Venus Theatre Company
committed to setting flight to the voices of women and children with theatre for a lifetime since 2001.
The Venus Theatre Play Shack
21 C Street
Laurel, MD 20707
ph: 202.236.4078
Venus Theatre is among the longest running women's theaters in the world.
Venus announces our 2015 season!
Feral 15: Feminist Fables (no strings attatched)
The box office is open and plays begin in March!
"Legitimate Off-Off Broadway"
-Washington Post
Venus Theatre Docu-Photography as we made our way to 50.
Feral 15: Feminist Fables
(no strings attached)
God Don' Like Ugly
by Doc Andersen Bloomfield (UK)
March 19Esme loves to sing and dance, dressing up in costumes, performing her ‘Golden Oldies’ to an imaginary audience. Today is Esme’s 36th birthday and because she has the mental age of a seven year old, she still lives with her tired and overwhelmed mother, Bessie, (a TAROT READER) in a dilapidated old crumbling home, SET in the rural South. Esme has a twin, not seen for quite awhile. Heartsick Bessie yearns for the twin, who’s ‘the okay one’ to come home to celebrate. This will never happen and only Esme seems to understand this. A stranger, on the run, named SJ, ENTERS their small lives, seeking to hide from a violent partner. She encounters the extraordinary, both in the human beings who live there as well as their magic of simply ‘being’.
A reaslistic (but magical) tragicomedy SET in AMERICA'S rural south, with intermittent Physical Theatre Scenes.
Doc currently writes with Oxford Playwrights and for Oxford Actors’ Network. Other past WORKS in progress/rehearsed readings include: Women’s ‘Theatre Workshop (Oval; Finborough; Drill Hall; Soho in London)
Doc is an American who has lived and written in Oxford, England, the last 28 years. She was one of the FOUNDING mothers of Women In Theatre, in Los Angeles.
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Dry Bones Rising
by Cecelia Raker (BOSTON)
May 21 on only one point: they gotta find help. But he wants to embark on a journey to a safer place, and she wants to stay, calling upon an ancient POWER to kiss a protective golem to life. When creating a Mud Man doesn't turn out the way she'd hoped, will they two human survivors be able to make a new world together, or will they reap the dire consequences of playing pretend God?Cecelia Raker is a playwright, director, and dramaturg currently at work on a cycle of movement-and-text pieces based on fairytales, a few more traditional plays, and SHIVER, a collaborative devised piece with the Project:Project collective in BOSTON. Her play SKINWALKING was developed at the 2014 Great Plains Theater Conference Playlab, and had a sold-out run in 2011 at the ART’s Loeb Experimental Theater. Her new piece DRY BONES RISING was read in December 2014 with Argos Productions, and her play LILACS IN NOVEMBER was workshopped in the 2010 Harvard Playwrights’ Festival. Her short play WEBBED HANDS was produced by Imaginary Beasts at the 2014 Boston Theater Marathon. Her work has also been developed/performed at The One-Minute Play Festival, the Exit 7 New Short Play Contest, Bostonia Bohemia, Company One, and a variety of other venues. Cecelia is a member of Project:Project, the Grub Street Writers’ Workshop, and One Bird Productions. She holds an AB in Theater Arts from HARVARD COLLEGE. www.ceceliaraker.tumblr.com
for Girls---
Witches Vanish
by Claudia Barnett (TN)
August 20 who disappear, whether by choice or force. Inspired by HISTORY, astronomy, and Shakespeare, Witches Vanish examines the nature of change and the value of human life. Finalist Festival (New York), the Great Plains Theatre Conference (Omaha), the Women’s Work Festival (St. John’s, Newfoundland), and the Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival (Washington, DC). She teaches playwriting at Middle Tennessee State UNIVERSITY and is the AUTHOR of I Love You Terribly: Six PLAYS (2012) and No. 731 Degraw-street, Brooklyn, or Emily Dickinson’s Sister (forthcoming, fall 2015), both from Carnegie Mellon University Press.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Raw
by Amy Bernstein (Baltimore)
October 22 is under siege: by Caroline, the documentary film-making, grudge-holding heifer she allows into her house to bear witness, for a fee; by Harriet, her inheritance-deprived sister; and by the bacteria lurking in the raw milk lying in wait for daughter Jamie. Woe descends on Red Robin Farm.Amy Bernstein’s short comedies and dramas have been read and produced in New York City; Washington, DC; Baltimore, MD; Lexington, KY and elsewhere. She has twice been selected for readings at the Baltimore Playwrights Festival and was chosen TO PARTICIPATE in intensive playwright workshops at the 2011 Association of Theaters for Higher EDUCATION (ATHE) Conference and at the Inkwell Theater in D.C. in 2012. A one-minute play was selected for production and videotaping in an annual short-play festival produced in Leeds, England. Amy is also a regular contributor of short dramatic WORK to the annual Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival and FREE Fall Baltimore.
Venus Theatre is committed to setting flight to the voices of women and children with theatre for a lifetime. Ten years of producing in temporary rental spaces in DC, NYC, Baltimore, and Pennsylvania has led to a new vision. In April of 2006 Venus secured a storefront in Laurel, MD. The Venus Theatre Play Shack is home to the Company today.
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The Venus Theatre Play Shack
21 C Street
Laurel, MD 20707
ph: 202.236.4078
