GIRLCOTT ALERT - THE ALLEY THEATRE, HOUSTON ANNOUNCES SEXIST SEASON!

Last season it was the Guthrie Theatre and the Actors Theatre of Louisville (as well as hundreds of others).

This season it's THE ALLEY THEATRE.  The HOUSTON PRESS just announced that THE ALLEY THEATRE's next mainstage season is 9 plays by WHITE MEN.

“…the Alley Theatre's 2013-14 season announced today will be dominated by American plays and give female actors a special chance to shine, according to Alley Artistic Director Gregory Boyd.”

SOURCE: Houston Press Blog

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack/2013/04/alley_theatre_announces_its_20.php

GUERRILLA GIRLS ON TOUR!  CALLS FOR A GIRLCOTT OF THE ALLEY THEATRE

WRITE, TWEET, FeMAIL and FAX Artistic Director, Gregory Boyd, and tell him you are Girlcotting The Alley and will not buy a ticket until he includes a play by a woman on the main stage.

FAX THE ALLEY THEATRE:  713 222-6542

CALL THE ALLEY THEATRE: 713 228-9341 TWEET: @alleytheatre @GuerrillaGsOT  #girlcott

FeMAIL:  Gregory Boyd gboyd@alleytheatre.org

CC PR Associate Lauren Pelletier laurenp@alleytheatre.org

ALLEY THEATRE'S PRESS RELEASE:

FOR RELEASE
April 6, 2013

MEDIA CONTACT:
Rodi Franco, Director of Communications, (rodif@alleytheatre.org), 713.315.3352
Lauren Pelletier, Public Relations Associate, (laurenp@alleytheatre.org) 713.315.3364

Highlighting Alley Theatre’s Upcoming Season: The Good Woman of Setzuan by Bertolt Brecht, Never the Sinner by John Logan,Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, Venus in Fur by David Ives, Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain, and Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire
-Also featured are Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t Take It With You.
-This summer, Agatha Christie’s The Hollow will be produced as the ExxonMobil Summer Chills production.

HOUSTON, Texas – Gregory Boyd, Artistic Director of the Tony Award-winning Alley Theatre, announces its thrilling new season of plays created by playwrights that include a Pulitzer-Prize winning comedy, a new play that was the Outer Critics Circle’s Outstanding, New Play winner, the first play by a Tony Award winner, a 2011 Tony Award nominee for Best Play, plus an ingenious comedy from acclaimed, award-winning playwright Alan Ayckbourn and an intriguing epic by Bertolt Brecht.

Kicking off the Alley Theatre’s 67^th season is perhaps the greatest American comedy ever written, Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You on the Hubbard Stage and the new sexy, provocative comedy Venus in Fur by David Ives on the Neuhaus Stage.

The season continues on the Hubbard Stage with a riveting new play by Pulitzer Prize nominee Jon Robin Baitz, Other Desert Cities, and a fascinating new play on the Neuhaus Stage where professor and author C.S. Lewis visits psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud in Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain. Returning to the Alley are Tony winner John Logan, with the play that launched his career, Never the Sinner on the Hubbard Stage and award-winning acclaimed playwright Alan Ayckbourn, with his ingenious comic tour de force where Back to the Future meets Hitchcock in Communicating Doors.

The final show of the season on the Hubbard Stage is the 2011 Tony Award nominated Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire and the final show on the Neuhaus Stage is Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan.

This summer’s ExxonMobil Summer Chills production is Agatha Christie’s The Hollow. This is the first time the Alley will produce this play. Season ticket buyers can purchase tickets now with their season package. Tickets to the public will go on sale in May.

Also available now to season ticket buyers are tickets to Houston’s holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol on the Alley’s Hubbard Stage. Adapted and created by Artistic Director (and Alley Artistic Associate) Michael Wilson, the production incorporates elaborate scenic, costume, and lighting design and features a cast of over 15.

The Alley’s subscription season includes five plays on the Hubbard Stage and three plays on Neuhaus Stage, all produced in the Alley’s two-theatre complex at 615 Texas Avenue in downtown Houston.

