The Connecticut Women Playwrights Festival has a new producer and three new locations this year, bringing added breadth and visibility to the well-established event.
This year the festival is presenting four one-act plays in three locations.
The plays are “Mischief at the Mermaid Tavern” by Zeb Appel of Bethany, “Hollywood and Thine” by Kimberly Hill (whose TV writing credits include “Cheers,” “Family Ties” and “The Facts of Life”), “30 Days” by Betsy Maguire of the Simsbury-based Playland Productions theater company and “U-Got Credit” by Kate McLeod.
The days and locations are Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Centerbrook Meeting House, 51 Main St., Centerbrook; March 18 at 7 p.m. at Playhouse on Park, 244 Park Road, West Hartford; and a lunchtime presentation on March 27 at G.W. Tavern, 20 Bee Brook Road, Washington Depot, with eating at noon and the reading at 1 p.m. Lunch must be purchased to attend the event.
All four one-acts will be read at each location.
Until this year, the festival took place in October at the Ivoryton Playhouse in Essex. The playhouse was unable to produce the festival this year, citing budget issues and other reasons. The Connecticut chapter of the League of Professional Theatre Women, which had been a regular sponsor of the festival, offered to take charge of this year.
Lauren Yarger, who founded the chapter and is producing the festival through her Gracewell Productions, sees ramping up the festival to several locations throughout the month as the culmination of the years of effort the Ivoryton Playhouse has put into the project. The playhouse’s executive director, Jacqueline Hubbard, remains involved, directing two of the one-acts.
Multiple performances improve the development process which the festival serves. The playwrights can test reactions, think about staging options and even do rewrites of the scripts between one performance and the next.
Yarger said the League of Professional Theatre Women “are here to support women in theater, provide networking opportunities and hold helpful discussions. It all translates into finding work.”
Through the organization and her own Gracewell Productions, which produces a regular playreading series at the Waterbury Palace, Yarger said “we get a lot of people in seats. Our people will go to these events. With our own programs we try to hold them throughout the state. We felt doing that with this would benefit the playwrights as well.”
In the past, the Connecticut Women Playwrights Festival has offered full-length plays as well as one-acts, but Yarger and the other organizers felt that that a program of all short plays worked best this year. She said the program offers a great deal of variety. “There’s broad appeal. ‘Mischief at the Mermaid Tavern’ has Anne Hathaway spying on her husband, William Shakespeare — it will be good to see it read in an actual tavern. ‘Hollywood and Thine’ is based a true experience the playwright had. ‘30 Days’ is based on the mothers of Bonnie & Clyde. ‘U-Got Credit’ is a modern play about customer service.”
These are staged readings with scripts in hand and some action. “The actors move around a bit,” Yarger said. “They’re not fully staged but are made interesting for the audience with some costumes and props. I call them enhanced readings.” Each reading is followed by audience talkbacks.
“The other thing that’s cool about this is that it’s fully sponsored,” she said. With the exception of the G.W. Tavern reading, which requires attendees to order food from the menu, all the presentations are free.
Yarger expects the Connecticut chapter of the League of Professional Theatre Women and Gracewell Productions to continue to produce the Connecticut Women Playwrights Festival as a biennial event, with the next one likely to happen in the spring of 2027.