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SF Chronicle lists “Witch Hunt” among 2019’s defining moments in Bay Area theater

Posted on December 15, 2019
by Audrey Ronningen
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Lily Janiak cites Witch Hunt as a production that changed Bay Area theatre in 2019, listed alongside shows from companies including Berkeley Rep, Shotgun Players, and San Francisco Playhouse.

The article describes Witch Hunt as part of a conscious shift in Bay Area productions’ approach to historical narratives. Numerous companies, including Those Women Productions reckoned with history’s tendency to be dictated solely by those in power, instead focusing on the historical perspectives that have, as a result, been erased.

“The way we perceive ourselves and others in the world comes in large part from the histories we’ve absorbed, but history’s victors have traditionally shaped those stories to justify their positions. Local theater this year has worked to right that imbalance, mapping the obscure and putting the marginalized at the center of historical narratives.”

Renee Rogoff as Tituba, in Witch Hunt

“In Those Women Productions’ “Witch Hunt,” the white girls and women of the Salem witch trials took a backseat to Tituba, the Native American woman who was the first accused of witchcraft. A mother to a hero became the protagonist in “Mother of the Maid,” at Marin Theatre Company, and Asian and Asian American stories got told from within in Magic Theatre’s “The Chinese Lady,” and the Marsh’s “The Box Without a Bottom,” instead of from a white gaze, with its tendency to whitewash or exoticize.”

Read the complete story: Moments that defined Bay Area theater in 2019

News

The Daily Californian: “An Ode to Isolation: Those Women Productions’ ‘HINDSIGHT 2020’”

Posted on June 4, 2021
by Audrey Ronningen
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In their review of Those Women Productions’ latest co-production, Hindsight 2020, The Daily Californian writes that this virtual piece “encapsulates the universal experiences of longing, disconnection and endurance that 2020 produced in us all, from baking bread to working at home to illness — the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Taking place entirely over Zoom, Hindsight 2020 ran from April 9th-17th and provided viewers with a unique multimedia experience that encapsulated many different sides of the past year: “much like 2020, the storyline has no singular beginning, end or objective. Rather, each scene speaks to a different aspect of the universal 2020 experience.”

“A significant theme of “HINDSIGHT 2020” is the artists’ own frustrations with isolation, both from loved ones and from an audience,” writes Nathalie Grogan. “They ask, ‘What are these boxes staring back at me, is this theater?’ and protest, ‘I want back on the stage right now!’ With no stage to return to, however, the play instead toys with the imagination of the stage, the screen and the audience. Cardboard cutouts dance across a miniature, cardboard theater while actors dance over projected scenes.'” Other scenes take place during recorded Zoom meetings, capturing the awkwardness and humor of adapting to a pandemic, while the ending section acknowledges the widespread loss that has defined this time: “Actors reach for each other across screens, retell the death of family members and long for a love that could have been. These scenes are summarized in the line: ‘It’s hard to say goodbye when you can’t give someone a hug.'”

“HINDSIGHT 2020” is a testament to the incredible strength and endurance of people, to hold out hope, to adapt, to find new communities and to find new mediums of creative expression. A true and honest ode to 2020, “HINDSIGHT 2020” looks back upon a year of struggle and encapsulates it with undeniable skill and refreshing creativity. “

-Nathalie Grogan, The Daily Californian

News

Santa Cruz Sentinel: “Diverse group creates time capsule in ‘Hindsight 2020’ production”

Posted on April 14, 2021
by Audrey Ronningen
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In their recent feature on Hindsight 2020, the Santa Cruz Sentinel describes the virtual production as “a virtual time capsule of last year – clearly a year that defies categorization.” Hindsight 2020, which runs online from April 9th-April 17th, is a co-production from Those Women Production, and our first venture working with co-collaborators Rebecca Haley Clark and Cree Noble.

Due to its virtual format, Hindsight 2020 was able to feature artists from across the globe, who used their experience of 2020 to create unique performance pieces spanning a variety of disciplines. As Joanne Engelhardt writes, “Clark explains that 2020’s global pandemic, as well as the worldwide Black Lives Matter movement, the economic downturn, wildfires, and social and political unrest all combined to form the catalyst for the creation of this production.”

“‘As artists we wanted to provide a space for contemplation and healing, and we realized it could be found by repeating the stories we’ve been telling one another over the past year.'”

-Rebecca Haley Clark, from Joanne Engelhartd’s piece in the Santa Cruz Sentinel

“Some of those stories are major and traumatic like isolation, the economic crisis, the U.S. election, and the advent of the vaccine. Others are small, yet they, too, have meaning: Learning to make a sourdough starter, plant parenting, discovering how to look and speak on a Zoom call.”

