Thanks for checking out the LAFPI “tag team” blog, below, handed off each week from one interesting female playwright to another.
Who are they? Click Here
The FPI Files: A Conversation Between Friends Dives into “Realm of the River”
On September 2, 2026, playwright Sigrid Gilmer sat down with Jesse Bliss – writer, performer, educator, founder of the The Roots and Wings Project and the writer/director of Realm of the River, which opens September 18th at the Rosenthal Theatre at Inner-City Arts – to talk about Jesse’s new play.
Here is an edited excerpt of their conversation:
Sigrid Gilmer: I wanted to frame this interview around friendship, because we’re friends and I love you. You are one of the most special people in the world to me.
Jesse Bliss: Likewise, Sigrid, I love you so much. You’re one of my favorite humans.
Sigrid: Oh, that’s nice! I want to talk about female friendship, joy, resistance, because your play Realm of the River starts with two friends on their way to pick up their other homie, so they can go wild out and dance. But the night takes a dark turn and they find themselves at the edge of a river trying to come together to make life or death decision. I don’t want to give to much away. People should go and see it.
Jesse: Right!
Sigrid: For me the heart of the play is the friendship between the three main women and how it saves them from a very tough night. Thinking about the importances of women holding each other, a question that came up for me was, was there a woman, when you were starting out, who was an inspiration for you?
Jesse: My acting teacher, Linda. Linda Lowry, who I met in San Francisco, was definitely somebody who really invested in me and pulled me up. She was a single mother, an actress and a prodigy of Bobby Lewis from the original Actor’s Studio. He studied with Stanislavski, so Linda came from that very strict old school lineage. I had so much respect for her because she was so talented and so hardworking, and she really was a person who had pulled herself through life. I respected that, you know?
Sigrid: Yeah, yeah. Tell me, even though I know – this is for the interview – tell me where you started?
Jesse: On my path with this work?
Sigrid: Yeah?
Jesse: I definitely started with Linda. I moved to San Francisco when I was 20 with nothing. I moved with my friend and we lived in the Tenderloin where we used to drop sacks of flour down to the crackheads so we could make a run for it. I mean, we were in the Tenderloin. It’s the worst part of San Francisco. We moved there, and three weeks after we got there I was walking up Geary Street and I saw this theater, the Phoenix Theatre, and there was Linda. And so I asked her, what is this place? And she said, “Come inside. It’s cold out there.”
I think Linda was the first woman I ever became close with in this profession. I was always searching for material to work on in her acting class because the work for women was nothing I could relate to, and so she would tell me, “You’re a writer. You should write your own material.” And that was…
I’d always written my whole life, but I just did it because it was in my heart to do it. She gave me the suggestion that I could create work that would speak truthfully to our experiences, and that appealed to me only because it wasn’t already in the landscape.
Sigrid: Hmm. Okay. I’m not even going to try to think of a clever way to transition this. I was thinking of your writing and your new play. I think most of all the stuff I’ve read of yours is very poetic. It’s like everyday language, everyday speech flipped and heightened. You use a lot of repetition. It’s the language mounted in a way that evokes slam poetry, liturgical ritual language. Talk about how you use language as a tool of resistance.
Jesse: You know what? You made me think of my friend Gustavo, who just passed away. I was reading something he wrote just the other day: “You can use language to build or burn bridges.”
Words have power. You know in our culture, in this country, we’ve been conditioned into silence and taught that it will protect us. And so words, when used in certain contexts, can help us to liberate. Whether it’s using your words to advocate for something that you need or advocating for something that somebody else needs, or if it’s like a play for instance – offering it as a reflection of what is.
Sigrid: In Realm, especially around Esme and Oshun’s relationship, there is this question of what are we honestly reflecting back.
Jesse: Brandon Ramon Williams, one of the actors in the play, said that nobody in this play can hide from themselves. Everybody’s taking accountability. They all face off with themselves, which is very metaphoric.
