Jody Christopherson photo by Zachary Oberzan

 

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Transcript of the recorded Introduction;

 

Hi. I’m Jody Christopherson, the creator and photographer of Necessary Exposure: The Female Playwright Project, which you are listening to and/ or viewing right now.

We are a series of photographic portraits and sound installations. I take these photos, do this work to bring visibility to playwrights. This is what a playwright looks like. I want you to see them. When you seek plays to produce, artists to commission, curriculum to teach, I want you to remember.

Martha Goode has recorded and designed these sound plays you’ll be hearing so that we can amplify the voices of female identifying playwrights, writing at this time in history.

As I write this, it’s Feburary 7th, 2017 in New York.

A lot has happened this year already. A lot has been happening for decades. History, culture, change are made by those who control what is written about them and what access the public has to that information. Theater is an opportunity, like no other, for writers to connect directly with our audiences and create worlds together. Yet only 1/5 of the plays produced in America are written by female playwrights. Why are so few women produced when they account for over 50% of ticket sales? There is a belief that there simply aren’t enough in the “pipeline” right now.

My father was a well driller. So I know, as do you, that a pipe is structure that runs underground. I don’t want these voices underground. I want them in our theaters, I want them our non-traditional site-specific spaces, I want them in our audition rooms, our schools, our conversations. Necessary Exposure is an amplification system for that purpose. We share these words, these artists with you, and ask that you become our speakers.

If you like an excerpt you hear and want to see more, read the full play, get in touch with one of our playwrights, commission or bring an installation to your city contact us at [email protected] and visit us on line at thefemaleplaywrightproject.com

View the current exhibit while you stream the plays at Dixon Place, on view through March 6th.

This portrait was on display at Dixon Place. It is part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt from Shasta Geaux Pop, read by Shasta Geaux Pop. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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“I want us to travel together, to move together. . . we’re going on a journey. . . will you ride with me?”

Who is Shasta? Shasta Geaux Pop, born Shastina Adrina Degeaux, grew up in a small town in Louisiana by the name of New Iberia. Birthed on the 17th of August, 1982 to Donald Degeaux and Evaline August Degeaux. Shasta is an only child from a modest background. Her parents were middle middle class. Her father owns a small plumbing company, and her mother is a still life painter, and day care assistant. Growing up she quickly realized that small town life just wasn’t for her. She found it stifling and full of fear. She attended public schools most of her adolescent career with the exception of preschool where she attended a private catholic school that she was kicked out of for having too strong a will. Her teacher made an attempt to change the way Shastina held her pencil which she absolutely disagreed with and she proceeded to inform the teacher of her inability to comprehend the possibility that her penmanship posture had no effect on the beauty of her writing and it was quite ridiculous that someone of such a small mind would attempt to thwart the development of the next potential A.B. Endress, or Mary L. Champion (famous penmans). At this her teacher was extremely taken aback and quite frankly put to shame, and thus began a downhill battle for Shastina at this school where she would soon be removed. How did Shasta become…Shasta? Shasta would eventually  make her way to the big city. NYC!!! Inspired by her surroundings she took to the cities culture and vibrance and made it part of her everyday existence. She found herself taking long walks getting lost in all that the city could offer her. Its neighborhoods, eateries, abandoned buildings, museums, etc. She once decided to spend an entire day walking borough to borough. She didn’t make the 5th as the blisters on her feet and holes in her shoes made her realize maybe she should stop. It was this walk that helped her realize that she wanted to meet the world. From that moment forward she dedicated all of her time and energy to developing her career, and her music. Shasta always had a penchant for satire and entertainment, and thought well why not reach the masses through the mediums that she loves. She found her muse through pop culture and the everyday hustle and bustle of the world around her. Shasta dug deep down inside to excavate and talk about the topics not everyone wants to tackle and do it with a twist. Well, quite frankly she was was mining for gold, and thus the star was born. Who is Shasta now? Shasta Geaux Pop is beyond diva. So, what is Shasta to do when given the time, space, and audience to do whatever she wants to do? Shasta might discuss “the do”, she might sing about “the do”, or just show you how to “do”. Or she’ll just “do” whatever her heart damn well pleases.  Shasta Geaux Pop is an “experience”. She loves her adoring fans, lovers, punks, copycats and anyone else looking for a raucous time. She mixes theatrics, music, comedy, outrageous costumes, and pop culture commentary. She is the flavor you want to savor. Shasta is like a scratch and sniff that never fades.     www.ayeshajordan.com/shasta-geaux-pop

This portrait was on display at Dixon Place. It is part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt of Casey’s play O’Earth, read by Casey Llewellyn and Ren Evans. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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“I am staging the worlds I want to inhabit.”

