Ibsen’s Ghost: An Irresponsible Biographical Fantasy, a new play written by and starring Charles Busch (The Confession of Lily Dare) and directed by Carl Andress (The Confession of Lily Dare), is now playing at 59E59’s Theater A. The production officially opened last night, March 14 for a limited run through April 14. Check out opening night photos below!

Jim Parsons, Daryl Roth and Todd Spiewak

Jim Parsons

Hunter Foster

Jen Cody and Hunter Foster

Julie Halston and Charles Busch

Charles Busch

Julie Halston

Judy Kaye

Carl Andress, Charles Busch, Erin Daley and Shane D. Hudson

Carl Andress, Charles Busch

Desmond Dutcher and Christopher Borg

Kate Hampton

Jen Cody and Hunter Foster

Charles Busch and Stephen Breimer

Kate Hampton, Judy Kaye, Jen Cody, Carl Andress, Charles Busch, Jennifer Van Dyck, Christopher Borg, Shane D. Hudson and Erin Daley

Jamie DeRoy, Charles Busch

Jennifer Van Dyck

Christopher Borg

Thomas Gibson

Thomas Gibson and son James Parker Gibson

Jonathan Walker and Mary Beth Peil

Ted Snowden

James Hindman and Lynne Halliday

Doug Plaut

Wyatt Femler

Penny Fuller

Bruce Roberts and Jamie deRoy

Jim Kierstead

Jessica Blank and Mary Bacon

David Staller

Howard McGillin and Richard Samson

Howard McGillin

Executive Directors of Primary Stages- Shane D. Hudson and Erin Daley

Shoko Kambara (Scenic Design), Ien DeNio (Sound Design) and Gregory Gale (Costume Design)

Michelle Caiona

Kate Hamill

David Corren

David Bishop, Chris Halcombe and Desmond Dutcher

This is the play Ibsen never wrote – but with more laughs and a happy ending!

Shortly after the death of celebrated playwright Henrik Ibsen, his widow Suzannah receives word that her husband’s former protégée is in town peddling a libelous diary exposing the playwright’s misdeeds. Enlisting help from her sharp-witted stepmother, Ibsen’s long-lost illegitimate son, a servant girl with a wayward pelvis, and an enigmatic rodent exterminator known as the Rat Wife, Suzannah sets out to preserve her husband’s legacy by any means necessary.

Written by and starring the legendary Charles Busch, Ibsen’s Ghost tells a tall (and hilarious) tale of the toll a great man’s ghost takes on the women at the soul of his work.

Now playing at 59E59

We are thrilled to announce that Soho Rep is accepting applications for the 2024-2025 Writer Director Lab.

Instigated in 1998, the Writer Director Lab is an engine for the generation of new theatrical projects. The program—a beacon in the city for formally inventive work—supports four collaborative teams as they develop their projects over 12 months. The Lab culminates in work-in-progress presentations that are free and open to the public.

This signature Soho Rep program will again be co-chaired by theater makers William Burke and Jackie Sibblies Drury.

You can click HERE to access the application. You can also read an FAQ HERE. We will also hold an info session over Zoom on Wednesday, March 20th from 6-7PM (EST). Register for that HERE.

Please submit by Wednesday, April 10 at 5:00PM (EST) to be considered. We can’t wait to read your submissions!

Email lab@sohorep.org with any additional questions.

She really means it!  But the ride is not as bumpy as one might anticipate, courtesy of the stunning Jessica Sherr who is portraying the Queen of the Silver Screen. 

In a show she created entitled Bette Davis Ain’t for Sissies, Sherr portrays the famously formidable star butt never veers into a cliche, but rather—and here’s the magic part—she lets the audience see the vulnerable woman beneath the all too familiar posturing.  The show begins on the night of the Oscars in 1939, the night Davis lost her anticipated award for Dark Victory to Vivien Leigh in GWTW. Notably, Davis turned down the role of Scarlet O’Hara because she felt Errol Flynn wasn’t right for Rhett Butler. 

Through a series of phone calls and reminiscences, Sherr reveals Davis in her varying moods. One piece of advice Bette gives her friend Olivia deHavilland is Don’t Let Them Take Away Your Pride! While this dictum seems to have been taken to heart by Bette herself, it also was probably the mantra she needed several times in her life. There were several times in her legendary career where the viewer is asked to consider if Davis is not exercising a bit too much chutzpah, which occasionally undermines her objective. It is precisely this attitude, however, that fortified her reputation as a trailblazer and role model for many. Sherr’s excellent portrayal invites us to make our own judgments. 

