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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.

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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.”


Those Women Productions
A Feminist Community Theater
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1700 Shattuck Ave.
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