Casey Llewellyn is a writer and theater maker whose work interrogates identity, collectivity and form. Works for theatre include: O, Earth (commissioned and produced by The Foundry Theatre at HERE, January/February 2016), The Body which is the Town, Zaide!, Obsession Piece, The Quiet Way, Existing Conditions (co-written with Claudia Rankine), and I Love Dick, an adaptation for theater of the book by Chris Kraus. Performance works include: I Am Bleeding All Over the Place: A Living History Tour (conceived by Brooke O’Harra, co-written with her, La Mama June 2016), Come in. Be with me. Don’t touch me. and Piece for Vibrating Chair. Casey is a New Georges Affiliated Artist. Her essay “What We Could Do With Writing” appears in The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind, edited by Claudia Rankine, Beth Loffreda, and Max King Cap. Her collaboration with Claudia Rankine “Theatre of intimacy and abandon” is forthcoming in Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage, edited by Daniel Sack (Routledge 2017).

http://www.caseyllewellyn.com/

This portrait was on display at Dixon Place. It is part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt of Chisa’s play Alondra Was Here read by Chisa Hutchinson. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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” . . . it was telling me to keep it small. Keep it small, stay insignificant. . . ” 

Chisa was born in Queens, New York to young, irresponsible parents.  She spent majority of her formative years under the care of a much more responsible, but chronically broke woman who was technically her godfather’s mother, but who would later—in the fine, it-takes-a-village tradition of the broken family—simply become “Ma.”  Chisa grew up in the company of what seemed like hundreds of unofficially adopted brothers and sisters in Newark, New Jersey, where she excelled in school and philosophized with cockroaches about the ultimate merits of poverty.  Her favorite six-legged pest, who called himself Swifty on account of his uncanny ability to elude the bottom of any shoe, once told her with a wistful chuckle,“One day, you will be able to look back and romanticize all this shit.”

That day appeared on the horizon of Chisa’s future when, at fourteen, she got a scholarship to what she thought was a boarding school.  It turns out, however, that having more than one building—indeed, having a campus—does not a boarding school make (Chisa was naïve and probably should’ve read the brochures more carefully).  So she moved about ten miles and a whole galaxy away from Newark to Short Hills to live with a host family comprised of a quirky, Buddhist psychologist, her then husband, a nature-loving, piano-playing Jew, their three kids, and an ancient dog named Baboo.   It was a rough transition.  But one which has, nevertheless, shaped Chisa and her writing for the better.  She thinks.

A couple more awesome, supportive parents and several scholarships later, Chisa has earned a B.A. in Dramatic Arts from Vassar College and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from NYU.  She’s landed some pretty cool gigs since then, such as writing and performing with the New York NeoFuturists and being a Staff Writer for Blue Man Group. As she tends to write plays about underrepresented folks that require a minimum of five actors, she doubts very much that you’ll see any of her plays on Broadway any time soon, but encourages you to support the intrepid companies that have presented her work, which include the Lark Play Development Center, City Parks’ Summerstage, the New York NeoFuturists, Partial Comfort, Mad Dog Productions, Atlantic Theater Company, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, New Dramatists,  the Rattlestick Theater, the Contemporary  American Theater Festival, Midtown Direct Rep, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC),  the Working Theater, Project Y, the Contemporary American Theater Festival, National Black Theater  and FilmGym.

 http://www.chisahutchinson.com/

This portrait was on display at Dixon Place. It is part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt of Kathryn’s play They Are Gone but Here I Must Remain read by Kathryn Hamilton. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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“What kind of times are these, when
To talk about trees is almost a crime
Because it implies silence about so many horrors?”