Casting for this summer’s ExxonMobil Summer Chills production and plays in the 2013-2014 season will be announced at a later date.

ALLEY THEATRE’S 2013-2014 SEASON INCLUDES:Please note: play titles and dates are subject to change.
You Can’t Take It With YouBy Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman
Hubbard Stage
September 20 to October 20, 2013

This Pulitzer Prize-winning classic by the team of Kaufman and Hart (The Man Who Came to Dinner, 2009) is perhaps the greatest American comedy ever written. Alice Sycamore must introduce her fiancé’s straitlaced family to her rather more eccentric family. When the wildly different families meet, the worlds of the wealthy, uptight Kirbys and the off-kilter Sycamores collide. At first the Sycamores seem mad, but it is not long before we realize that if they are mad, the rest of the world is madder. Kaufman and Hart’s hilarious You Can’t Take It With You features the Alley Resident Company of Actors. Recommended for general audiences.
Venus in FurBy David Ives
Neuhaus Stage
October 18 to November 17, 2013

Theatrical mastermind David Ives’ sexy, provocative comedy, Venus in Fur, is an electrifying game of cat and mouse between a young actress and a demanding playwright-director that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, seduction and power, love and sex. "Role-playing takes on a whole new meaning" (New York Post) in this "don’t miss" play The Wall Street Journal says is "deadly serious, madly funny … you won't see a funnier play this season, or a smarter one."Recommended for mature audiences.
Other Desert CitiesBy Jon Robin Baitz
Hubbard Stage
January 10 to February 2, 2014

A riveting new play by Pulitzer Prize nominee and creator of TV's hit drama Brothers & Sisters, Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities was named the Outstanding Play by the Outer Critics Circle and called "the best new play on Broadway" by The New York Times. After a six-year absence, Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs to celebrate Christmas with her parents, brother and aunt. The warm desert air turns chilly when news of her upcoming memoir threatens to revive the most painful chapter of the family’s history. The New York Daily News calls this dysfunctional family drama "a winner … funny and fierce, invigorating and intelligent." Recommended for mature audiences.
Freud’s Last SessionBy Mark St. Germain
Neuhaus Stage
January 24 to February 23, 2014

Freud’s Last Session centers on legendary psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud, who invites a little-known professor C.S. Lewis, (who later wrote the children’s classic The Chronicles of Narnia), to his home in London. Lewis, expecting to be called on the carpet for satirizing Freud in a recent book, soon realizes Freud has a much more significant agenda. On the day England enters World War II, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex, and the meaning of life. "The humor is plentiful" (The New York Times) in this "thrilling" (Variety) tête-à-tête. Recommended for general audiences.
Never the Sinner: The Murder Trial of the CenturyBy John Logan
Hubbard Stage
February 21 to March 16, 2014

Playwright John Logan – who received three Academy Award nominations and wrote the recent James Bond film Skyfall, and won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critic Circle and Drama League awards for his play Red (Alley production, 2012) – returns to the Alley with the play that launched his career. Never the Sinner is about two boys who commit a murder – not for gain, or out of passion – just to do it, just to experience the thrill. Based on the infamous 1924 trial of Leopold and Loeb, Never the Sinner is their story, and the story of one of the most famous American lawyers and civil libertarians, Clarence Darrow. In the case of a lifetime, Darrow is called in to defend the monstrous and try to win freedom for the depraved. Recommended for mature audiences.
Communicating Doors
By Alan Ayckbourn
Hubbard Stage
April 4 to April 27, 2014

Award-winning playwright Alan Ayckbourn (House & Garden, 2002) returns to the Alley in this ingenious comic tour de force where Back to the Future meets Hitchcock. In 2024 Phoebe, a "private personal services consultant," finds herself with an elderly client in a posh hotel room – she opens the wrong door and finds herself running for her life. Soon she is confronting her own past by way of a woman named Ruella, and the two join forces to prevent a murder, while Phoebe's gradual friendship with that remarkable woman changes the future for both of them. Eleven plays penned by Alan Ayckbourn have been produced by the Alley, including the American premiere of Henceforward in 1987. Alan Ayckbourn has been inducted into the American Theatre’s Hall of Fame, received the 2010 Critics’ Circle Award for Services to the Arts, became the first British playwright to receive both Olivier and Tony Special Lifetime Achievement Awards and was knighted in 1997 for services to the theatre. Recommended for adults due to language.
Good People
By David Lindsay-Abaire
Hubbard Stage
May 16 to June 8, 2014