Brandon’s character is named Emir – a mirror. So there is that strong undertone of taking a look, you know. But I think women, especially, are conditioned from so early on to make our relationship to our reflection shallow and harmful. And we’re taught to detect flaws and detect in our faces and our bodies things that are in line with the preference of patriarchy, rather than things that are in line with nature and what makes us feel whole.
Sigrid: Yeah, yeah: I’m not seeing myself like it’s a one-way relationship, I’m looking at myself as I would think a man would look at me. So what do I really look like?
Jesse: Yes.
Sigrid: And how can I even evaluate because what we deem attractive is so narrow and framed by patriarchy and white supremacy!
Jesse: It’s a big industry. A lot of profit, right? Financial gain off making us feel that way.
Sigrid: Truly.
Jesse: Buy this to look like that. Get this surgery to achieve that, right? To give us something that we inherently have. It’s not even beauty, because what is that? It’s such a subjective thing. We’re made to feel so bad about ourselves because that’s profitable.
And this whole craze of media makes it all worse. All the filters that people are using on top of all of the surgeries that are happening… just combine all of that and people are made to feel bad about themselves, comparing themselves to some some weird, poisonous non-existent aesthetic.
Sigrid: That’s a crazy thing.
Jesse: It doesn’t exist, It’s not a true thing, but we act as if it is.
Sigrid: Speaking of belief in things that cannot be seen, there’s so much praying in in Realm of the River. So much just like straight up, I’m gonna drop to my knees here at this river. I’m gonna get on this dance floor and I’m gonna pray.
Jesse: Because prayer is resistance. I think prayer is that place that arrests all of these false notions that push along our society. It is to me. Prayer automatically stills that because when you’re praying, you’re acknowledging that there’s something beyond all of this that is beautiful, that’s a force of love, that is nurturing. And so yeah: I’m a big believer that prayer, no matter what you’re praying to. Or even meditation or anything that puts you in that state, it automatically is gonna disarm the false thoughts and the voices and all the buy-in that happens – buying into these ideas that I’m not what I should be.
Like in the play, there’s a reference to the flower could just enjoy being a flower. Just be fragrant all on your own. Yeah, just enjoy your rightness. But we’re taught that what we are is wrong. So the prayer, I think, is a reminder that we’re in relationship to something really beautiful, and we’re a part of that.
Sigrid: For me that’s what the play is about.
Jesse: Also, that the women just want to ride out and have fun! Like, could they just for one night not think something’s wrong with them? Couldn’t they just go dancing and enjoy themselves and just be free, just be a human being? Enjoy being alive and escape all of these weighing notions that something’s wrong all the time with who they are?
Sigrid: We’re so conditioned.
Jesse: Right. And if you try to walk around not buying in and just being free, it’s like offensive to people. Why is she having fun? Why is she laughing at the grocery store?
Sigrid: Like, stop it!
Jesse: It’s always with women about how we behave and how we’re expected to behave; it’s such a sham.
Sigrid: What do you think it is about joy – like female joy – that rattles people?
Jesse: Because you can’t make money off of it. It’s like it’s outside the realm of ownership.
Sigrid: Talk more… Oh wait. We’ve been talking for an hour!
Jesse: You started this conversation with the idea of friendship, and so just to speak to that as we close, I think there’s…
I was just writing about this the other day. I don’t think anything saves a woman like a friend, another woman friend. You know, because it’s like we call back each other’s souls. When I laugh with you, oh my God! I I mean, I laugh myself in oblivion, and it’s the best. I’m like, “Oh, there I am!”
Sigrid: To have somebody who… and I feel like with us. I feel like this with you. I feel 1000% seen and loved, and that is… I mean-I’m crying now. There’s nothing like that.
Jesse: It’s a lifeline. It’s like it’s breath itself. It’s not like a relationship to nature, but it’s the only thing that could even get slightly close to that feeling. You know when you’re someplace really really beautiful and you can’t help but feel alive? The air is so fresh, and you’re just like, “Oh, nothing’s bothering me right now. I’m so happy.” Right? It’s that beautiful.
