First Peek 2021 June 12-13 Live on Zoom!
The Playwrights Union invites you to our 11th annual reading series, featuring the brand new work of some of our member playwrights. Come participate in the process of play creation and join us online.
SATURDAY, JUNE 12th
12pm – SOPHIA HAYDEN DESERVES BETTER by Stephanie Alison Walker
In 1891 a brilliant 23-year-old woman won an architecture contest to design the Woman’s Building for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. What should have been the start to a flourishing career in architecture became career-ending. Throughout the two-year process of building The Woman’s Building, the architect quietly endured bullying, micromanaging and undermining until she finally spoke up. In a time when women were defined as physically and intellectually weaker than men, her concerns were not only not heard, but she was sent to a sanitarium. Diagnosed with melancholia due to overexertion. Silenced. After the fair, her building was destroyed and she never built another building again. Her name was Sophia Hayden and she deserves better.
3:30pm – CIRCLE FORWARD by Deb Hiett
When a 15-year-old boy claims to be the reincarnation of a writer’s late husband, she must come to terms with her version of the past.
6:30pm – LISTEN, A BLACK WOMAN IS SPEAKING by Marlow Wyatt
Just two days before she is to speak at a predominantly white conservative women’s luncheon, playwright Penelope Weintraub’s characters start to consume her and force her to perpetrate the most courageous crime a Black woman can commit-speak the truth.
SUNDAY, JUNE 13th
2:00pm – THE INTENSIVE by Abbey Fenbert
Is the Intensive a personal improvement program, or a cult? As participants discover after a day of relentless self-examination and no coffee, in the 21st century, there might not be much of a difference.
4:30pm – DEAD PEOPLE’S DISHES by Jennie Webb
A play about what we hang onto, what we get rid of and the weight of our losses, “Dead People’s Dishes” is made up of stories which move through Los Angeles history to look at how we manage to get through things, over and over again.
Readings free, donations welcome.
