Friday, March 19th @8m "Red Helen"

Saturday, March 20th @4pm "Re-Drowning Ophelia"

Saturday, March 20th @8pm "Adoration of Dora"

Sunday, March 21st @3pm "Coming Attractions"

Sunday, March 21st @7pm "the terrible girls"

 

Friday, March 26th @8m "Red Helen"

Saturday, March 27th @4pm "Re-Drowning Ophelia"

Saturday, March 27th @8pm "Adoration of Dora"

Sunday, March 28th @3pm "Coming Attractions"

Sunday, March 28th @7pm "the terrible girls"

 

Individual Reading: $10*

Day Pass: $15* (Saturday and Sunday only)

Festival Pass: $40 (Includes Wrap-Up Reception 3/28 @5:30pm and 1 vote in Fighting Words Play Reading Festival)*

 

*All readings include talkback with readers, 

 

 

 A dark and twisted comedy about bloody money, blood-red meat, and blood relations.  Red Helen dominates her home and three daughters with an unwavering clenched fist-- until all hell breaks loose at the family steak restaurant, and the status quo starts to slip.  Directed by Kim Rubinstein

 

If you liked MOXIE's "The Butcher of Baraboo", you'll like this play!

 

From playwright Jennifer Barclay:

My goal is to write stories which are full of raw, muscular humanity; stories which inspire and elevate, with juicy, scenery-chewing characters actors will die to gobble up. I make it a priority to create stereotype-busting roles for women; ones which I feel are infinitely more complicated than the standard leading lady or ingénue. I’m fascinated by the extremes of humanity, the dark & twisted, the psychologically unexpected, and the quirky underbelly. I write about both the intimacy of family and the magnitude of the world at large. And I believe that a play or a film at its best should be a challenge to the mind, a revelation for the heart, and a raw, joyful collision between human beings.

 

Note: Mature Audiences Only

 

A small group of adolescent girls refuse to be defined by a dead fictional character.

 

Six very different teenage girls traverse the complicated world of female adolescence, within the confines of an all-girl's Catholic high school.  Directed by Chelsea Whitmore.

 

If you liked MOXIES's "Victoria Martin & The Sugar Syndrome", you'll like this play!  Winner of the 2009 California Young Playwrights Contest.  Written when the playwright was 18 years old.

 

From playwright Katie Henry:

Growing up in the theatre world, I always felt as though life was never represented onstage, that interesting and complex female characters were few and far between, and strong young female characters even more rare. My mission as a playwright is to give voice to underrepresented female voices, and to explore femininity, gender roles and identity, and what it means to be female in modern America. I want young women to be able to see themselves in my work, and for the entire audience to leave entertained, and questioning their own ideas about gender and sex.

 

Note:  For ages 15+ 

 

"Adoration of Dora" explores the nature of art and creativity through the story of surrealist photographer and one of Picasso’s many lovers, Dora Maar. Already an accomplished photographer when she and Picasso met in 1936, Maar is perhaps best known as Picasso’s Weeping Woman, the subject of numerous portraits painted during the Spanish Civil War.  "Adoration of Dora" explores the conflict that Maar felt as both artist and muse to one of the most revered creative geniuses of the 20th century.  Jeffrey Wienckowski.

 

A semi-finalist, Alive Theatre's Cherry Poppin' Play Festival, 2008.  "Adoration of Dora" draws its inspiration from the Parisian surrealist movement and the upheaval of the interwar period that shaped the art and politics of the time.

 

From playwright Lojo Simon:

Dora Maar (1907-1997) was smart, beautiful, creative, innovative and politically and socially active. Despite all this, she is remembered most for being Picasso’s lover and muse – his often-painted “weeping woman.” I wondered what it would be like to live as Dora Maar did – between two wars, intimate with genius, the object of Picasso’s adoration and artistic vision, yet also an independent woman and an artist in her own right. I imagined her tears resulted from her struggle to find her voice.

 

Note: Mature Audiences Only

 

 

During the dying days of the Disco era, a group of Hollywood has-beens and hangers-on gather at The Desert Knight- onetime hideaway of Tinseltown’s “twilight” set.

 

It's Palm Springs circa 1979, before the dawn of AIDS and the Reagan Era, during the dying days of Disco. A group of Hollywood has-beens and hangers-on gather at The Desert Knight, onetime hideaway of Tinseltown’s “twilight” set, after the funeral of closeted Big Band-singer-turned-real-estate-magnate Didi Windom, a slut of Olympic proportions. Will the last reel play out as planned?  Directed by Stephen Elton.

 

From playwright Zsa Zsa Gershick:

My personal mission is to uplift, entertain, educate and inspire, particularly illuminating the lives of LGBT folks, who've largely been hidden from history. I want audiences to laugh, to learn, to have a good time and to think about the ties that bind us all.

 

If you enjoyed MOXIE's "Bluebonnet Court", you'll like "Coming Attractions".

 

Note: Mature Audiences Only

 

 A wicked dark comedy of friendship, obsession, and Southern sensibilities, two women battle for the love of one man, while the third guards his terrible secret. “It’s a wild mix of fearless comedy and Southern Gothic horror,” says Kristina Meeks, Founder, Playwrights Collective.  Directed by Chelsea Whitmore.

 

The original one-act version of "the terrible girls" was produced at the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival. See the new full-length version for the first time at MOXIE!

 

From playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger:

Growing up in the rural South, I fell in love with the stories of William Faulkner, Kate Chopin, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, and Katherine Anne Porter. However, I was disappointed to see the Southern Gothic genre destroyed on the stage either by soap opera melodrama or a perverse misunderstanding that “Gothic” simply meant “Horror.”

 

My work is inspired by the Southern Gothic style as portrayed in classic fiction - a style that heightens reality, gives epic importance to everyday situations, and embraces the macabre as a necessary, and instructive, part of life – yet transforms this literary style into an active and dramatic narrative for the stage.

 

Note: Mature Audiences Only