In full focus is Ruthie, her beloved mother who raised Bette and her sister when they were abandoned by her husband. In addition to revealing aspects of Davis’ persona and personality, we are taken back to the Hollywood of that era and are introduced to Jack Warner, William Wyler, and George Arliss. Along the way, her four husbands, two Oscars and three abortions get the spotlight leading her in later life to say that she sacrificed personal relationships for her career. What she makes clear is that making money was never her objective, but she was driven by the quality of the roles.   

One comes away from this show understanding more about Davis than perhaps Sherr intended. Does credit go to Sherr’s sublime acting skill or Karen Carpenter’s superb direction? I had seen this show before and cannot really know the answer for sure. But who cares—it’s a show that will not leave you quickly, the kind of show you should see with friends so you can hash it all out over a cocktail or two afterwards—Bette would like that!   

Karen Carpenter

Award-winning director Karen Carpenter keeps this piece moving along at a manageable pace, allowing the viewer to never lose focus and still make note of revelations that are worthy of further discussion. And Sherr’s talents and accomplishments deserve a peek at her website, where you can keep apprised of her future engagements for this show.  Word on the Rialto is that we’ll see it again soon! Don’t miss it—you’ll come away from it with an understanding of the engraving on her tombstone: She did the hard way, and you’ll admire her all the more. 

Ensemble Studio Theatre (Estefanía Fadul and Graeme Gillis, Co-Artistic Directors) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation(Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director) are pleased to announce the line-up for the 2024 First Light Festival, part of the EST/Sloan Project to develop plays exploring science and technology.  Every year, the First Light festival shares a first look at projects commissioned and currently in development under the EST/Sloan Project. This year’s line-up includes new works by Karina Billini, Meghan Endres Brown, Sandra A. Daley-Sharif, Allyson Morgan, Jacquelyn Reingold, Jacob Marx Rice, Melisa Tien, and Zhu Yi.

The 2024 First Light Festival will run from April 25 to June 13 and include six public readings and two closed readings for internal development. All First Light Festival presentations are free and will be held at Ensemble Studio Theatre (545 W. 52nd St., 2nd Floor). Reservations are required and can be made at www.ensemblestudotheatre.org/firstlight.

Since 1998, the EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project has developed hundreds of new plays that challenge and broaden the view of science in the popular imagination. Over the past 25 years, the EST/Sloan Project has fostered over 300 plays about science and technology, leading to productions across the country. Each play’s life onstage begins with the First Light Festival, an annual presentation of new readings, workshops, and productions. Nelson Diaz-Marcano’s Las Borinqueñas, this season’s mainstage production premiering in April, was originally commissioned and developed through the EST/Sloan Project and was part of the First Light festival in 2022 and 2023.

2024 FIRST LIGHT FESTIVAL:

Binding Energy

by Jacob Marx Rice

Thursday, April 25 at 3:00 pm

Four high schoolers trapped in a study group quickly discover that science is the least of their problems as they fight to survive the emotional hurricane of being seventeen.

Jacob Marx Rice is a playwright and screenwriter based in Queens, New York, whose plays have been seen at theaters around the world in over a dozen cities on three continents. He has been produced and developed by theaters including Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Finborough Theatre in London, The New Ohio, The Flea Theater, Atlantic Theatre Stage 2, and others. He has won the Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center, the Faculty Award from NYU/Tisch, and a Sloan Commission from the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Jacob was a Playwright Observer at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and the Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He has also been a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, The Lark Playwrights Week, and the Princess Grace Award and his plays have been nominated for four of London’s prestigious Off-West End Awards.

Orva and Nadine

by Jacquelyn Reingold

Thursday, May 16 at 3:00 pm

When a woman with no fear, meets a neuroscientist studying fear, an investigation begins. Fear, fearlessness, friendship, and the crazy struggle to survive.