“Realm of the River,” written and directed by Jesse Bliss, runs from September 18th thru September 27th. Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 2pm at the Rosenthal Theatre at Inner-City Arts.
Visit www.therootsandwingsproject.com/realm-of-the-river for tickets and more information.
Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at lafpi.updates@gmail.com & check out The FPI Files for more stories.
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The Point is to become a stranger
I was recently in Virginia at James Madison University’s Theatre Department for the Madison New Works Lab. We were working on a play of mine for a reading series — a play that is very dear to me, that feels like one of my go-to calling card plays, so making sure it works has been especially important to me.
What I did, almost accidentally, was put a lot of distance between myself and the script; the last I heard this version was over a zoom with actors reading it cold in spring 2025. So it had be over a year by the time I heard it again in August 2026. I’d done bigger rewrites in that draft but had not revisited.
So when I first heard this draft out loud, I had an almost out-of-body experience; there were whole sections of the play I didn’t remember writing but I remember trying to solve the problems the new sections took care of. During the first reading of it I genuinely didn’t know what was going to happen next.
But of course I KNEW. Because I wrote it. Even though I couldn’t remember it.
I think I might know when a play is getting close to being “done.” At least for me. And it lies in this sensation — the feeling of watching a thing running around that both IS you and is absolutely NOT you. I saw the play, knew it was mine, knew almost immediately what I needed to do once I started looking at it with an editor’s eye — but it somehow no longer felt like mine. It felt alive, I suppose, in a way that made me feel like a stranger intruding on something important.
But I think that is the point. To get your work to a point where you can let it go, that you couldn’t hold onto it even if you tried. The point is to become a bit of a stranger to the work. Give each other space. Write so that the play solves its own problems and no longer needs you.
I supposed I just needed to be reminded of the joy of a rehearsal room, of revisiting a play after a time away, to learn how to look at something you know so intimately with new curosity.
And curiosity glues that whole universe together.
we are our mothers…
by Robin Byrd
we are our mothers
embodied and portioned
lost and aware
wisps of memory
captives to genographic fates
the black potted bread still soaking in butter on the stove’s eye
sizzling hot and blisteringly dangerous
“misery lives in the bones”
blood bleeds on dresses repurposed each generation for war
braided and rolled coifs frame faces too old to love hard again
ruint too young to know full abandon
“survival is a verb, is an action”
deep as conversation between matrilineal and patrilineal Xs
“we was runnin’ /
/ we was walkin’
we was birthin’ babies at a young age
/ an’ at a old age
we was locked up
/ inside ourselves
an’ in asylums /
for this can be the work of men
but he loved me /
/ he loved me
til’ his dyin’ day /
/ til’ my dyin’ day
we was young /
/ then we was old
then we was old /
i survived the asylum /
/ i did not survive my body reekin’ of alcohol
/ nor could i forget the huntin’ days
/ of wild meat simmerin’ or the smell
of afterbirth” /
give me cabbage and potatoes with the “e”
give me corned beef or meatloaf with gravy
and some of that bread
press my hair straight
don’t burn my ears or my kitchen
let me speak of shadows in dark rooms
and how much blood can be scrubbed from the soul or barren-ed womb
years of flesh falling like crabapples on the medicinal lawn so pretty you forget the apples need washing
unbefitting – this landscape
a lovely blanket to hide the oath breakers lair
life slips
expels itself
for grief is a murderer cloaked in silence
forgive me if i remember Dothan’s road as a desert route to hades
“we went north…east /
/ we went north…west
then we backtracked south…west /
we met in the middle in the southernmost northern city
we met in the middle /
/ we met in the middle
your son/my daughter /
/ your daughter/my son
we met in the middle
left nothing to chance”
the bones ache of revisiting crime scenes
sometimes i want to run when i need to walk
other times i just want to straddle this fence
teetering
invisible is not the end of a thing
written off is not the same as a black woman weathering
misery lives
in the bones
i am my mother
i am all my mothers
in ways too familiar to ignore
still scratching at scabs
still burying the dead
still weathering the pretty lawns
7/16/26
#FringeFemmes 2026: Meet Kathy Westfield
By Constance Jaquay Strickland
Conversations with some of #HFF26’s compelling “Women on the Fringe”
Ten years ago, I did my first Fringe Femme interview out of a desperate need to hear and uplift the voices of women of color during Fringe. I also selfishly wanted to bear witness and, in some small way, archive the multiplicity of voices and conversations women of color were having.
