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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.

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In The Press

  • ESCAPE VELOCITY is recommended by Lily Janiak at SFGate to all those who want to “rocket away from sexism.”
  • “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 Berkeley-based Theater Company
PO Box 11393 | Piedmont, CA 94611

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