TDF Stages

Reps from WP Theater, New Georges and The Hearth on showcasing gender-marginalized artists

---

When Julia Miles founded the Women's Project Theater in 1978 to champion female artists, our understanding of gender was different. Five decades later, the company she started, now called WP Theater, continues to celebrate the work of women in addition to trans, nonbinary and other gender-marginalized artists. While there has been progress in closing the gender gap in the theatre industry in recent years, women are still grossly underrepresented in many areas, especially backstage, with the numbers even worse for trans and gender-nonconforming folks. We sat down with three NYC-based theatre-makers who are working to change the stats: director and choreographer Rebecca Martínez, the BOLD associate artistic director of WP Theater; Susan Bernfield, founder and artistic director of New Georges, which has been devoted to women+ artists since 1992; and performer and playwright Julia Greer, the artistic director of The Hearth, founded in 2017 to showcase artists of underrepresented genders. Tune in this Thursday, December 1 at 1 p.m. ET on TDF's YouTube channel or Facebook page as TDF Stages Editor Raven Snook moderates a passionate and wide-ranging discussion with these activist artists. Captions will be available.

See these theatres in action this December:

The Hearth presents the world premiere of Events, an absurdist new play by Bailey Williams about the impossibility of work-life balance, at The Brick in Brooklyn from December 1 to 18.

New Georges presents Miranda Haymon in bb brech's Holiday Yuletide Spectacular! at Dixon Place on December 14.

Top image: Rebecca Martínez, Julia Greer and Susan Bernfield.