Nominated for a 2011 Tony Award for Best Play, Good People is a funny, tough and tender story about the insurmountable class divide. When Margie Walsh loses her job at a South Boston dollar store, she reaches out to old flame Mike, a neighborhood boy who escaped and became a successful doctor. Margie's attempt to hit Mike up for a job takes on a surprising twist when she realizes the power a secret from Mike's past holds. From Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire, Good People looks at the extraordinary consequences of choosing to hold on to the past or leaving it behind. "Thoroughly absorbing ... Good People is good stuff" (Variety) and one of the finest new American plays. Recommended for mature audiences.
The Good Woman of SetzuanBy Bertolt Brecht
Neuhaus Stage
May 30 to June 29, 2014

Can we practice goodness and create a world to sustain it? In Brecht’s comic, intriguing epic play, this question is raised by one of his most entertaining characters, Shen Teh, the good-hearted, penniless, prostitute who is forced to disguise herself as a savvy businessman named Shui Ta to master the ruthlessness needed to be a "good person" in a brutal world. Recommended for mature audiences.
SUMMER PRODUCTION

ExxonMobil Summer ChillsAgatha Christie’s The HollowBy Agatha Christie
Hubbard Stage
July 5 to August 4, 2013

A weekend gathering at The Hollow family estate of Lady Lucy and Sir Henry Angkatell explodes in the murder of one of their guests, physician John Cristow. When the good doctor is found shot, almost everyone is suspect with opportunity and motive including his dim but loyal wife, his current mistress, and his ex-mistress, who lives on a neighboring estate. Don’t miss this classic Christie whodunit filled with brilliantly eccentric characters. Recommended for general audiences.
HOLIDAY PRODUCTIONS:
Houston's Holiday FavoriteA Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of ChristmasBy Charles Dickens
Adapted and Originally Directed by Michael Wilson
Directed by James Black
Hubbard Stage
November 15 – December 29, 2013

We Came! We Saw! We Threw Bananas! WE WERE THEATRE!

Check out Aphra Behn's guest blog post on the Women and Hollywood blog:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/guest-post-we-came-we-saw-we-threw-bananas-we-were-theatre

PHOTOS of WE ARE THEATRE by Miriam Berkley

Dana Berger performs "Who’s The Man" by Mary Steelsmith 

 

Alysia Reiner performs "Chopping Cabbage" by Sophia Romma  

Yvette X performs her own "Bridge to Baraka" 

Drae Campbell in "A Rejection in Full" by Mila Golubuv

Gael Schaefer performs "She" by Caridad Svich

Honor Molloy performs her own work "Not Published, Not Produced" 

Annie-Sage Whitehurst performs "I Am Estonia" by Jyl Lynn Felman 

 

Sarah M. Duncan performs her own "PSA"

Taifa Harris performs Theresa Rebeck's "Why Can't We Do That In The Theatre?"

Guerrilla Girl On Tour Anne Sexton as Machoswine in "Oh, the joys of being a woman playwright"

WE ARE THEATRE CURTAIN CALL 

5 days to the end of discrimination in theatre!

FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY

Guerrilla Girls On Tour! will come out of the jungle, go into the Cherry Lane Theatre and stand up for gender equality.

WE ARE THEATRE

An evening of kick ass plays by Tiffany Antone, Brooke Berman, Kate Bornstein, Lynne S. Brandon, EllaRose Chary, Paula Cizmar, Sarah Duncan, Jyl Lyyn Felman, Lauren Ferebee, Dominique Fishback, Mila Golubov, Elizabeth Hess, Yvette Heyliger, Velina Hasu Houston, Penny Jackson, Erato A. Kremmyda, Andrea Lepcio, Marianne McDonald, Irina Merkina, Honor Molloy, Brighde Mullins , Vince Peterson, Sophia Romma, Laura Shamas, Mary Steelsmith, Caridad Svich, Kathleen Warnock, Sheilah Rae, Theresa Rebeck, Thelma Virata de Castro, Shay Youngblood and Guerrilla Girls On Tour!

