FIRST FRIDAY | Women+ on the Edge of Democracy
OCT FIRST FRIDAY | ROBLE GYM 137 | Open to the Stanford Community
The TAPS Graduate Students host the October First Friday in partnership with the Women+ on the Edge of Democracy project.
ABOUT THE READING
This open table-reading draws from the Women+ on the Edge of Democracy project, an initiative that invites conversation on women and democracy through theater. Three plays by three female playwrights will be featured in this reading: Reasonable Suspicion by Lisa Loomer, An Uplifting Highschool Graduation Speech by Sarah Ruhl, and hunting / issa social thing by a. k. payne.
“Women+ on the Edge of Democracy was initiated and commissioned by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, in partnership with the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, taking place in communities around the country and the globe.”
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS
Lisa Loomer’s recent play, Side Effects May Include… premiered at Contemporary American Theater Festival. She is the bookwriter of Real Women Have Curves for which she received the 2024 Kleban Prize for most promising musical theatre librettist. The musical opened on Broadway in April 2025. Her play Roe, about Roe v. Wade, debuted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and went on to such theaters as Arena Stage, The Goodman and Berkley Rep. Other plays include The Waiting Room (Williamstown, Vineyard etc.), Living Out (Mark Taper, Second Stage, etc.), Distracted (Mark Taper, Roundabout, etc.), Expecting Isabel, (Mark Taper, Arena etc.) ¡Bocón! (Mark Taper Forum etc.) and Café Vida (LATC). Her work has also been produced in Europe and Mexico. Ms. Loomer is an alumna of New Dramatists and has received The American Theater Critics Award (twice), Pen award, Jane Chambers award (twice), Kennedy Center New Plays Award, Susan Smith Blackburn and Ovation awards, and an Imagen Award for positive portrayals of Latine people in all media. Screen credits include Girl, Interrupted.
Sarah Ruhl is an American playwright, author, and teacher. Her twelve plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2010; Tony Award Nominee, 2010); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2005; Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); and Eurydice (Named one of the most impactful plays of the last 25 years by The New York Times). Her plays have been produced on Broadway and across the country as well as internationally and translated into fourteen languages. Most recently, Signature Theater dedicated a season to her body of work. Her opera Eurydice (with composer Matthew Aucoin) debuted at the Metropolitan Opera and earned a Grammy nomination, and her musical Wonder with A Great Big World recently finished running at the American Repertory Theater. Her books include Smile, a memoir, 100 essays I don’t have time to write, and Lessons from my Teachers. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a PEN Center Award for mid-career playwrights, a Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, and a MacArthur “genius award” Fellowship. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
a.k. payne wrights plays. They make art & theatre, freedom dream and theorize from the hills & valleys of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—where her people have carved home since the early 20th century. Her plays love on Black pasts, presents and futures. They hold a B.A. in English and African-American Studies from Yale College & an MFA in Playwriting under Tarell Alvin McCraney from fka Yale School of Drama. Named one of Variety Magazine’s Top Ten Storytellers to Watch, her work has been a 3x finalist and 2025 winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the oldest and largest international prize honoring women+ playwrights. Their work has been developed and workshopped broadly including: at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, The New Harmony Project and Breaking The Binary Theatre Festival. Her work has been produced in theaters across the country in NYC (Off-Broadway), Atlanta (Alliance Theatre), Los Angeles (Geffen Playhouse), DC (UPC. 2027, Wooly Mammoth) and beyond. They are currently the inaugural Artist in Residence at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre and part of National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwright Residency.