– Brecht

Kathryn Hamilton is a performance maker based in New York and Istanbul. She is the founder and director of the New York-based company Sister Sylvester. Recent productions include They Are Gone at The Public Theater for Under The Radar’s Incoming! series; Welcome at Alt Bomonti gallery in Istanbul; The Maids’ The Maids at Abrons Arts Center; The Fall at The Park Avenue Armory, as part of the Under Construction Series; Dead Behind These Eyes (NYT critic’s pick) at Sing Sing Karaoke; Science Fiction at Köşe. Her work has been reviewed by New York Times, New Yorker, Time Out, Village Voice, American Theater Magazine, Performance Art Journal, Hyperallergic, Culturebot, among other publications. She has received grants from LMCC, BAC, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and has been a resident at The Public Theater’s Devised Theater Working Group; Salem Art Works; Park Avenue Armory; Flux Factory, Queens; and Spread Art, Detroit, among others. She is currently a part of Lift Festival’s Urban Heat program for social practice artists. She has taught or mentored students at Columbia University, NYU and Boğaziçi, Istanbul; and she spent the years 2011-13 in disguise as a french diplomat in New York.

http://sistersylvester.org/

 

 

 

This portrait was on display at Dixon Place. It is part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt of Kristen’s play The Heart in Your Chest read by Jill Frutkin and Jody Christopherson. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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“Humans need to be heard, to be seen. We must get the mess of our minds and hearts and histories into a form that we can recognize deeply or it will overwhelm us – it is overwhelming us. This transformation is the artists job. This is the necessary action.”

Kristen Palmer is a playwright, director and teaching artist.  Her plays have been produced and/or developed with Live Girls!, ACT (Seattle), FLUX, Blue Coyote, Women’s Project, Soho Rep, P73, Rising Phoenix Rep, New Georges, Playwrights Center, William Inge Center for the Arts, Circle X, Theater of NOTE, Lake George Theater Lab, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, and Printer’s Devil Theater.   Her plays include Once Upon A Bride There Was a Forest, The Stray Dog, All the Girls Love Bobby Kennedy, Local Story, and Departures.  She is a recipient of the Jerome Fellowship and an alum of the Women’s Project Theater Lab and Soho Rep Writer Director Lab. She is the Artistic Director of Oddfellows Playhouse Youth Theater in Middletown and mother to Wallace. Her plays can be read at the New Play Exchange  https://newplayexchange.org/users/426/kristen–palmer  and  at Indie Theater Now:  http://www.indietheaternow.com/Playwright/kristen–palmer.

This portrait was on display at Dixon Place. It is part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt of Juliana’s play The Reenactors read by Juliana Francis-Kelly. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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“Hello. I am one pretentious mother from the sticks.”

 Juliana Francis Kelly is a New York City based actor and a playwright who has performed in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. She has originated roles for many great directors, including Reza Abdoh (as a founding member of the internationally renowned Dar A Luz Company); Richard Foreman (in “Paradise Hotel;” “Bad Boy Nietzsche;” “King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe” and “Maria Del Bosco” – for which she received an OBIE Award) and for Anne Bogart, Karin Coonrod, Young Jean Lee, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, Lear DeBessonet, Normandy Sherwood, Charlotte Braithwaite, Hal Hartley, Meredith Drum, Mary Billyou, Marie Losier in collaboration with Guy Maddin, Bryan Doerries (for outsidethewirellc.com) and David Michalek (for the 2011 Lincoln Center Festival’s “Portraits in Dramatic Time.”) Recent performances include ”Feather Gatherers” for the Drunkard’s Wife and “elizabeth r/text and beheadings”, directed by Karin Coonrod at The Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival and The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. Plays she’s written include: “The Reenactors,” directed by Tony Torn at Abrons Arts Center; “Go Go Go”, directed by Anne Bogart at PS 122, reprised at The Institute of Contemporary Art for London International Festival of Theater; “Box”, directed by Torn and performed at The Women’s Project, PS 122; and The Fontanon Festival in Italy; “The Baddest Natashas”, performed at The Ontological Theater and published by Open City Magazine; “Saint Latrice”, at PS 122 (for which she received a Sundance Screenwriters Fellowship for the film script adaptation.) Her plays have been translated into four languages, and she has received project support from the N.E.A., NYSCA, The Greenwall Foundation, The Durst Foundation and The Jerome Foundation.. Ms. Kelly also builds dolls, one of which is installed at the American Museum of Natural History’s Discovery Room. Ms. Francis Kelly lives in Harlem with her husband, actor/musician David Patrick Kelly, and their eight-year-old daughter Margarethe. 