-Joanne Engelhartd, the Santa Cruz Sentinel
News

“Hindsight 2020” on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show

Posted on April 14, 2021
by Audrey Ronningen
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Our co-producers for Hindsight 2020, Rebecca Haley Clark and Cree Noble appeared on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show on April 7th to promote this virtual production, which airs only from April 9th-April 17th. Wanda’s Picks is a Black arts and culture site, “exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression.” Host Wanda Sabir writes of the show, “It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion.”

To listen to the segment on Hindsight 2020, please go to the 1hr35min mark of the recording.

“It was really important for us to include some part of reflection, and not prescribe for people what they took away from it…but also looking back to the past to see how other generations have dealt with major health crises like these.”

-Rebecca Haley Clark, on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show
News

48 Hills: “Global artists tackle an epic year in ‘Hindsight 2020’”

Posted on April 13, 2021
by Audrey Ronningen
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In 48 Hills‘s feature on Hindsight 2020, Emily Wilson describes Those Women Productions’ latest virtual co-production as “a ‘devised multimedia time capsule’ [that] addresses what we’ll take with us from all of this.” This show, which runs online from April 9th-April 17th, is in partnership with co-collaborators Rebecca Haley Clark and Cree Noble. Clark and Noble approached the show with goal of reflecting on the year of 2020 – which included the start of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, wildfires in California and abroad, and protests around the world in solidarity with Black Lives Matter – and, ultimately, answering the question “What parts of 2020 will you leave behind or bring with you?”

With assistant director Cree Noble, Clark put together a list of prompts as the basis for show including: How did you find joy in 2020? What would like to leave behind? What would you tell someone from a different generation about this time?

-Emily Wilson, 48 Hills
Rebecca Haley Clark, one of our co-collaborators for Hindsight 2020.
News

East Bay Express: “Hindsight 2020 acts out the despair and the hope”

Posted on April 13, 2021
by Audrey Ronningen
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In their “Focus on Theater” coverage of Hindsight 2020, East Bay Express writer Janis Hashe comments, “Except for the very young, no one who lived through 2020 is likely to forget it.” She describes the show, a co-production by Those Women Productions and collaborators Rebecca Haley Clark and Cree Noble that reflects on the titular “‘year that defies all categorization.'” In its final format, Hindsight 2020 is a virtual, hybrid piece including pre-recorded segments, featuring artists from all over the globe performing in disciplines that include, but also go beyond traditional theater.

“‘As I started to bring more people into the piece—diverse, international voices—they reflected on their own experiences of 2020,’ Clark said. Those experiences included the more than 60 countries’ protests in support of BLM, the pandemic, economic crises, wildfires and a hugely consequential election.”

– Janis Hashe, East Bay Express

“Hindsight 2020 audiences can take away the message ‘not to give up hope,’ Clark said. ‘And to be open to the possibility that a new world is on the horizon. We are just starting the journey.'”

-Janis Hashe, East Bay Express
News

Theatrius: “‘LADY SCRIBBLERS’ SCRIPT RIBALD RESTORATION COMEDY, AT CUSTOM MADE, S.F.”

Posted on February 15, 2021
by Audrey Ronningen
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In Theatrius‘s review of “The Lady Scribblers,” writer Lynne Stevens notes, “My friend and I thoroughly enjoyed “The Lady Scribblers” and I think any woman who has felt inhibited in her work will enjoy the comedy, too.”

The review praises the Neo-Restoration farce, co-produced by Custom Made Theatre Company and Those Women Productions, for its ability to seamlessly capture the conventions of the genre, and its fitting jabs “at the expense of over-bearing theater owners and vacillating men in power.”

“The Lady Scribblers,” directed by Tracy Ward and written by Berkeley playwright Michaela Goldhaber, made its world premiere at Custom Made Theatre Company in SF and enjoyed a successful partial March 2020 run, prior to a forced closure due to COVID-19. The comedy tells the story of Catherine Trotters, Delarivier “Delia” Manley, and Mary Pix, three aspiring female playwrights in late 17th century England who continue the legacy of Aphra Behn – their country’s first working female playwright – following her death. As they work to ensure their own plays reach the stage, they’re joined by a group of disgruntled actors, and together the group hatches a plot to combat the overblown, spectacle-based United Company theatre group, led by the domineering Christopher Rich.

“Catherine Trotters, Delarivier ‘Delia’ Manley, and Mary Pix were all successful female writers and playwrights during the Restoration of the monarchy.  Indeed, they paved the way for women to enter the theater world.”