WHEN: September 24, 2012 @ 7PM WHERE: The Cherry Lane Theatre 38

Commerce Street, New York City 

WHAT: A theatrical Happening that will cause more plays by women to Happen 

TICKETS: $20 general admission, $12 students and seniors. - for half price tickets use the code WAT 10

FOR TICKETS CLICK HERE: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/916365

OR HERE:  http://www.broadwaybox.com/shows/we_are_theatre_nyc_tickets.aspx

WATCH LIVE – WE ARE THEATRE WILL BE STREAMED LIVE: http://www.livestream.com/ggontour

DRESS: ANYTHING YELLOW 

DONATE: to the cause: http://www.indiegogo.com/WeAreTheatre

MEDIA REQUESTS: Contact Meredith Rich at meredithrich@earthlink.net

www.facebook.com/WeAreTheatre @OccupyBroadway

www.ggontour.com

WE ARE THEATRE PRODUCERS: Guerrilla Girls On Tour! with 50/50 in 2020, the Women's Initiative members of the Dramatists Guild and the Belladonna Series

WE ARE THEATRE CO-SPONSORS:  Women's Project Theatre, LA Female Playwrights Initiative, WET Productions, The Feminist Spectator, The Shirley Chisholm Project of Brooklyn Women's Activism, Project Girl Performance Collective, Hollaback!, Hedgebrook, LIVE GIRLS Theatre, Judith Shakespeare, Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, New Perspectives Theatre Company, The Queens Company, The Negro Ensemble Company, Guerrilla Girls Broad Band, Little Black Dress INK, Looking for Lilith, Women at Work Festival, The Bella Abzug Leadership Institute and Agent 160 Theatre.

Going Bananas at Bluestockings

We held our annual GUERRILLA GALa last night at Bluestockings Book Store and Café on the lower east side. Bluestockings is owned by a five-person workers’ collective and is staffed by about 60 volunteers. (The staff was awesome to us all during our GALa).
The store hosts events almost every night and we were lucky to be the featured event last night.

Kudos to GGOT Anne Sexton who single handedly organized the event and arranged for a diverse bunch of about 50 of NYC’s theatre women to arrive at 7PM for the schmooze. We had young and old with both long and short resumes in attendance as well as representatives from organizations like the Women’s Project, Theatre for a New City, Dixon Place and the League of Professional Theatre Women.

I was so impressed and in awe of the women who showed up, who each gave a two minute speech about what they were currently working on and what they hoped to accomplish in the theatre in the next few years. It seemed there was much more hope at this event then there had been at past ones.

I wonder if it’s because of Emily Sands’ economic study on the state of women in theatre or perhaps the impact of the newly formed 50/50 in 20/20 group that hopes to have an equally number of plays by both women and men produced in the US by 2020? Are we theatre women more hopeful that our work will get some much needed attention in years to come?

If so, our 13 plus years of effort trying to shed light on discrimination in theater will have been worth it. But we can’t quite take our masks off yet.

Thanks to Carole Lombard, Edna Lewis, Josephine Baker and Anne Sexton for hosting and organizing the GALa. And please if you have never been you must immediately head downtown to Bluestockings - they also run a free-trade café that serves great soy lattes and organic, vegan treats!

Bluestockings – 172 Allen Street (btw. Stanton & Irvington) – 212-777-6028

American Theatre Wing’s Jonathan Larson Grants maintain status quo of sexism on Broadway

What’s wrong with this picture? The American Theatre Wing announced that its 2010 Jonathan Larson grants had been awarded to 4 men. That’s right, not one woman this year or last year received a JL grant. Since 1997 the Jonathan Larson Foundation has given out 104 grants. Only 16 of those have gone to women or to theatres producing a musical by a woman. The grant is described by ATW as “for individual creative theatre artists to turn to for financial support and encouragement. The Jonathan Larson Grants honor the talented creator of Rent and ensure that his spirit continues to inspire the future of American musical theatre.” I guess they believe that the future of musical theatre is reflected in what’s currently playing on Broadway. There are 26 musicals on Broadway – 23 by men and 3 by women. That’s 12% representation by female musical theatre writers. Just 15% of all Jonathan Larson grants have gone to women. I know there are just as many women writing musical as men so why do these grants help to maintain the status quo instead of encouraging more women’s voices? What’s currently playing on Broadway? Discrimination. Note to American Theatre Wing – we need more Broads on Broadway. In 2011 give only women awards. Feel free to steal that idea.

