Jennifer Chambers News

On Thursday, June 27th The Kilroys celebrated the drop of THE LIST 2019 at Here & Now in Los Angeles. The event celebrated the 13 founding members of the organization and the 33 plays featured on THE LIST 2019.

On Thursday, June 27th The Kilroys celebrated the drop of THE LIST 2019 at WP Theater in New York City. The event celebrated the 13 founding members of the organization and the 33 plays featured on THE LIST 2019. 

The Kilroys, an independent, Los Angeles- and New York City-based playwrightdirectorproducer collective, announced their 5th annual THE LIST 2019 of industry-recommended new plays. THE LIST serves as a resource for producers and theaters committed to gender parity. The Kilroys have partnered with the New Play Exchange to provide interested parties fast and easy access to THE LIST plays. 

Barrington Stage Company announced today casting for its 25th Anniversary season. Casting will include Elijah Alexander, Mara Davi, Carson Elrod, Joel de la Fuente, Mykal Kilgore, Alyse Alan Louis, Kate MacCluggage, Jeff McCarthy, Julia Murney, Jonathan Raviv, Debra Jo Rupp and more. Full casting for the 25th Anniversary season is below.

The League of Professional Theatre Women (Kelli Lynn Harrison and Catherine Porter, Co-Presidents), an organization which has been leading the gender parity conversation and championing women in the professional theatre for over 35 years, will present the 2019 Theatre Women Awards at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012) on Monday, March 25 at 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm). For more information on the 2019 TheatreWomen Awards, and to purchase tickets, please visit www.theatrewomen.org.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC), the award-winning theatre in the Berkshires (Pittsfield, MA) under the leadership of Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, announced today its 25th Anniversary season, which will feature four world premieres, including the new musical from BSC's Musical Theatre Lab, Fall Springs by Niko Tsakalakos and Peter Sinn Nachtrieb; America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of The American Negro by Stacey Rose; American Underground by Brent Askari; and Ragtag Theatre's Hansel and Gretel, commissioned by BSC.

The League of Professional Theatre Women (Kelli Lynn Harrison and Catherine Porter, Co-Presidents), an organization which has been leading the gender parity conversation and championing women in the professional theatre for over 35 years, will present the 2019 Theatre Women Awards at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (18 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012) on Monday, March 25 at 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm). For more information on the 2019 Theatre Women Awards, and to purchase tickets, please visit www.theatrewomen.org. 

McCarter Theatre Center has announced three new works as part of its 2019 Spotlight New Play Festival. These intimate play readings showcase the core of the McCarter LAB's mission to support new voices with creative insight from dramaturgs, directors, and actors to help guide and shape their plays. Additionally, real-time reactions of audience members play an active role in the creative development process, assisting playwrights in the elevation of their artistic endeavors.

We have a lot of new plays on Broadway this season. Thirteen are currently set. There are also seven play revivals. Two of the new plays were written by women--both produced by non-profits and both already closed. Not one revival is of a play written by a woman.

The Old Globe today announced it will present the sixth annual Powers New Voices Festival, a weekend of readings of new American plays by some of the most exciting voices writing for the American theatre today, playing January 18-20, 2019.

New year, new Kilroys! For the past five years The Kilroys, an LA-based collective of playwrights/producers continuing the fight to achieve gender balance in the American theater, have been advocating for equal representation on our American stages, and have released an annual list of under-produced plays by women, trans, and non-binary writers. Despite some measurable progress, we still have a long way to go before we strike that balance. So, as we approach 2019, we are beyond thrilled to introduce a fresh new gang of fearless badass leaders. These women will seize our reins and continue the fight for equality, creating random acts of disruption along the way, while the OG Kilroys will serve as an advisory board supporting the current class. 

At an SRO ceremony held at Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsfield, the Board of the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association presented the Berkshire Theatre Awards on the evening of Monday, November 12, 2018. This was the third year the awards have been presented to honor and celebrate the excellence and diversity of theatre in the greater Berkshire region.

This week the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association is voting on the final award list in preparation for the Third Annual Berkshire Theatre Awards. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony to be held on Monday, November 12 at 7 pm at the Zion Lutheran Church, 74 First Street (Route 7) in Pittsfield, MA.

The first of three Monday evening new-play readings at South Coast Repertory for the 2018-19 season will be Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector. The NewSCRipts reading on Monday, Oct. 22, at 7:30 p.m., is directed by Jennifer Chambers. Tickets are available at www.scr.org.

Six new plays by award-winning, mid-career writers will have readings on Sept. 29 and Sept. 30 as part of the new Lab Results: The Antaeus Playwrights Lab Festival series at Antaeus Theatre Company.

When Della and her Goddaughter Jen have a truthful heart-to-heart about making the decision whether or not the wedding cake will be baked at Della's Sweets, even though you may need a Kleenex, listen closely to the truthful honesty with which the lines are delivered by these two actresses dedicated to showing audiences that neither side is right nor wrong, just diametrically opposed and correct to each of them. And I am not revealing whether or not Della bakes the cake or even attends the wedding as the truth is revealed during the final moments of the play when THE CAKE proves that love is always the key ingredient in life.

Bekah Brunstetter's THE CAKE will once again be served on a Los Angeles stage. Helmed by its original world premiere director Jennifer Chambers, THE CAKE has already begun previews, with opening night September 20, 2018 at the Geffen Theatre. A topic still making headlines, a baker's refusal to bake a cake gets uncomfortably personal when the cake's for family. We had the chance to chat with Jennifer on the secret ingredients of Bekah's simply delicious concoction.

Six new plays by award-winning, mid-career writers will have readings on Sept. 29 and Sept. 30 as part of the new Lab Results: The Antaeus Playwrights Lab Festival series at Antaeus Theatre Company.

The 2018 Stage Raw Theater Awards celebrate excellence on the Los Angeles stages in venues of 99-seats or under. This fourth annual edition included productions that opened between January 1, 2017 and May 31, 2018. Stage Raw is a community funded professional journalism website that was created in response to the decline of arts coverage in local mainstream and alternative media.The Awards ceremony was held Monday night, August 20, at Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles, hosted by Coeurage Theatre Company, and co-directed by Jer Adrianne Lelliott, Thaddeus Shafer and Lauren Ludwig. Winners notated in red below.

Geffen Playhouse today announced the full cast for its encore production of The Cake, directed by Jennifer Chambers (Bed, Better), who also directed the world premiere for the Echo Theater Company in 2017. The cast features Morrison Keddie (Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream) as George, Shannon Lucio (The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, American Horror Story) as Jen, Rod McLachlan (What the Butler Saw, Wait Until Dark) as Tim, Carolyn Ratteray (The Imaginary Invalid, Pygmalion) as Macy and Debra Jo Rupp (That 70's Show, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) as Della, reprising the role for which she received an LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Lead Actress in a Play.