Valerie Fachman, Oluchi Nwokocha, J.J. Van Name, Emily Stone. Photos by Jay Yamada

“How fitting to open ‘The Lady Scribblers’ on International Women’s Day. Women from Mexico to Pakistan are still marching in protest about their treatment by a world governed disastrously by men. Well worth a visit to see how this fresh comedy exercises newfound power.”

J.J. Van Name, Emma Curtin, and Oluchi Nwokocha

“The Lady Scribblers” by Michaela Goldhaber, directed by Tracy Ward, by The Custom Made Theatre, co-produced with Those Women Productions, San Francisco, through Sunday, March 29, 2020.  Info: custommade.org

Cast:  Annika Bergman, Emma Curtin, Valerie Fachman, Michael Houston, Oluchi Nwokocha, Dave Sikula, Emily Stone, J.J. Van Name, and Ted Zoldan.

Read the full review here.

News

The Mercury News: “Custom Made Theatre in SF debuts feminist farce ‘Lady Scribblers’”

Posted on February 15, 2021
by Audrey Ronningen
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In their preview of “The Lady Scribblers,” The Mercury News notes its significance in exploring the legacy of England’s first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn, and the women who continued her legacy as playwrights in the male-dominated London theatre scene. With a world premiere of March 2020, this Restoration-era comedy is our most recent full production to debut pre-COVID-19, and our first co-production with San Francisco-based Custom Made Theatre Company.

“Aphra Behn was famously the first woman to earn a living as a playwright in England, starting in 1670, just 10 years after women were first allowed to act on-stage in that country. But who would even be allowed to follow in her footsteps?

Local playwright Michaela Goldhaber explores that very question in “The Lady Scribblers,”  her new farce making its premiere at San Francisco’s Custom Made Theatre Co. in a co-production with Berkeley’s Those Women Productions.

A fight breaks out at Behn’s funeral in 1689 among other aspiring women playwrights and producers who have had quite enough of these newfangled new voices and want to stick to the gents from here on out.”

Directed by Tracy Ward and written by Michaela Goldhaber, “The Lady Scribblers” had a successful partial run at Custom Made, before being forced to close early due to COVID-19 restrictions.

J.J. Van Name and Oluchi Nwokocha

Read the full preview here.

News

Those Women in the SF Chronicle: “Tituba was a slave, then a witch, then a caricature. Now, in ‘Witch Hunt,’ she’s a human.”

Posted on December 8, 2019
by Audrey Ronningen
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Lily Janiak spoke with the team of Witch Hunt, including director Elizabeth Vega, playwright Carol S. Lashof, and actor Renee Rogoff for a Datebook feature in the SF Chronicle.

In the article, Lashof describes how the most well-known fictional account of the Salem witch panic, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, served as a “‘source of provocation'” rather than inspiration for Witch Hunt, which explores that same era in American history. Through research, Lashof learned that Miller’s classic admonishment of the McCarthy era grossly misrepresented many of its female characters. From there, she was inspired to tell the story of one of these real-life figures in our nation’s history: Tituba, an Indigenous woman from South America and slave to the Parrish family, who provided the first false confession to witchcraft. Further, Witch Hunt reveals additional layers to the era as one defined by the Purtian community’s rampant distrust and fear of Indians – putting people like Tituba and her husband John at increased risk for persecution and scapegoating.

Carol S. Lashof, playwright of Witch Hunt.

In bringing Tituba’s story to the stage through Witch Hunt, Lashof, Vega, and Rogoff felt a special responsibility to present her life in a respectful and honest way, as past accounts have consistently failed to do so. For many Americans, the only knowledge they have of Tituba is from The Crucible, which portrays her, as Vega states, as a “‘1950s mammy'” who practiced black magic and intentionally led Puritan girls astray. Instead, “‘Witch Hunt’ gives Tituba hopes and fears, virtues and flaws. It gives her goals, and it makes her strategic in pursuit of them. In short, it makes Tituba a person,” writes Janiak.

Actors Steven Flores, as John, Tituba’s husband, and Renee Rogoff, as Tituba, in Witch Hunt.
News

Witch Hunt Playwright Carol S. Lashof Interviewed in 48Hills

Posted on November 25, 2019
by Audrey Ronningen
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Carol S. Lashof, cofounder of Those Women Productions and the playwright behind Witch Hunt, speaks with Emily Wilson of Bay Area publication 48Hills. They discuss the history of Those Women Productions, as well as Lashof’s process of researching and writing Witch Hunt, a new drama that examines the Salem witch panic from the perspectives of the real-life figures whose stories have been historically overlooked.

“’We were frustrated trying to get our stories made, so rather than rant and rave we started making our own theater.’”

