater Company, and an Associate Artist at Cutting Ball Theatre

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig is a graduate of Brown University, the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre, and the International School of Beijing. She is in her final semester of a three-year fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, and was recently awarded the Glimmer Train New Writers Award for her short story Monkeys of the Sea. She has been a finalist for the Jerome and Julliard fellowships, the O’Neill Institute, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and the Yale Emerging Playwrights Award.

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Regina Taylor is a playwright, director, and actor. As a Goodman Theatre artistic associate, her credits include the world premiere of Oo-Bla-Dee (2000 American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Award), Urban Zulu Mambo (an evening of plays by Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange, Suzan Lori Parks, and Kia Corthran), The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove  (which first premiered at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival), and the award-winning Crowns (first produced at the McCarter Theatre and at Second Stage in New York), both written and directed by Ms. Taylor.  Drowning Crow, her adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, was produced on Broadway at Manhattan Theater Club’s Biltmore Theater. Her other plays include Escape from Paradise, Watermelon Rinds, Inside the Belly of the Beast, Mudtracks, and Love Poem #97. Her latest play, Magnolia, set during the beginning of desegregation in Atlanta, Georgia in 1961, premiered at The Goodman Theater in March, 2009 (directed by Anna Shapiro). Ms. Taylor’s acting credits include roles on Broadway, off-Broadway and at numerous regional theaters.  Her film credits include Clockers, Losing Isaiah, Lean on Me, A Family Thing, Courage Under Fire with Denzel Washington, and The Negotiator with Samuel L. Jackson.  For her role as Lilly Harper on the television series “I’ll Fly Away,” Ms. Taylor won an NAACP Image Award, was nominated for an Emmy Award, and received the Golden Globe Award for best leading dramatic actress. Ms. Taylor currently plays Molly Blane on CBS’ “The Unit,” written by David Mamet and Shawn Ryan.

Kathleen Tolan’s play, Memory House, commissioned by Trinity Repertory Theatre, had its first reading at Seattle Rep during the 2004 Women Playwrights Festival, co-produced by Hedgebrook. Thanks to that crucial process, the play had productions at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Playwrights Horizons, Seattle Rep, Victory Gardens in Chicago, Trinity Rep and a number of other theatres. Her other plays include The Wax (Playwrights Horizons); Approximating Mother (the Women’s Project); Kate’s Diary (The Public Theatre and Playwrights Horizons), and A Weekend Near Madison (Actors Theatre of Louisville; Astor Place Theatre, and other theatres). Tolan has received the McKnight Fellowship, a NYFA Fellowship; several MacDowell residencies, and a couple of Sundance Playwrights residencies. She is the Chair of the Dramatic Writing Program Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at Purchase College where she teaches playwriting.

History of the Women Playwrights Festival

1998
Darrah Cloud
Kia Corthron
Migdalia Cruz
Joann Farias
Naomi Iizuka
Lizzie Olesker
Dramaturgs: Liz Engelman and Mame Hunt

1999
Neena Beber
Lillian Garrett-Groag
Gina Gionfriddo
Cherrie Moraga
Regina Porter
Erin Cressida Wilson
Dramaturgs: Liz Engelman and Mame Hunt

2000
Michele Lowe
Ellen McLaughlin
Lynn Nottage
Alice Tuan
Dramaturgs: Liz Engelman and Christine Sumption

2001
Valetta Anderson
Jamie Pachino
Theresa Rebeck
Lydia Stryk
Dramaturgs: Liz Engelman and Christine Sumption

2002
Leanna Brodie
Jessica Goldberg
Julie Jensen
Caridad Svich
Dramaturgs: Mame Hunt and Christine Sumption

2003
Julia Cho
Sarah Ruhl
Karen Zacarias
Kathleen Tolan
Dramaturgs: Mame Hunt and Christine Sumption

2004
Tanya Barfield
Honour Kane
Rosanna Staffa
Eisa Davis
Dramaturgs: Mame Hunt and Christine Sumption

2005
Gwendolyn Schwinke
Deborah Isobel Stein
Laura Schellhardt
Victoria Stewart
Dramaturgs: Carrie Ryan and Christine Sumption

2006
Laurie Carlos
Julie Marie Myatt
Quiara Alegria Hudes
Alva Rogers
Dramaturgs: Mame Hunt and Christine Sumption

2007
Ellen McLaughlin
Caridad Svich
Kathleen Tolan
Naomi Iizuka
Dramaturgs: Liz Engelman, Valerie Curtis-Newton, Allison Narver, and Christine Sumption

2008
Danai Gurira
Lenelle Moïse

2009
Eugenie Chan
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Regina Taylor
Kathleen Tolan
Dramaturgs: Liz Engelman, Anita Montgomery, and Christine Sumption