These portraits were on display at Dixon Place. They are part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt of Hilary’s play Ghosts of Lote Bravo,
read by Hilary Bettis. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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“Our values are not statements we put on walls, they are actions we take behind closed doors.”

Hilary Bettis writes plays, TV and movies. Her work includes: Dolly Arkansas, Blood & Dust, The Ghosts of Lote Bravo, The History of American Pornography, Alligator, Dakota Atoll, Mexico andAmerican Girls.

She is a two-time recipient of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize from Lincoln Center and is a 2015 graduate of the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwright Fellowship at The Juilliard School. Bettis has received fellowships and residencies at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, New York Theatre Workshop, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, SPACE at Ryder Farm, Cape Cod Theatre Project, La Jolla Playhouse, New York Foundation for the Arts, Playwrights’ Week at The Lark, NNPN’s National Showcase of New Plays, Audrey Residency at New Georges, Two River Theater, Great Plains Theatre Conference, The Kennedy Center/NNPN MFA Workshop and a Sloan/EST Commission. Her plays, The Ghosts of Lote Bravo and The History of American

Pornography made the 2015 Kilroy’s List as the most recommended new plays by a female writer. She has been a Runner-Up for the Alliance Theatre’s Kendeda Award, Nuestras Voces National Playwriting Competition, American Blues Theater’s Blue Ink Award and the Leah Ryan Prize. She is currently working on a commissioned adaptation of Miss Julie with Michel Hausmann/Miami New Drama.

The Ghosts of Lote Bravo received a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere at the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, MO, Borderlands Theater in Tucson, Arizona. Her play, Alligator, received an Off-Broadway production this past winter with New Georges and The Sol Project.

As a screenwriter, Bettis has written and produced two short films, B’Hurst and The Iron Warehouse, which have screened at multiple film festivals across the globe. Hilary is currently a writer on FX’s hit show The Americans.  She is developing a project at The Weinstein Company with Alyssa Milano producing, as well as another project at Fox 21 TVS with producer Bob Levy.

She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her cat and her actor-fiancee.

 https://www.hilarybettiswriter.com/

This portrait was on display at Dixon Place. It is part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt of Lisa’s play Persephone in Retrograde
read by Elizabeth Seldin and Adriana Jones. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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“My mother had a beautiful garden. A bit wild, but there was an internal rhythm. A patchwork quilt of shapes, colors and flavors . . . I sometimes felt I was growing up in an alternate universe.”

 Lisa Huberman is a playwright and storyteller based in Astoria, whose work has been produced throughout New York City and New Jersey.  Her full-length play, Sex and Charitable Giving was produced in The Brick Theatre’s inaugural F*ck Fest and was recorded for Elephant Run District’s hERD Podcast.  She recently performed her solo show, The Worst Zionist in the Room, Lounge Series at Dixon Place.  Lisa is an Artist in Residence with the Queens-based artist collective Mission to (dit)Mars and a member of their playwriting group, The Propulsion Lab.

This portrait was on display at Dixon Place. It is part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt of Chiori’s play I Came to Look for You on Tuesday
read by Maria-Christina Oliveras and LeeAnne Hutchison. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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“Born in Japan and Made in USA.”

After November 8, 2016, my soul became homeless. Every day since then, I’ve been looking for a road back to being American. In 1993 under the Clinton presidency, I became a US citizen, giving up all rights to my birth country, Japan. I didn’t have any sentimental feelings about the decision at the time, but on the morning of November 9, I thought about the original citizenship I lightheartedly let go many years ago, when I woke up without a definition of myself.