The reality was, I was having a hard time discovering and seeing the work of women of color. I knew I had a small network, no connections, and yet I still found a way. I knew that the hardest part of manifesting a new work was finding a way to let people know you have a show happening.
The 2026 Hollywood Fringe Femme Interview series is an ode to the women who find a way to tell stories by any means necessary. And this Fringe Femme is truly a miracle – I do not say that frivolously. In the United States, nearly 1 in 3 women have experienced a form of physical violence by an intimate partner. Nearly 75% of all domestic homicide and severe violent crime victims of domestic abuse are women.
Currently here in California, the Hope Transitional Shelter houses more than three dozen women and children who are facing a high risk of losing services that support families experiencing domestic violence. As a child who witnessed my mother escape domestic violence, I know how urgent and vital services are for families to get back on their feet but also how it transforms an entire family when women have the ability, support and forums to share their stories of survival.
This is why it is not only emotional, but truly a blessing to introduce Fringe Femme Kathy Westfield and “He Put His Hands On Me.” May each time she shares her story, it saves another woman’s life. May each time she shares her story, it transforms the lens via how women are viewed. May each time she shares her story, it opens a portal of courage and healing for all the women who are on the brink of leaving a violent partner.
Constance Jaquay Strickland: How long have you been sitting with this work and what led you to the Hollywood Fringe?
Kathy Westfield: I initially wrote “He Put His Hands On Me” in 2018. In searching for a platform for my show, I came across the Hollywood Fringe Festival. It immediately caught my attention because it provided an opportunity without creative limits, was part of the performing arts community and it also gave me the freedom to produce my own show. So, in October 2019 and then in January 2020, I produced my show in preparation for the June 2020 Hollywood Fringe Festival. However, in February 2020, COVID hit. [And the 2020 Hollywood Fringe was cancelled.]
Constance: So why now?
Kathy: Because it was time to just do it! I could not forget how the audience at my last show came onstage, surrounded me and asked, “When is your next show?” They maintained a strong position stating, “You have to do it again. People need to hear your story.”
Constance: Were there joy and surprises that you discovered when creating your show?
Kathy: There was joy in realizing my show could possibly help someone who is currently being abused. It then was no longer just about writing my story. It now had a much bigger purpose. True joy came in knowing that I am fortunate to be alive. I can now share my journey to enlighten, inform and to encourage others.
Constance: What was your biggest challenge in terms of the Fringe and your development process?
Kathy: As the artist as well as the producer, it was challenging handling all the duties, i.e., securing the venue, production and promotions, as well as other performance related duties. I stayed busy from the inception, through the rewrites and all the way through managing the tech rehearsals. One had to be organized in order to be successful.
Constance: What did you enjoy most about doing your show during the Fringe?
Kathy: I enjoyed being able to touch the hearts of the audience by using my sense of humor in an effort to lighten up some of the pretty dark times in my story. There were tears by those embracing my pain as well as tears of joy brought forth through my humor. The audience didn’t leave the show depressed and sad, but rather empowered and uplifted.
Constance: So is the show a love letter to survivors or a plea to the community and women still stuck in violent relationships?
Kathy: My show is to all of the above. For survivors, it’s a reminder about just how far they have come. It’s also an opportunity for the community to better understand the challenges facing most victims. And it is definitely an opportunity to provide information to victims presently in a violent relationship so they know help is available 24 hours a day at (800)799-7233(SAFE).
Constance: Do you believe theatre is a bridge to healing and rebuilding?
