3Girls Theatre’s 6th Annual New Works Festival

Posted by on August 4, 2017

3Girls Theatre Company (3GT) presents the 6th Annual New Works Festival representing the best of 3GT’s work in developing, producing and promoting original work by women playwrights throughout the year. The 10-day free festival takes place from August 17 to 27, 2017 at the Potrero Stage (formerly Thick House), and is part of PlayGround’s Potrero Stage Presenting Program.

All events are FREE to the public, but many performances “sell out” so advance reservations are recommended. To reserve tickets, visit www.3girlstheatre.org/2017-3gt-new-works-festival.

3Girls Theatre Company is proud to be one of the few theater companies in the country that produces only plays by women playwrights. 3GT seeks more than “gender parity” in theater: the company has a vision of a world where stories told by women are heard onstage just as often as stories told by men. Less than 20% of new plays produced annually by the American mainstream theater are written by women (the same today as it was a century ago).

Each year, 3GT chooses a theme for its annual festival; this year’s theme is 3GT Celebrates Radical Hope and The New Resistance. The 2017 festival events explore the need for artists to never let go of hope, despite what political forces surround us. Persistence, resistance and radical hope are what theater-making is all about. Like so many of fellow artists (and fellow citizens), 3GT felt discouraged and disenfranchised by the results of the 2016 election. This year’s theme relates to the helplessness many people feel due to the new regime in Washington. The theme allows people to express frustration in a constructive way.

3GT will feature its Salon Series Finalists along with all-new editions of Repro Rights (in collaboration with Repro Rights Theater), LezWrites! and GirlWrights, and a special multi-disciplinary evening of conversation and performance exploring its theme. And 3GT will again be hosting its annual curated art exhibit, playwrights meet and greet, talk-back panel and artists reception.

New this year:

QueerWrites! A Writing Workshop. (August 23 @ 7:30pm)

Lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning writers are invited to attend a free 2-1/2 hour writing workshop given by 3GT resident playwright, Margery Kreitman. Writing and improv exercises will be used to explore one’s lives and create work for the stage in the form of monologue, scene writing, memoir, creative non-fiction, poetry, rap, and song lyrics. Participants will be reading their work aloud and offering feedback about what stood out for the listeners. How to structure narrative in scenes and monologue will be discussed. A safe space will be created and held to explore and create.

Girl Talk: The Play (August 24 @ 7:30pm)

For teenagers and the grown-ups who love them, there will be two performances that focus on the dramatic ups and downs of life as a girl in today’s world. Girl Talk: The Play is a presentation that powerfully shares the perspectives of real girls on topics like bullying and body image.

GirlWrights Performance Day (August 27 @ 3pm)

The culmination of 3GT’s summer intensive dramatic writing program for teenage girls in the Hunters Point-Bayview Foundation youth services program. Both performances give audience members an unvarnished look at the issues on the minds of teenage girls in the Bay Area today.

SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award:

In March, 3GT was recognized for its theater work with the prestigious 2016 Annette Lust Award, given annually by the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle to “a promising new theatrical talent or an organization that has demonstrated early in its existence the potential to have a significant impact on Bay Area theater.”

About 3Girls Theatre Company:

3GT’s mission is to develop, produce and promote new plays written by San Francisco Bay Area women playwrights. In 2011, San Francisco playwrights AJ Baker, Suze Allen, and Lee Brady decided it was time to stop complaining about the lack of opportunities for women playwrights in American theater and take action. They set about recruiting a company of women who shared their vision to “put women’s work on stage where it belongs.” Today, 3GT’s resident playwrights collaborate with one another and the larger community to create and support extraordinary new work by women playwrights through three core programs: the annual New Works Festival, the intimate Salon Reading Series, and full productions of new plays. 3GT also sponsors outreach programs that develop new playwrights, empower girls, and nurture LBT playwrights and performers.