“‘We keep talking about witch hunts, and every time I pick up the paper, the president is complaining about witch hunts, and we’re arguing about whose truths get to be heard,” Lashof said. “Then in a deeper way the United States government and some people living here are demonizing folks they think don’t belong. Tituba, even though she’d been Christianized and assimilated, would never be accepted into Christian culture and there are clear parallels to what’s happening now with immigrants.’” 

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In the Press

The press has a few things to say about Those Women:

Lily Janiak of the SF Chronicle, in a Datebook feature on Witch Hunt: “‘Witch Hunt’ gives Tituba hopes and fears, virtues and flaws. It gives her goals, and it makes her strategic in pursuit of them. In short, it makes Tituba a person.”

“‘Witch Hunt’ is an important and timely production,” writes Jordan Freed in Theatrius. 

Carol S. Lashof on the founding of Those Women Productions and the process of writing Witch Hunt, in the magazine 48Hills: “’We were frustrated trying to get our stories made, so rather than rant and rave we started making our own theater.’”

Fritz Mad’Laine writes of Witch Hunt in Theatrius: “The question of how to tell an unrecorded story plagues artists and historians alike. At Salem’s notorious trials, Tituba was the first to confess to practicing witchcraft—but we know little else about her. In Arthur Miller’s classic “The Crucible,” she appears as a victim of the pilgrims’ manipulation, but Lashof portrays her as the master of her own fate.”

“[Carol and I] have the same feeling that we want our audiences to take away. And her job is to convey that feeling on the page, and my job is to stand that feeling up and put it into action.” – Director Elizabeth Vega on collaboration with Lashof for Witch Hunt, in an interview with KPFA.

“You think about how much you think you know…I was mind-blown as to [Tituba’s] story’” – Witch Hunt actor Renee Rogoff on playing Tituba, interviewed on KPOO. 

“Most of what’s in popular [on the Salem witch paniic] is a gross distortion of the historical record,” says playwright Carol S. Lashof of her new play Witch Hunt, in an interview on KALW.

Lily Janiak lists UNQUESTIONED INTEGRITY as a Datebook Pick in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Those Women Productions offers a chance to account for how much or how little we’ve progressed since [since the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings] in 1991.”

“Marisela Treviño Orta conjures [a] supernatural border,” writes Carly Van Liere in Theatrius’s review of WOMAN ON FIRE.

Lily Janiak of the San Francisco Chronicle profiles our West Coast premiere of WOMAN ON FIRE and interviews playwright Marisela Treviño Orta: “Everything that happens along the border, it’s all connected.…The border is something that we have to grapple with as a society.”

“‘SHIFTING SPACES’ is so much more than an excellent feminist perspective on self image and determination…Characters transcend the stage, touchingly, as they search for and discover new identities,” writes Owen Brunell in Theatrius.

“Shakespeare would have been proud to see his work take on new life in MARGARET OF ANJOU,” says The Daily Californian.

Lily Janiak of the San Francisco Chronicle profiles Artistic Director Libby Vega: ““There can be a tendency to say, ‘If their stories were interesting, we would know them already.’” But, Vega continues, “just because the story’s not being told doesn’t mean the story’s not there.'”

About MARGARET OF ANJOU, Sam Hurwitt of The Mercury News writes: “the experiment of creating the illusion of a Shakespeare play all about Margaret is a success.”

Berkeleyside features Those Women Productions: “Carol Lashof and Libby Vega aren’t ashamed to reveal their infatuations with the “dead white guys” who populate the Western Canon.”

BEST OF THE EAST BAY: On the occasion of our first birthday in 2015, The East Bay Express named us “Best Year-Old Theater Company.”

Theater critic Sam Hurwitt described our production of IN PLAIN SIGHT as “a provocative mix of voices and perspectives on these classic tales that may inspire the viewer to look back at the originals with new eyes.”

The Dramatist Magazine lauds Those Women for joining the fight for gender parity, “turn[ing] patriarchy on its ear.”

Our production of DISCLOSURE was highlighted in the San Francisco Chronicle’s feature on the “hot SF scene” at PianoFight.

About our inaugural production in 2014, the Daily Californian wrote: “JUST DESERTS is offering something surprisingly new, and drawing a new audience. It is absolutely worth seeing, with or without a grasp of Greek mythology. This play works on multiple levels, and satisfies as diverse an audience as it attracts.”

JUST DESERTS was also an Editor’s Pick of Theatre Bay Area Magazine, where critic Lily Janiak wrote, “Lashof ingeniously channels both what many treasure about Greek mythology–its pitting of evenly matched foes in debates that dig deeper and deeper as combatants seem to be going in circles–while also skewering its misogyny.”


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