Now in its 16th season, the Centenary Stage Company Women Playwrights
Series is dedicated to providing a working forum for the unique
and underserved voice of women writing for the theatre today. Through
a playwright residency and workshop program sponsored in part by
the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, each year WPS showcases new works
by a women playwrights in a developmental program that offers each
playwright the opportunity to work for a short, intense rehearsal
period with professional directors, actors, and staff, mounting
and rewriting the play for a public forum.
Plays presented in the developmental WPS program are under consideration
for full production in a subsequent season at the Centenary Stage
Company, the professional, Equity theatre in residence on the campus
of Centenary College. The many plays which have successfully transitioned
from development to production now include the popular Tillie
Project about local legend, Tillie Smith, Inventing
Montana, by Jeanne Murray Walker, Dreamhouse,
by Darrah Cloud (recently named as an exciting new playwright to
develop works for Broadway for Disney), Alice in Ireland,
by Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding co-creator, Judy Sheehan, and this year’s
The Strange Misadventures of Patty…,
by Allison Moore. Many of these works have appeared on the stages
of New York, Louisville's Humana Festival, Chicago's Goodman Theatre,
Carnegie Mellon and many more.
Each workshop performance, open to the public at no
charge, is an exciting exchange of new ideas, public feedback and
conversation with the playwright, which can often inspire subtle
and defining alterations to the script for the final rewrite. Past
playwright residents have included a wonderful array of talented
writers, including:
C. Denby Swanson (recipient of the McKnight Grant)
Allison Moore
Darrah Cloud
Wendy Hammond
Christina DeLancie
Jean Murray Walker (NEA fellow)
Judy Sheehan (Tony N' Tina's Wedding co-author)
Past Women Playwrights
Series Schedules: [WPS before 2001 not on Web Site]