Stella Adler - an excerpt by Sidra Rausch

Synopsis: The famed actress and theatre theorist Stella Adler instructs a student on Chekhov's The Seagull in the Stanislavski method.

Director: Madison Smith

CAST

STELLA ADLER……..Madison Smith
DEAN……………Conner Kocks

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Sidra Rausch

Sidra Rausch attended Bennington College and Boston University (M.A. Vocal Performance). She received fellowships to The Aspen Music Festival and Playwright’s Horizons Theatre in NY. She wrote and produced plays including Wonder Woman, How I Became a Bennington Girl directed by Karen Berman (Source Theatre Festival H.D. Lewis Award for Best Play), Long Beach ’44, and Stella Adler (Kennedy Center New Plays Festival). Her film credits include Feathers of Hope produced at AFI in L.A. Sidra was Co-founder and Co-artistic director of Washington Women in Theatre and member of the Playwright’s Forum. Sidra collaborated with Jerry Robinson (cartoonist for Batman) on a new comic book musical Meteor Girl, developed into a manga comic in Japan and performed off-Broadway at La Mama and in D.C. Timberland was nominated for “best production” at the Washington Theatre Festival and produced at Playwrights Horizons and the Joseph Papp Yiddish Theatre in NY

Sisters by Dani Stoller

Synopsis:  Two young women, Maya and Ellie, navigate their journeys through girlhood and teenage-hood after Maya returns home after a late night at a party to which Ellie was not invited.

Director Sadia Alao

CAST

ELLIE ALLEN……………Mecca  Bryant
MAYA ALLEN……………Aliyah Jackson

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Dani Stoller 

Dani Stoller Is an actress and playwright originally from Brooklyn,  NY.  She found her way to DC after graduating cum laude with a BFA in acting from Ithaca College.  She is currently an MFA Playwriting Candidate at Catholic University.  Her show, The Joy That Carries You, co-written with Awa Sal Secka, was nominated for five Helen Hayes Awards including the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical.  Dani is also thrilled to have been nominated for her role in My Body, No Choice performing the words of V (formerly Eve Ensler) at Arena Stage.

Come Home by Anu Yadav

Synopsis: Come Home is a choreo-poem between a mother, Bhavani, and her daughter, Lakshmi, both reaching for each other. Each set of stanzas represent a different stage of their relationship - as a young child and young mother, and later with Lakshmi as a teen, young adult, and then as a mother herself. This short play is part of a larger performance project on ancestral legacy, trauma, collective healing, and social transformation inspired by the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

Director
Chitra Subramanian 

CAST

LAKSHMI………………….. Anu Yadav
BHAV…………..Chitra Subramanian

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Anu Yadav

Anu Yadav is a critically-acclaimed actress, playwright, and cultural worker. She wrote and performed the solo plays 'Capers and Meena’s Dream,  co-founded the storytelling project Classlines and was featured in the documentaries Chocolate City, Walk with Me. She has performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Shakespeare Theatre Company; Studio Safdar in Delhi, India and the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Beijing, China.  She was 2019-2020 Creative Strategist Artist-in-Residence with the Los Angeles County Government Department of Mental Health. 2021-2022 she designed and co-directed community arts and cultural programming for WE RISE, a Countywide mental health awareness campaign. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and holds an M.F.A. in Performance from University of Maryland, College Park. She is a Senior Annenberg Innovation Lab Senior Civic Media Fellow.

Daddy's Jazz by Caleen Sinnette Jennings & Miyuki Williams

Synopsis: When little black girls learn about jazz from their Daddies, a beautiful bond and a lifelong love of the music make their lives wonderfully rich. Daddy's Jazz is a compilation of poetry,  stories and music based on interviews with twenty black women who pay tribute to their Daddies and to the creators of this extraordinary, uniquely American art form.  

WRITERS/PERFORMERS

Caleen Sinnette Jennings
Miyuki Williams 

Sound Design by Carl Jennings

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS

Caleen Sinnette Jennings

Caleen Sinnette Jennings is the playwright of the Queens Girl Trilogy and seven published plays. Her plays have been seen Off-Broadway, at the Kennedy Center, Theatre J, Mosaic Theatre and Everyman Theatre among others. She is a founding member of The Welders Playwright’s Collective and is a six-time Helen Hayes Award nominee. She is Professor of Theatre Emerita of the American University Department of Performing Arts.  Caleen recently completed an Arena Stage Power Play on Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and she is writing the book to a musical  on the life of famous black contralto Marian Anderson.

Miyuki Williams

Miyuki Williams last appeared with Horizons Theatre. She has performed with The Welders and was a company member of Washington Shakespeare Company (now Avant Bard).  Miyuki studied at the Shakespeare Theatre’s Shakespeare for Actors of Color.   She has been with WPFW for 42 years. She was creator and host of A Sunday Kind of Love.  She is thrilled to collaborate with Caleen.

Dozen Paper Tissue Roses by Tuyết Thị Phạm

Synopsis: Isabella and Joseph reconcile their past in the present.

Director: Jjana Valentiner

CAST

ISABELLA...............Paige Hernandez
JOSEPH...............Elliott Kashner

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Tuyết Thị Phạm

Tuyết Thị Phạm is a Helen Hayes Award-winning actor living in Washington, DC. After earning her Master's, she moved to Washington, DC to become an Artistic Fellow at the famed Living Stage Theatre Company at Arena Stage. Following her fellowship, she has worked as a stage, television, film, and print performer for over twenty years and has been seen in over 50 productions in the Baltimore-Washington DC area and other theatres that include roles at Centerstage, Everyman Theatre, Olney Theatre, Constellation Theatre Company, RepStage, Roundhouse Theatre, Imagination Stage, Signature Theatre, The HUB Theatre, The Inkwell, Ford’s Theatre, The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Arena Stage, and The Capital Fringe Festival. Her play Dinner and Cake received its world premiere at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, MD in Fall of 2022, and she was commissioned to write, co-direct and perform in Ping Chong and Company’s Generation Rise, presented at the Reston Arts Center in the spring of 2023. She served as Associate Director for Tripp Cullman on Kenneth Lin’s World Premiere of his play Exclusion at Arena Stage