Women Playwrights Series (WPS) - Centenary Stage Company (CSC), Performing Arts Theatre serving NJ and Pa with professional plays, music and dance presentations at affordable prices

The Prisoner of
Second Avenue
Oct. 1-17, 2010
Professional Equity Play

Women Playwrights Series (WPS)

   Photo L-R: April 2009 WPS Playwright Merri Biechler, Program
   Director, Catherine Rust, and Playwrights Darrah Cloud and
   Emily Bentley  (Playwright Kate Lyn Reiter not pictured)

   Sister Week, one of many WPS developed plays performed
   during a regular CSC Season, was presented in Spring
   2005.

   Photo L-R: Two of the three sisters, Becky Engborg and
   Maria Brodeur

Now in its 18th 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.

Women Playwrights Series (WPS) 2010
April 21-25, 2010

Enjoy our new WPS Photo Gallery of Women Playwrights Series Past and Present.

Women writers from around the country will converge in Hackettstown for the five-day event, which will bring multiple events including dramatic workshop-presentations of 4 new full-length plays by women writers.

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, Alice in Ireland, by Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding co-creator, Judy Sheehan, ++, and 2010's Loose Knit, by Theresa Rebeck. 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.

Past Women Playwrights Series Schedules: [WPS before 2001 not on Web Site]
More Recent WPS Developed Plays as Professional Equity Play Presentations on the Centenary Stage Company stage: [WPS before 2003 not shown here]

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:

Bekah Brunstetter
Eugenie Chan
Neena Beber
Deborah Brevoort
Heather McCutchen
Allison Moore
Jeanne Murray Walker (NEA fellow)
C. Denby Swanson (recipient of the McKnight Grant)
Darrah Cloud
Wendy Hammond
Christina DeLancie
Judy Sheehan (Tony N' Tina's Wedding co-author)

Annual programming at the Centenary Performing Arts Guild are made possible in part through the generous support of the The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour (Penn PAT) , Heath Village, Coldwell Banker and Centenary Performing Arts Guild Members and Sponsors.

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