Kathy: I most definitely believe theatre is a bridge to both healing and rebuilding. Experiencing the performance of someone who has overcome a hurdle can give another individual the hope and insight needed in overcoming their similar situation. It can also become a shared emotional journey for the audience as well as a pathway towards healing for the performer.
In fact, acting out my domestic violence experiences in my performances has allowed me the opportunity to process the pain, verbalize my emotions and release the shame many times felt by both victims and survivors. It has helped me tremendously in my healing process.
Constance: Silence often plays a huge part in how domestic violence continues. To stay silent is to hide the shame that may exist; it may also cost a woman her life. How did you navigate this when choosing to put your story onstage?
Kathy: Balancing the discovery of my voice and saving my own life had to be approached carefully. I had to come to the realization if I remained silent I could potentially die. Secondly, I had to make the decision not to embrace the shame because shame keeps us shackled.
In my first abusive relationship, I carefully planned an escape. I say carefully because this is the most dangerous time for a victim. Statistics show 75% of deaths occur when the victim tries to leave their abuser.
Lastly, I learned to listen to my inner voice. One night during my abusive marriage my husband knocked me to the floor and started choking me. I couldn’t breathe but then I heard a voice say, “Bite him.” When I bit him, he released my neck. I then escaped by running down our apartment hallway screaming for help and a complete stranger opened her door, pulled me inside and then slammed the door behind me. I learned not to ignore that inner voice. It’s there for a reason.
Constance: Are you planning to continue performing “He Put His Hands On Me?” How do you see it living beyond Fringe?
Kathy: I definitely believe there is a need to continue. Audience members’ responses and reviews demonstrate it has a purpose. With all the feedback I have received, I envision the show has the potential to be successfully produced at theatrical venues as well as through women’s organizations, churches, advocacy groups and universities for fundraisers, community awareness and educational purposes.
Constance: I love the double-entendre title of your solo show. It is very powerful. May I ask you to describe how your faith saw you through this painful season?
Kathy: My faith evolved while I was deep into my abusive marriage. I was at my wit’s end. I finally got on my knees one night and turned my life over to God. I then began building a closer relationship with Him. As I grew in my spiritual walk, so did my faith. On more than one occasion strangers were placed in my path and saved me from harm’s way. I do not believe their placement was coincidental but rather it was God’s divine intervention. Without faith, I’m convinced I would not be alive today. Men put their hands on me but God had his hands on me all along.
Constance: How are you doing now? How are you allowing love and laughter to stay active and alive?
Kathy: Currently, I continue to perform my clean, stand-up comedy. I share love through my humor in an effort to bring joy to my audiences. I am a firm believer that it may not be funny at the time, but eventually, we can find humor in just about any situation. Laughter has been a major source of my healing.
I am also actively researching plans to take my solo show on the road!
For info on “He Put His Hands On Me” at the 2026 Hollywood Fringe, visit https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/13495
Interludes for the mid-summer season
by Ayesha Siddiqui
Burdens
Sometimes the small burdens of life press on you over and over, are we out of coffee, I forgot to get the paper towels that I left the house to get what have I even been doing for two hours, the air conditioning is broken, I said something stupid in that meeting didn’t I, and then my god what a joy it is when something small but magnificent bursts through, like birdsong in the morning or you look up to stare at a friend you love and they are there, you call a parent and you’re fortunate enough to have their voice on the other end, and the fragility of it all, knowing that it might be a long time before another moment like this comes to pass, but my god the joy of having it ever so briefly now. I have glanced out my window to see the stucco walls of the adjacent apartment building, sun filtered through leaves making a painting on the wall, the grandmother who lives across from me always rotating her plants inside and out and I get to bask in the warm light of her fiddle leaf ferns today and I want to knock on her door and say thank you, thank you, you do not know this but I soak in every color of the flowers and leaves you place out, I do not miss these things, please may I trade places with your fiddle leaf fern. I long to be turned towards the sun.
