Washington Women in Theatre (WWIT) celebrates its 20th anniversary with a showcase of new plays and music by diverse women+ on two weekends in June at American University in the Katzen Arts Center’s Studio Theatre. WWIT promotes theater and music projects from the perspective of women+ giving voice to women+ writers and composers of the DC area and beyond. (WWIT uses “+” to be inclusive of a wider definition of gender and identity.)
WWIT celebrates this summer with two weekends of local, national, and international full-length, one-act, and 10-minute plays including comedies, choreoplays, cabarets, poetry, tragedies, one-woman shows, and personal stories by Helen Hayes Award winners and nominees, Heideman Award Finalists, Jane Chambers New Play Award Finalists, and an Annenberg Innovation Lab Senior Civic Media Fellow.
Experience gender-non-conforming, neurodivergent geneticist Barbara McClintock’s quest (along with her companion/partner Harriet Creighton) to understand diversity in nature and to reframe “deviance” as an expression of natural variance by playwright Carolyn Cage entitled In McClintock’s Corn.
Engage with Caleen Sinnette Jennings and Miyuki Williams performing in their own play, and their newest, Daddy’s Jazz.
Witness the famed actress and theater theorist Stella Adler instruct a student on Chekhov’s The Seagull in the Stanislavski method in the play Stella Adler by WWIT co-founder Sidra Rausch.
Discover a first-generation Cambodian American’s struggle with guilt, anger, and grief of generational trauma as she tries to unpack her parents’ experiences as survivors of the Cambodian genocide in the play Dawn by Tuyết Thị Phạm.
Encounter a grieving woman as she is visited by the ghost of her dead friend in Milbre Burch’s Haunted.
Accompany mothers and daughters, sisters, lovers, and friends seeking understanding, forgiveness, joy, and laughter in new plays by Dani Stoller, Anu Yadav, Linda Sherbert, Susan Lynskey, and Judy Klass.
Revel in four cabaret late nights with Lynn Sharp Spears & Mundy Spears and Barbara Papendorp & Amy Conley.
Washington Women in Theatre’s 20th Anniversary Festival will run June 9–12 and June 15–18, 2023, in the Studio Theatre at the Katzen Arts Center at American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC. Tickets ($12 for one performance, $20 for two performances, $30 for three performances) can be purchased at auartstix.universitytickets.com with more info at washingtonwit.org.
Performance Schedule
June 9 at 7:30 & June 10 at 2:00 – Exposure Therapy by Linda Sherbert, Haunted by Milbre Burch, Book of Life by Judy Klass, Redeeming the Witch by Milbre Burch
June 9 & 10 at 9:30 – A Cabaret: 2003-2023 Women, Music and Milestones with Lynn Sharp Spears & Mundy Spears
June 10 at 7:30 & June 11 at 2:00 – In McClintock’s Corn by Carolyn Gage
June 12 at 7:30 – 7:30 PM – Meteor Girl: A Tribute to Sidra Rausch read by Susan Lynskey, Holly Twyford, Terrence Currier, Lawrence Redmond, and Frank Britton.
June 15 & 16 at 7:30 – Daddy’s Jazz by Caleen Sinnette Jennings & Miyuki Williams, Sisters by Dani Stoller, Mummi Beti/Mother Daughter by Anu Yadav, A Dozen Paper Tissue Roses by Tuyết Thị Phạm, Stella Adler (excerpt) by Sidra Rausch
June 16 & 17 at 9:30 – Witty Women a Musical Celebration for WWIT with Barbara Papendorp & Amy Conley
June 17 at 2:00 & 7:30 – Dawn by Tuyết Thị Phạm
The WWIT 20th Anniversary Festival program, containing cast and creative bios, is online here.