The road to American was always rocky for me. At fifteen, I had to rebuild myself, learn an entirely new culture (still an unfathomable one) and a brand-new language. I hadn’t managed to become quite all-American before November 8. Instead, I’d made a bizarre culture of my own, an amalgamation of imaginary Japanese sentiments and acquired American beliefs. Perhaps because of this personal history, my plays—whether they take place in Chekhov’s Russia or on death row in a prison in Texas—are in the end, about memory and identity. Possibly because my time line did not flow in one direction (starting over as an immigrant) I view the stage as a place where the time is unpredictable and malleable, and we live with all kinds of “ghosts”.

I’ve had a fortunate journey in theater. My plays have been produced by off-Broadway theaters (Vineyard Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Women’s Project), at renounced performance spaces in NYC (Performance Space 122, HERE, Ohio Theater, Culture Project) and regionally (in recent years, This Lingering Life premiered in San Francisco at Z Space and Antigone Project had a revival at Stage Rep in Baltimore). Twelve of my plays are collected in two books: Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays from Seagull Books and America Dreaming and Other Plays from NoPassport Press. I’m grateful for many fellowships I’ve received that supported my work, including a New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, a McKnight Playwriting Fellowship, a Van Lier Playwriting Fellowship, a Rockefeller Bellagio Residency in Italy, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University, and a New Dramatists Residency (2006-2013.)

In addition to writing plays with magic realism and collaborating with amazing theater artists, I’ve been lucky to experience some magical events in my life. I was granted a private audience with The Dalai Lama and visited him in Dharamshala, India. For seven years leading up to the seventieth anniversary of atomic bombings, I collaborated with several Hibakusha—survivors from Japan–on annual theater retreat with NYC public high school students. I worked with survivors of domestic violence to create solo shows based on the women’s childhood memories.

I created a fellowship program for emerging writers of color at New York Theatre Workshop, designed and managed Asian American Playwrights Fellowship at The Public Theater, produced two performance festivals which included many interesting artists of color and women at the former Dance Theater Workshop, and designed a rigorous undergraduate playwriting program from scratch at Bard College under director JoAnne Akalaitis, where I continue to teach after her retirement. I’ve travelled extensively in East and South East Asia with a support of National Performance Network and Asian Cultural Council.

At the end of 2016, I spent three days in Moscow and visited Chekhov’s house, Dostoyevsky’s childhood home and saw Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theater. Growing up in a small snowy town called Nagano, I saw a Bolshoi Ballet Company production on tour every year. As a child, I never dreamed that one day I’d visit Moscow to see it at their home theater.

Everything I’ve done as an adult so far was made possible, I still believe, by living my life as a playwright in New York City. But on a fundamental level, I felt that my identity was threatened at the end of 2016.

I haven’t felt the disparity between who I think I am and who the nation identifies me so severely since I was a teenager.

As I was conceptualizing Jody’s project with her, my mind was not clear about my future-self. I asked her if I could reflect on my identity and my home. I’m married to a wonderful human being and visual artist, Hap Tivey. We have a little puppy Dandy Lion. Every day, I think—tomorrow is another day.

chiorimiyagawa.info

 

This portrait was on display at Dixon Place. It is part of Necessary Exposure’s 3rd installation which explores what it means to be writing for the theater as a woman at this moment in history.

Click below to listen to an excerpt of Amina’s play The Animals read by; Charles Everett, Melissa Diaz, Leta Renée-Alan, Isabelle Pierre, and Amelia Fowler. Sound Design by Martha Goode.

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“Empathy, in the form of giving space to a diversity of voices to be heard, is essential now.”

Amina Henry is a Brooklyn-based playwright and producer. Productions include: The Animals at JACK, Happily Ever at Brooklyn College, An American Family Takes a Lover produced by the cell at Theater for the New City, Water produced by Drama of Works and The Minstrel Show,produced as part of the 2013 Bring a Weasel and a Pint of Your Own Blood Festival at 13th Street Theater/CSC (NYC). Her work has been developed by/presented at: The New Group, The Flea, Clubbed Thumb, National Black Theater, Barefoot Theater, Little Theater at Dixon Place, HERE Arts Center, The Brick, JACK, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland, OR) and Kitchen Dog Theater (Dallas, TX), among others.  www.aminahenry.wordpress.com