Prescriptive
Have you tried the following:
Listening for birds when you wake
Looking into a dog’s eyes
Hot coffee and a morning to drink it
Letting an elder go first
Reminding you to slow down
Have you tried the following:
This one is prescriptive but
Cocteau Twins and driving
Touching trees as you pass
I like to think they enjoy it
Some days when I’m
Having a hard time
I try to remember this list.
#FringeFemmes Check-Ins: Inside the Box
Quick peeks at #HFF26’s “Women on the Fringe” by Fringe Femmes who are behind the scenes this year. Click Here for all Check-Ins
WHO: Clara Rodriguez
WHAT: Inside the Box
WHERE: The Broadwater (Studio), 1078 Lillian Way
WHY: Because there comes a point where each of us questions our life choices. What do a mouse, a mature woman named Alice (Clara Rodriguez), an aged mother-in-law (Seemah Wilder Idelson) and a clueless husband (John Combs) have in common? A release-seeking a road trip. Writer/director/performer Clara Rodriguez has crafted a hilarious feel-bad comedy that pokes at the soft, sensitive underbelly of aging and the human desire for purpose. Alice feels trapped after attending her high school reunion and running into her former best-friend-turned-meteorologist. She questions her 50-year career as “just a receptionist” and 43-year marriage. This three-hander is expertly crafted and performed. Find out if Alice finds the freedom she craves.
HOW: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/13481
#FringeFemmes Check-Ins: Nilbog! The Troll 2 Musical
Quick peeks at #HFF26’s “Women on the Fringe” by Fringe Femmes who are behind the scenes this year. Click Here for all Check-Ins
WHO: Kristin Boulé, Tiffany Asta and Juan Lazano
WHAT: Nilbog! The Troll 2 Musical
WHERE: The Cat’s Crawl, 660 N. Heliotrope Dr
WHY: What happens when you take the worst movie ever made and turn it into a musical? Kristin Boulé (co-creator/producer/director), Tiffany Asta (co-creator/Joshua) and Juan Lazano (co-creator/composer) have created a pure, unhinged, hot mess of an adaptation. The ensemble and creators have used their crafts to weave a sweet, absurd homage that the best worst movie deserves. It is replete with goblins, ghosts, sexy Stonehenge, ballads, conditional love, vegetarians, green goo and a ludicrous lack of trolls. Even if you are not a fan of the movie, you’ll leave a fan of the musical. If you crave a non-stop evening of laughter, this musical delivers.
HOW: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/13950
The FPI Files: SheLA Arts is Back With Stories to Tell
The SheLA Arts Summer Theater Festival is back in Los Angeles, this year at Rogue Machine Theatre. The 2026 Festival features four plays and one musical, and we’re glad to be able to profile the femme writers again, getting to know them and these new works a bit better through a few questions.
Ashley Denise Robinson – Writer/director of “The Partner Or, The Sou-Sou Play”
The Play: Every Tuesday night, five first-generation women meet to exchange money, gossip, and insults. Their deepest secrets are pulled out of the shadows when a new, non- Caribbean member joins the group. “The Partner, or The Sou-Sou Play” pulls at the threads of how tightly we can hold on to our secret lives, no matter the cost.
LAFPI: Where did this play come from and why were you compelled to write it?
Ashley Denise Robinson: It was important for me to write the sou-sou play because I wanted to see more first generation, Caribbean and African women on stage. Sou-sou was something that I had just recently learned about and I wanted people to understand this very old very traditional form of money saving that came out of West Africa. I also wanted to send a play around a topic that I personally hadn’t seen before. I think writing the sou-sou play has reinforced the power of women, specifically Black women, and the power of community and also how trying to smooth over the circle can cause fractures that may never be able to be mended.
LAFPI: What do you hope is next for your play?
Ashley: Global dominance. Because sou-sou is a global practice, I’d love to see the show in different countries, different languages, with different people taking on these characters. I’d also love for audience members to see these women and themselves, and to have something to relate to in terms of first generation stories, complicated, love stories, black women stories.
