Wide Eyed Productions presents: A Girl Wrote It 2012

Wide Eyed Productions presents: A Girl Wrote It 2012

Wide Eyed Productions, now in its fifth season, has brought back its festival of female playwrights entitled A Girl Wrote It (AGWI). For the sake of full disclosure, it should be said that my work was presented by Wide Eyed as part of a the original A Girl Wrote It last season. The evening is presented in support of the 50/50 in 2020 project, an effort to increase the 17% of plays produced written by women to 50% by the year 2020.

Wide Eyed has been producing solid work for years and has returned to the venue where it all started, the Richmond Shepard Theater located at 309 East 26th Street, NYC. The show runs Thur, Fri, Sat @ 8pm and Sundays @ 3pm. Tickets are reasonably priced at $18.00.

The evening features nine short pieces by seven playwrights. Each has their own style and unique take on life, love, relationships and loss. The evening's line up:

Being Late

By - Judith Goudsmit

Yes

By Bekah Brunstetter

Bologna Sandwiches

By Erin Singleton

Penicillin

By Deirdre O’Connor

Jeans

By Liz Magee

Early Michigan

By Heather Lynn MacDonald

Robot

By Judith Goudsmit

Posing

By Laura Maria Censabella

Stones Fall, Birds Fly

By Laura Maria Censabella

Goudsmit, Singleton & Magee have written smart and poignant monologues that serve as transitions between the longer works. Liz White begins the night with the apt opener, Being Late, a perfect match of writer and actor as White has the energy and chops to sell Goudsmit's deep and idiosyncratic humor. Amy Lee Pearsall performs Singleton's monologue with a magnetism that brings life to the charm and pain of Bologna Sandwiches. Carly Knight ably portrays the disenchanted and frustrated humor to Magee's Jeans while Savvy Clement gives an impressively haunting performance of Goudsmit's Robot.

While each of these monologues entertains and provokes, AGWI's short plays are the larger attraction of the evening. Bekah Brunstetter's Yes is a witty microcosm of relationships that will tickle even the most bitterly jaded. The cast, Andrew Harris and Sarah Cook, are both that rare sort of actor that can nail comic timing and never lose a moment of honesty. Ali Scaramella and Michael Komala show the pitfalls of being young and single with performances that delight in Deirdre O'Connor's Penicillin. Heather Lynn MacDonald provides the most thoughtful piece of the evening with Early Michigan. The script provides opportunity for actors to shine and Sky Seals, Lisa Mamazza, Patrick Bonck & Judy Merrick seize it. 

The final two pieces of the evening are by Wide Eyed's Resident Playwright, Laura Maria Censabella. Nate Faust and Dana Mazzenga offer two of the strongest performances of the evening in Posing and bring integrity to characters that might be dismissed as caricatures in the hands of lesser actors. The last piece of the evening, Stones Fall, Birds Fly, is peformed by Curzon Dobell and is worth the wait. Dobell's natural charisma enriches a beautifully written piece that had me floating out of the theater.

There are limitations to the production and the space, but nothing that detracts from the evening. Opinions may vary as to what piece is more enjoyable than others, but one aspect of AGWI is undeniable. The collective talent of the actors involved in A Girl Wrote It is not to be missed. Treat yourself to this night of talented writers and amazing performances!

Female Doctors...

I have a friend - who will remain nameless so he can stay married - who has this theory about women in their chosen professions. He says to a group of our friends, “I will only go to a female doctor.” As all of our presumptions of his lechery begin to mount he says, “think about it, for a woman to be successful she has to be ‘really fucking good’ at what she does.” … Those in the group who considered themselves more progressive were ready to quickly correct his thinking… but nobody spoke. It’s the kind of thing that you want to argue the validity of but can’t because it is only mirroring what’s present in society. Is there something wrong with what he said or the society that makes the statement true? I hold two degrees in Theater and in my studies I read an innumerable amount of plays, about a quarter of them were written by female playwrights. I have a great admiration for many of them, not because they are women but because of their writing. Women like Aphra Behn, Theresa Rebeck, Lillian Hellman, Suzan Lori-Parks, Beth Henley and Susan Glaspell inspire me not because of their gender but because they know their craft so well. I subscribe to the theory that the title playwright should be spelled w-r-i-g-h-t and not w-r-i-t-e because the former spelling conjures the image of a master of their craft while the latter merely evokes someone with pen and paper. When it comes to learning a craft, I believe a “Y” or “X” chromosome is not the determinate factor for mastery. I don’t want to believe that there can be any merit to my friend’s theory, but then I think of the six playwrights I cited as examples. They are all incredible writers, gifted beyond most of their contemporaries. My friend’s theory states that a woman must be exceedingly good at what she does to achieve success. It also implies that a man can be simply average at his job and still have success. I feel like I should be offended by this, but then I realize how hard it is for me to think of a female playwright that is simply “average”. How many “average” male playwrights can you think of?