SCHEDULE:

Thursday, August 17 @ 7:30pm. Opening Night: The Not-So-Late Nite Show with 3GT. Comedy, theater, music and conversation kicks off the exploration of radical hope at the second annual 3GT live talk-show event. Kicks off 3GT’s exploration of radical hope with festival favorites MC Debi Durst, improv duo MacLean & Hamilton, a new short play by the 3GT founders, music by Oakland-based indie, folk, country, bluesy band, Strano & Reed, and a very special conversation between Artistic Director AJ Baker and Bay Area legendary actress, director, artistic director, Joy Carlin, who has been inspiring artists and audiences on the San Francisco theater scene since the 1960s. Carlin started out as one of the core members of the ACT ensemble and over the years has appeared regularly with such companies as Berkeley Rep, where she briefly took the reins in the 1980s.
Friday, August 18 @ 7:30pm (also, Saturday, August 26 @ 1pm): Staged Reading: Finalist #1: Miracle Lake by Susan Jackson. Staged reading of the first Finalist from the 2016-2017 3GT Salon Reading Series, in competition for the 2017 Festival Prize. “No one ever dies at Miracle Lake. What happens to the Langdon family after a catastrophic event? Miracle Lake follows their reunion years after Timmy’s accident and just before it occurs. Lives are drastically changed; hope for a miraculous cure is juxtaposed with reality. Secrets are revealed. Heartbreak. Was there a moment for a miracle that could have saved the family?”
Saturday, August 19 @ 2pm & 7:30pm. ReproRights! Radical Hope and the New Resistance. A dozen short play readings, monologues and performance pieces centering on women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, raising awareness of the work being done by NARAL Pro-Choice America. ReproRights! began in 2012 when a group of writers, producers, directors, and theater artists responded to the dire need to address attacks on women’s bodies and reproductive rights in the US.

Using performance as the medium to explore these issues not only seemed appropriate, but natural. ReproRights! Theater has since expanded to include the voices in the fight against the threats on the bodies of genderqueer, trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. This is 3GT’s third annual collaboration with ReproRights! Theater, curated by Jennifer Lynne Roberts. This year’s plays include War Pig (two elderly Jewish women in a Trump-loving Florida retirement community stage their own women’s march) and Forbidden Points (three women lay out your renewed options in a post-Roe world). ReproRights has been such a popular event that this year there are two performances.

Sunday, August 20 @ 7:30pm. Best of LezWrites! 2017. 3GT’s fourth annual Festival program of this popular series. Short, humorous pieces on the body politic from the LBTQ perspective. Curated by 3GT resident playwright Margery Kreitman, with featured artists Mercilee Jenkins, Tina D’Elia and Thao Nyguen.
Wednesday, August 23 @ 7:30pm. QueerWrites! A Writing Workshop. 3GT welcomes lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning writers to join resident playwright, Margery Kreitman, for a 2 -1/2 hour writing workshop. Writing exercises, improv, reading, and performing in a safe space. Space limited.

Thursday, August 24 @ 7:30pm. Girl Talk: The Play. Young actors perform powerful teen stories about real life struggles, peer pressure, anxieties and how they survived. Resident playwright, Suze Allen, collaborated with Dr. Carol Langlois to create this play version of Langlois’ acclaimed book, Girl Talk: Boys, Bullies and Body Image. Teens and parents are especially invited.
Friday, August 25 @ 7:30pm (also, Saturday, August 26 @ 3pm): Staged Reading: Finalist #2. Disruption by AJ Baker. Staged reading of the second Finalist from the 2016-2017 3GT Salon Reading Series, in competition for the 2017 Festival Prize. “Who Knew What When? When an anonymous whistle-blower threatens to go viral, visionary CEO Andrea Powell has just one day to save her company — and herself — from a public relations disaster that could destroy them both. But it’s not so easy to make a deal when the circumstances are shrouded in mystery. Who’s behind the threats? What do they really want? Is it all business — or is it something much more personal? Only one thing is clear: if a woman wants to disrupt the status quo, she needs all the friends she can get.”

Saturday, August 26 @ 1- 6pm. 3GT Day at Potrero Stage. A full afternoon of 3GT readings, conversation and partying. 1- 4:30pm: Double feature performance of the two Salon Series finalists, Susan Jackson’s Miracle Lake at 1pm and AJ Baker’s Disruption at 3pm. 4:30- 5pm: Talk-Back to 3GT Panel: 3GT Resident Playwright Robin Bradford leads panel members in an audience discussion of how radical hope can be practiced in theater. 5pm: Festival Artists Reception honoring the women artists exhibiting in the lobby art show (curated by Karen Stanton).
Sunday, August 27 @ 3pm. GirlWrights Performance Day. A unique afternoon performance of original monologues written by the teenage participants in 3GT’s 2016 GirlWrights Dramatic Writing Workshop (directed by 3GT resident playwright Suze Allen), in collaboration with the Hunters Point-Bayview Foundation Youth Services Project. Teenage actors will be performing works by our teenage girls. Stay for refreshments and conversation with the writers, actors and audience members.