LAFPI: What should someone ask you about your work?
Ashley: “How many commissions can you take on this year?” “Are you available to be out of the country writing for the next 6 months?” “Where can we house you in NYC/London for the Broadway run and West End runs?”
Chandler Patton – Book writer of “Ghostlight,” a new musical
The Play: Leah just can’t catch a break. After bombing her audition for the revival of her dream show — “Ghostlight”, the story of 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite poet-painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal — she and her best friend Jen are about to give up on their dreams. Then they get the call. As they rehearse, argue, and create, the line between reality and theatricality blurs, forcing them to face the truths about their characters, themselves…and the pasts that haunt them still. This is a real play about a fake musical.
LAFPI: What made it important for you to write this play?
Chandler Patton: I wanted to explore the addictive, electric energy of collaboration–to capture, in real time, that magic that all theatre artists pursue. It’s a story about how artists turn their pain into beauty, and to me, the tragic story of Elizabeth Siddal is the perfect example of this.
LAFPI: Which playwrights do you find most inspiring?
Chandler: I’m a dramaturg, so too many to name. This play in particular was heavily inspired by Venus in Fur by David Ives. Unfortunately a lot of the best plays I’ve ever read have been unproduced and by struggling writers… but I’m very inspired by that. Here’s to all the epic plays gathering dust in desk drawers as we speak.
LAFPI: What do you wish someone would ask you about your work?
Chandler: I’d secretly love to be asked about the uncanny woo-woo experiences I had writing the play…about how I would create specific details in the story that I thought I was inventing, only to come across them deep in the historical record and find out that I was correct.
“Ghostlight,” book by Chandler Patton, music & lyrics by Steven James Schmidt and directed by Andrew Ceglio, plays July 8 at 7:30pm, July 11 at 8:30pm
Bridget Flanery – Writer/director of “Litter”
The Play: A backpack is surreptitiously thrown out of an Uber on a Des Moines highway. When the bag’s gruesome contents are discovered, Detectives Merritt and Van Roekel track down and interrogate the 15 year-old passenger responsible for the “littering”.
LAFPI: Why did you want to write this play?
Bridget Flanery: I hadn’t seen these people or these circumstances before on stage or film and that drove my writing process. I tried to explore the humanity of their struggles and their aches and give reason or make sense of what might seem controversial behavior and action.
LAFPI: Do you see a lot of plays?
Bridget: I attend a great deal of Theatre and I read a lot of plays. I will always feel like there is something sacred about sitting in a live audience in that darkened space, experiencing the art form where anything can happen.
LAFPI: Are there playwrights who inspire you?
Bridget: Oh, gosh, there are SO many. Anton Chekhov, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, August Wilson, Lynn Nottage, Lauren Gunderson, Sarah Ruhl, Duncan MacMillan… I could go on forever.
“Litter,” written and directed by Bridget Flanery, plays July 10 at 7:30pm and July 11 at 12:00pm
Caroline Ullman – Writer/director of “Role Models”
The Play: Jack and his older sister Willa haven’t spoken in months, since she moved to New York without him. When he finally agrees to pay Willa a visit and see her new life, he discovers that Willa’s new boyfriend Peter is someone he already knows and he must decide whether or not to tell Willa his secret and risk ruining the trip, and possibly their relationship as well.
LAFPI: What made you want to write this play?
Caroine Ullman: My favorite plays to write center on young people navigating messy relationships. I love coming of age stories about people making mistakes and learning from them (or not!) and ultimately seeing how the relationships evolve and change over time. This was my initial approach to writing “Role Models,” and the characters and plots began to flow.
LAFPI: And how has it been, taking the next steps into production?
Caroline: Having the opportunity to premiere my work with the team at SheLA is always a dream! I feel so lucky to spend time with such a collaborative, supportive group of artists. I’m excited to see this play on its feet for the first time, and how it will continue to grow and evolve from there.
LAFPI: As a writer, are there playwrights who have influenced you?