-Aphra Behn
© 2010

HOW GUERRILLA GIRLS ON TOUR! BEGAN

By the mid-nineties the anonymous activist group, Guerrilla Girls, had expanded to include not only visual artists, but also actors, directors, playwrights, performance artists, costume designers and filmmakers. In 1997 I, as Guerrilla Girl Aphra Behn, along with Guerrilla Girl Lorraine Hansberry, initiated a GG committee to discuss how we could address the lack of opportunities for women in film and theatre. Because postering had become increasingly difficult and because plays and films were shown inside of theatres, we decided to begin by creating satirical stickers to paste up inside theatre toilet stalls that would amuse and provoke the audience. The stickers read: In this theatre, the taking of photographs, the use of a recording device and the production of plays by women is strictly prohibited.* – The Management. *This theatre will not produce any plays by women this season. We worked our way across Manhattan targeting sexist theatres like the Atlantic Theatre, Vineyard Theatre and The Roundabout Theatre. Some of these theatres quickly added women playwrights to their next seasons.

During the next three years our film and theatre committee created over 16 posters, stickers and actions that used quick, smart humor to focus on sexism, racism and discrimination in the theatre world. We invented the Fax blitz - a series of new posters faxed to theatre producers across the US during Women's History month. We put on our masks and hit the streets - passing out stickers at the TKTS booth in Times Square and organizing two Tony Awards protests in 1999 and 2000. In 2000 Lorraine and I received a NYSCA grant to research and write a play based on the history of women in American theatre. The play was included in A.S.K's Common Ground Festival in 2001, the same year the GG's received the Art is a Hammer Award from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. Our committee had attracted new GG attention and support and was written about in the Village Voice, BackStage, Mother Jones, Theatre Magazine and the LA Times.

In 2001 the original Guerrilla Girls split into three separate wings and the film and theatre committee became Guerrilla Girls On Tour – Theatre Girls dedicated to bringing the spirit of feminism, activism and performance around the world. We have since become an internationally acclaimed anonymous theatre collective producing new theatre, visual works and performances that tread the ground between entertainment and education, between two and three-dimensional art, between comedy and drama. Our theatrical pieces use comedic, physical, and vaudevillian-like techniques to dramatize women’s history and address current sexist trends. We have worked as an ensemble and with outside communities, creating site-specific works performed with local activists/artists in a variety of languages. In order to put the focus of our work entirely on the issue of discrimination and racism, each member of Guerrilla Girls On Tour performs using the name of a dead woman artist and when in public and on stage wears a gorilla mask to conceal her true identity.

Since 2001 Guerrilla Girls On Tour has proven that feminists are funny in over 200 performances and 100 workshops in theatres, classrooms, art galleries, community centers, cafes and the great outdoors. We have been featured in many festivals in the US, UK, Poland, Argentina, South Korea, Spain, Ireland, Japan, China and France. You can find us at www.ggontour.com

Members of Guerrilla Girls On Tour:
Gracie Allen, Josephine Baker, Aphra Behn, Lili Boulanger, Fanny Brice, Louise Brooks, Coco Chanel, Julia Child, Alice Childress, Cheryl Crawford, Edith Evans, Alexandra Exter, Hallie Flanagan, Lady Augusta Gregory , Lorraine Hansberry, Frances Harper, Edith Head, Laura Keene, Eva Le Gallienne, Lisa Lopes, Dorothy Parker, Diana Sands, Anne Sexton, Sophie Treadwell, Lupe Velez, Ethel Waters, Anna May Wong.