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ICR 2022 will feature a special reading and panel featuring playwright Kit Steinkellner
Kit Steinkellner’s Ladies
On FRIDAY AFTERNOON (October 21), we’re fortunate enough to hear a reading by UCSB Theater students and hear from playwright Kit Steinkellner about her innovative new play Ladies.
Initially inspired by a portrait exhibition, Ladies is a fictional account of a year in the life of The Blue Stocking Society, the world's first major feminist movement in 1790's London. The play explores the tangled knot of relationships in this group, including Evelina author Frances Burney, and the compulsive obsession and irresistible attraction that weaves its way through their affairs. Through the lenses of Romanticism and feminism, Steinkellner has crafted “an extraordinary emotional and intellectual journey with something very important to say to our disjointed and too often reactionary era,” says reviewer Charles Donelan.
Ladies is a play that employs burlesque, full frontal nudity, cross-dressing, and music with a heavy bass line to tell the story of four women with the misfortune of being born far ahead of their time. You can read more about the play below!
Carie Kawa, left and Meghan Andrews in Boston Court’s “Ladies.”(Jenny Graham)
FEATURING
Kirsten Hoj
•
Ahlora Smith
•
Taylor Kirk
•
Carlee Douglas
Kirsten Hoj • Ahlora Smith • Taylor Kirk • Carlee Douglas
With additional commentary by playwright Kit Steinkellner, Professor Wendy C. Nielsen (Montclair State University) and Professor Summer Star (San Francisco State University)
Directed by Professor Risa Brainin (UC Santa Barbara). Production Assistant: Kendall Minor.
Meet the Playwright
Kit Steinkellner is a nationally-produced and award-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her plays have been produced Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizon's Peter Jay Sharp Theater, at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C, and at the San Diego Old Globe. Her work has been praised by the New York Times, LA Times, Backstage, and LA Weekly.
She is best known for the 2018 Facebook Watch series Sorry for Your Loss and her award-winning comic Quince. She previously wrote on the Amazon Studios period drama Z: The Beginning of Everything, and was nominated for the Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity in Comics in 2018. She received her MFA in Screenwriting from the UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television.
The reviews are in!
“this charmingly vulnerable voice from the 21st century is what lifts the bluestockings’ dilemmas into a space of timeless relevance.”
— Charles Donelan, The Santa Barbara Independent
Friday,
October 21
3:30PM - 5:00PM
UCSB Studio Theater
Images: LA Times