Z Space

Z Space presents:

Problematic Play Festival

October 2 & 4, 2019 at Z Below

Three Fat Sisters - by Morgan Gould - Wednesday, October 2, 7:30pm
Mediocre Heterosexual Sex - by Madison Wetzell - Friday, October 4, 7:30pm

Z Space is proud (and still, a little nervous) to present the second annual Problematic Play Festival.

The staged reading series will present two ambitious and provocative plays that have been deemed “problematic” by certain theater industry gatekeepers (producers, artistic directors, literary managers, funders) due to content believed to be too offensive or controversial to produce. Each staged reading will include discussions facilitated by Radhika Rao with the playwrights, actors, directors, and audience.

Throughout this process and festival, we are asking two key questions: What makes a play too “problematic” to produce? What do each of us (individually as audiences, artists, and producers) mean by “problematic”?

In 2018, the inaugural year of the festival, local dramaturg Maddie Gaw covered the event in this HowlRound article: What’s Problematic, the Play or the Process?.

In 2019, the second year of the festival, we are specifically interested in exploring comedy in theater. With recent governmental policies and practices that threaten marginalized groups, many theaters have trended towards work that responds, corrects, heals, or educates, “positioning themselves as first responders in a time of political and humanitarian upheaval (Washington Post).” Other theaters have advocated for absurdist and comedic work, arguing that “what we really need to do is take a step back to understand what is going on in the whole of society – and in ourselves. And it is theatrical comedy that opens up this way of thinking (Theatre Times).” How does comedy fit into this social justice movement? Who is allowed to laugh at something within the current political climate? Is there a privilege in the ability to joke? Can the act of joking make something more or less “problematic”?  

Three Fat Sisters

Written and directed by Morgan Gould
Dramaturgy by Vanessa Flores
Wednesday October 2, 7:30pm

Cast: Laura Jane Bailey*, Martha Brigham*, J Jha, Katrina McGraw*, and Weston Scott.

*member AEA

Ginger and Margot and Anna are three fat sisters. Except now, perhaps, Anna might have recently discovered she is not fat. This savage revenge comedy written by an actual fat person asks, "how many calories are in a pint of my sister's blood?" and "Are there any cheetos left?"

Morgan Gould Bio

Morgan Gould is an NYC based writer/ director. The only play she can seem to get produced is I WANNA FUCKING TEAR YOU APART (Beatrice Terry/ Drama League Award Winner) which had its world premiere at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC in February 2017 (with Morgan directing) and was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play. The Chicago production received a 2019 Dramatists Guild Writers Alliance Award. Her other plays that no one will do include ALL THE STUPID BITCHES (O'Neill Finalist, Workshop - Playwrights Center), THREE FAT SISTERS (Cutting Ball Variety Pack, Sundance Lab Finalist), and NICOLE CLARK IS HAVING A BABY. Morgan is a 2019 graduate of the Juilliard playwriting program, a Resident playwright at New Dramatists, a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Yaddo Colony Resident, and an alumnus of the Dramatists Guild Fund Playwriting Fellowship, The Women's Project Lab, the Civilians R+D Group, Target Margin Lab, Lincoln Center Director's Lab, SDC Observership Program, the BAX AIR Residency, Playwrights Horizons Directing Residency and New Georges Writer/ Director Lab. Morgan holds a B.A. in Directing from Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and a M.F.A. in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. 

Mediocre Heterosexual Sex

Written by Madison Wetzell
Directed by Maya Herbsman
Friday, October 4, 7:30pm

Cast: Kieran Beccia, Lisa Hori-Garcia*, May Ramos, Jesse Vaughn, and Shaina Wagner.

*member AEA

Four hours after getting dumped by her girlfriend, Erin takes to Tinder to try men for the first time. She ends up meeting Aaron, who is only too happy to indulge her submissive fantasies. To make sense of her deeply ambivalent experience, Erin seeks the advice of Violet and Jeremy, a couple in a dominant/submissive relationship and the only straight people she knows. A vexed exploration of gender, power, and kink.

Madison Wetzell Bio

Madison Wetzell is a playwright based in the East Bay. Her past work includes her translation/adaptation of The Bacchae, which premiered in Tilden Park, and Two Coins for the Ferryman, co-written with Akaina Ghosh, which premiered at Z Below as part of 3Girls Theater’s Innovators Series. Her short play The Official Unicorn Hunters' Guide was the winner of Round 2 of ShortLived VIII at PianoFight. She is a member of PlayGround's 2019-2020 writers pool.

The Process and Vision

The idea of the festival originated from discussions between Rose Oser and playwright Jake Jeppson about the tension that exists in the American Theater between wanting to create meaningful work that speaks to our society’s truths while also being wary of material that offends our sensibilities as practitioners and audience members alike.

To unpack that tension, we began asking what it means for work to be “problematic.” It turns out the answer isn’t an easy one to find. So then we had a second idea: what if we gathered plays that had been deemed “problematic” by the theater community and investigated what it was about those plays that caused gatekeepers to turn away from them in favor of other material.

Of course, we have faced our own complications throughout the process as we encounter the opportunities and challenges of producing “problematic” works. We are pushing ourselves as an organization while acknowledging the limitations of our company and our responsibilities as a non-profit theater. This festival is as much a scrutiny of our own systems as it is of any other.

The 2019 steering committee: Abigail Pañares, Radhika Rao, Rebecca Struch, Stephanie Wilborn, Jake Jeppson, Rose Oser, and Shafer Mazow.

If you have questions about the festival, please email ppf@zspace.org.

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