CENTENARY STAGE COMPANY ANNOUNCES 2025 WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS SERIES FINALISTS SLATED FOR READINGS IN APRIL, STARTING THIS WEEK
Centenary Stage Company’s Women Playwrights Series returns this spring with three brand-new play readings.
WHEN: Wednesdays throughout April at 7:00 pm
WHERE: the Sitnik and Kutz Theatres of the Lackland Performing Arts Center at 715 Grand Avenue, Hackettstown, NJ on the campus of Centenary University.
ADMISSION: The Women Playwright Series readings are free to attend with donations welcome, advanced reservations have a $7.00 fee, which includes all fees. And each reading will be immediately followed by a talkback with the playwright, director, and actors.
For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit centenarystageco.org or call the Centenary Stage Company box office at (908) 979-0900.
The 2024-25 Women Playwrights Series selections include:
Lessons From A Jellyfish by Harriet Heydemann – Medical professionals don't know how to treat her. School teachers are at a loss. Even her mother can't see beyond her disabilities. Ariela is unsentimental, often hilarious, and at times, difficult, especially with her mother. Through faith, art, wit, a few psychic readings for good measure, and a computerized voice, Ariela becomes an artist and the master of comebacks, challenging those who love her to rethink what it means to create and connect. This reading will take place on Wednesday, April 9, at 7:00 PM.
Harriet Heydemann is a writer, playwright, poet, and student. She recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Her work is motivated by family histories and personal experiences. Her stories have appeared in Fourth River, Delacorte Review, Hippocampus, Brain, Child Magazine, and others. You can find her poetry in Driftwood Press and Intima. Her work was selected as a Semifinalist in the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. She is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Community of Writers. She is presently working on a play and a novel. She lives with her husband, Gary, and their incorrigible dog, Rico, in a sleepy suburb of San Francisco.
Crime Fiction by Deidre Girard – Maddie is making the transition from Crime Beat Journalist to Crime Fiction writer andis thrilled when best-selling author Heather Bowman takes her under her wing and invites her to join a Mystery Writers group. But when a stalker begins to prey on Heather, the lines between fact and fiction and between friend and foe start to fray. This reading will take place on Wednesday, April 16, at 7:00 PM.
Deirdre Girard, who earned her MFA in playwriting at Boston University, has had dozens of award-winning short plays produced worldwide, and several full-length productions. Her work, often in the mystery/horror genre, has been published by Applause Books, Smith & Kraus, Next Stage Press and Heuer Publishing. Deirdre's short horror piece The Night Visitor was made into a film by award winning international filmmaker Prataya Saha. Most recently, her play A Year to Grieve was selected for Smith & Kraus’s Best 10-Minute Plays of 2025, her collection Short & Scary II was produced by The Actors Studio of Newburyport (MA) in October of 2024, and an evening of female-centric shorts, Women at the Center, was produced by Chapel Players (DE) in November 2024. Her new full-length play Crime Fiction is a current Finalist in the ScreenCraft 2025 stage play competition.
The Mighty Four by Catherine Butterfield – The lives of a prominent liberal couple are upended when their son commits a horrific act of racial violence that is caught on video and goes viral. To their horror, the boy is embraced and made famous by the far right. How far do you go to protect a child whose actions you abhor? This reading will take place on Wednesday, April 23, at 7:00 PM.
Catherine Butterfield is a playwright, novelist, TV and screenplay writer whose work has been performed in New York, regional theatre, and internationally in London and Barcelona. She is the recipient of two Telly awards for her short films, the George E. Oppenheimer/New York Newsday Award for Best New Play ("Joined at the Head"), the Kennedy Center-American Express award for Outstanding Promise as a Playwright, the Kaufman & Hart Award for Best New American Comedy ("The Sleeper"), and the Davie Award for Best New Play in Regional Theatre ("Life in the Trees"). Her play "Joined at the Head" was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her husband, writer/director Ron West.
Centenary Stage Company’s Women Playwrights Series since 1992 has featured the work of more than 80 emerging playwrights from around the country and helped to develop their work. The program has also taken over 20 plays to full production from the series, including more than 21 World Premieres. Led by program director Catherine Rust, for over 30 years, and now helmed by Mikaela Kafka, the Women Playwrights Series offers playwrights the opportunity to work with professional actors and directors in a workshop rehearsal process, and to hear their work in front of a live audience – a critical part of the development process. The program has provided a working platform for the under-served voices of women writing the theatre. Lively talkbacks with the playwright and cast follow each presentation, and one play is selected each year as the winner of the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Award and receives a full production in the following main-stage season with CSC.
For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit centenarystageco.org or call the Centenary Stage Company box office at (908) 979-0900. The Centenary Stage Company box office is open Monday through Friday from 1:00-5:00 pm and two hours prior to performances. The box office is located in the Lackland Performing Arts Center on the campus of Centenary University at 715 Grand Ave. Hackettstown, NJ. Centenary Stage Company can also be found across social media platforms; Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. Like and follow to receive the latest in CSC news and special offers.
The 2024-25 Season of Performing Arts events at the Centenary Stage Company is made possible through the generous support of the NJ State Council on the Arts, the Shubert Foundation, the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, the Sandra Kupperman Foundation, the John and Margaret Post Foundation, The New Jersey Theatre Alliance, the CSC corporate sponsors, including Platinum Season Sponsor the House of the Good Shepherd, Silver Sponsors, Heath Village, Visions Federal Credit Union, Explore Warren, and Fulton Bank, and Centenary Stage Company members and supporters.