Caroline: One playwright I’ve always admired is Annie Baker. Reading her work growing up was definitely foundational to my own writing. I love losing myself in her characters’ dialogue and the complex relationships she crafts.
Jenn Melyan – Writer of “Her Way (隨 她而流)“
The Play: Summoned home to her mother’s apartment in Kaoshiung, Jessica walks into an ambush: her mother, Anita, has stage 4 cancer, and a deadline. Anita wants to die with dignity by week’s end, and she wants Jessica’s help. As a typhoon locks the family inside, pressure builds, secrets spill, and love turns volatile. With her father, Gary, caught in the middle, this darkly funny, emotionally explosive drama asks: can a mother and daughter forgive each other before time runs out?
LAFPI: Why did you write this play?
Jenn Meylan: I wrote this play because I wanted to share a story from a deeply personal and distinctly Taiwanese perspective that is rarely seen on stage. Through the story, I explore questions of death, family, and dignity at the end of life, and the difficult choices that accompany serious illness. My hope is to create space for meaningful conversations about death and family dynamics.
LAFPI: Which playwrights do you find most inspiring?
The playwrights I find most inspiring are actually the ones who are working on developing new works and putting their writing out there. I am part of a group of mostly women writers who regularly develop new works and give each other critiques – I find those playwrights most inspiring bc it takes a tremendous amount of courage to write, share, and receive feedback on shitty first drafts.
LAFPI: What would you like audiences to ask you about this play?
Jenn: Where the story came from, what parts are from everyday life, and what parts are uniquely from the Taiwanese diaspora.
“Her Way (隨 她而流)”, by Jenn Melyan and directed by Hannah Eden Chodos, plays July 11 at 6:00pm and July 12 at 1:30pm
The SheLA Summer Theatre Festival runs Tuesday, July 7 – Sunday, July 12. For more information and to purchase tickets, go to shenycarts.org/she-la – Use code LAFPI20 at checkout for 20% off all ticket orders!
Know a female or FPI-friendly theater, company or artist? Contact us at lafpi.updates@gmail.com & check out The FPI Files for more stories.
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#FringeFemmes Check-Ins: I Am Not A Spy. This Is A Magic Show
Quick peeks at #HFF26’s “Women on the Fringe” by Fringe Femmes who are behind the scenes this year. Click Here for all Check-Ins
WHO: Katrina Kroetch
WHAT: I Am Not A Spy. This Is A Magic Show
WHERE: Madnani Theatre, 6760 Lexington Ave
WHY: What happens when you go to a magic show, but it is actually a spy convention? The spy, no… the magician/writer Katrina Kroetch takes us on a comedic noir caper with magic, mentalism and a bit of spy craft. What better cover to infiltrate secret organizations than magic? As an audience member you might be the sleeper agent, but you are definitely a world-famous spy. This is a clever, funny, impossible-not-to-enjoy show. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: have fun, solve a mystery and laugh.
HOW: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/13348
#FringeFemmes Check-Ins: Two Be
Quick peeks at #HFF26’s “Women on the Fringe” by Fringe Femmes who are behind the scenes this year. Click Here for all Check-Ins
WHO: Keri Blunt
WHAT: Two Be
WHERE: Actors Company, 916 N. Formosa Ave.
WHY: : What happens when two performers find themselves aging out of their niche? A 42-year-old actress (Keri Blunt) struggles to meet the deadline of her taped audition for Hamlet. She laments her aging skin, and her AI avatar threatens to take over. A 35-year-old actor (Dino Petrera) is cued to be “gayer” when reading for Hamlet. His agent hits him with the gut shot: he’s no longer marketable as a teen, and the agency drops him. He finds drag and holds a funeral as Trita Wright for his career as a high school student. Each actor takes the stage to ask the question, to be or not to be. Because identity, aging and reinvention sit at the edge of every actor’s mind. Keri Blunt has crafted a funny, touching and quietly defiant two-part short play and Dino brings the wow factor with his drag performance. A perfect mixture of drama and drag.
HOW: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/14370
