Photo: Kamile Kuntz

Theaters across New Jersey have long brought productions by and about women to the contemporary stage. This Women’s History Month, join us in appreciating the work of creative women by listening to their stories—chronicles that continue to be meaningful today.

 

“[Alice Childress] wanted to write about people who were ordinary… to show them as worthy of full attention.”

– Dramaturg Arminda Thomas

For decades, Alice Childress‘s plays weren’t produced—but now her work is seeing a well-deserved renaissance. Originally an actress, she was frustrated at the lack of compelling roles for Black women. “She found that she wasn’t going to get to play the kind of roles that she wanted—so she could write them,” dramaturg Arminda Thomas explains, noting that legendary actor Sidney Poitier encouraged Alice Childress to do just that. Her 1955 satire Trouble in Mind was meant to go to Broadway—this would have made her the first Black woman to be produced there. But the producers kept pushing her to change the ending, and she pulled away, refusing to back down and make her plays more palatable for white audiences.

Having spent her career elevating the stories of Black women characters, her work remains timeless and relevant. As Director Brandon J. Dirden notes, “When a playwright is able to clearly articulate a truth about humanity, that will never get old.”

 

“Aishah Rahman speaks to voices that others would not listen to.”

– Pamela Bridgeforth, Managing Director, Camden Repertory Theater

In a stunningly immersive production, the Camden Repertory Theater produced Unfinished Women Cry In No Man’s Land While A Bird Dies In A Gilded Cage, an underground classic by Aishah Rahman (1936-2014). “She wrote a monster of a play—but amazing,” Director Chynah Michele smiles. The play tackles dual narratives, recounting not only on the death of jazz legend Charlie Parker at his mistress’s house, but also the lives of young women in a home for unwed mothers.

“Aishah Rahman wrote the play like it was a jazz song,” Founder and Artistic Director Desi P. Shelton notes. The Camden Repertory Theater thoroughly embraced this sentiment, bringing a small audience into an intimate space with a live jazz band, truly engaging the viewer with the stories onstage. Managing Director Pamela Bridgeforth tells us, “Our mission is about giving a platform, a meaningful platform, a professional platform, for women of color to have their voice heard. It’s essential.”

 

“We’re never turning back.”

– Gloria Steinem

At the McCarter Theatre, feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s story was brought to the stage by playwright Emily Mann in Gloria: A Life. Following each performance the audience took part in a roundtable with the actors, echoing the activist’s focus on talking circles. “You get the Gloria experience while a group, an ensemble of amazing women, are telling the story of all these years of feminism,” star Mary McDonnell tells us of the production.

Playwright Emily Mann urges us, “As Gloria says, you have to keep on pushing forward—but we’re not turning back now. We’ve come too far. We just have a long way to go.” After the McCarter premiere, Gloria: A Life went on to Broadway, and was honored with a Great Performances production on PBS.

At State of the Arts, we’re honored to share powerful stories of women on stage, here in New Jersey and beyond.