Jacquelyn Reingold is a playwright, TV writer, teacher, and advocate. Her plays have been seen in New York at EST, MCC, Naked Angels, at Actors Theater Louisville, Portland Center Stage, PlayLabs Minneapolis, at other theaters across the country, and in London, Dublin, Berlin, Belgrade, and Lima. Honors include: a Lilly Award, the Kennedy Center‘s Fund for New American Plays, EST/Sloan Foundation Commissions, MacDowell Fellowships, and a Susan Smith Blackburn finalist. She’s published in Women Playwrights: Best Plays, several Best American Short Plays, by DPS, French, Smith & Kraus, and a collection of her one-acts called Things Between Us. Several short plays have been recorded for podcast/radio by Playing-on-Air. TV credits include “The Good Fight,” “Grace and Frankie” and “In Treatment.” Jacquelyn is a member of EST, an alum of New Dramatists, and a founding member of Honor Roll, an advocacy group for women+ playwrights over 40, whose goal is inclusion in theater. She developed this play in the EST Playwrights Unit and worked on it at The Hermitage Artists Retreat.

Disrupted

by Melisa Tien

Thursday, May 23 at 3:00 pm

In the male-dominated tech arena, two women join forces to create a brand-new app—one that tracks the menstrual cycle—and form a partnership that is tested to its limits.

Melisa Tien is a playwright and librettist invested in making formally unconventional, socially relevant, and emotionally evocative work. A resident of New Dramatists, she is the author of the plays Best Life (JACK, 2021), Yellow Card, Red Card (Ice Factory, 2017), Refrain (Wild Project, 2011), The Boyd Show, and Familium Vulgare; librettist of the operas Forever (Washington National Opera, 2024), The Big Swim (Houston Grand Opera/Asia Society Texas Center, 2024), Family Heirloom (Experiments in Opera, 2024), Song of the Nightingale (On Site Opera/Arts Brookfield, 2023), and The Beehive (University of Northern Iowa, 2023), lyricist for the song cycles Swell (HERE, 2021) and Daylight Saving, co-creator of the podcast/auditory experience Active Listening, and creator of the theatrical experiences Untitled Landscape and Community Forest. She has been published in the anthologies Theater Artists Making Theatre With No Theater (Tripwire Harlot Press, 2020) and Modern Music for New Singers: 21st Century American Art Songs (North Star Music, 2021), and has authored essays for New Music USA and Innovations in Socially Distant Performance. She is currently a librettist for the American Opera Project’s Composers & the Voice program, and a recent member of Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Ground Floor Residency Lab, Experiments in Opera’s Writers’ Room, and The Assembly Theater Project’s Deceleration Lab.

Amma’s Wit

by Sandra A. Daley-Sharif

Thursday, June 6 at 3:00 pm

An homage to the “Granny” midwives.

Sandra Daley-Sharif is an Afro-Caribbean writer for Theater and TV living in Savannah, GA. She is a Professor of Dramatic Writing at SCAD University. Sandra is also a highly-sought-after dramaturg and collaborative deviser of new works. She is an OBIE Award winner and a recipient of the Josephine Abady Award, commending her for her contribution, as a producer, of Diversity to the American theater landscape. Two of her plays made it to the Kilroys List.

Apple Bottom

by Karina Billini

Thursday, June 13, 3:00 pm

When a humble neighbor, Andrea, and a high-strung influencer, Belinda, arrive as patients for their post-BBL recovery, Apple Bottom Spa struggles to keep both women afloat.

Karina Billini is a Dominican-American playwright, poet, and educator from Brooklyn. She is a first-year playwright in the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American playwriting program. She is a current member of the Public Theater’s 2023-2025 Emerging Writers Group. She is a proud alum of the New Harmony Project Conference, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, Pipeline PlayLab, Gingold Theatrical Group’s Speaker’s Corner, among others. Her plays have been workshopped and/or produced at La Jolla Playhouse, Alliance Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New Harmony Project, Fault Line Theatre, Teatro Vivo, among others. Her play, Apple Bottom, is a recipient of the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation commission.

BIGFOOT

by Meghan Endres Brown

Monday, June 17 at 3:00 pm

A darkly funny high-stakes suspense play about sibling rivalry, quantum physics, and the terrifying power of a good story.

Meghan Endres Brown writes about dangerous women. She is an award-winning playwright, librettist/lyricist, and screenwriter based in Pasadena, California. Her theater work has been performed or developed at institutions across the United States, including Lincoln Center, Portland Center Stage, Geffen Playhouse, Victory Gardens Theater, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Getty Villa. Favorite plays include The Tasters, The Pliant Girls, Untuned Ears Hear Nothing But Discord,EMMA: No One But Herself, I KILLED A TIGER, Perfect Teeth for Crocodile Land, and This Is Happening Now. She is a co-writer of the Lionsgate/Buzzfeed Studios comedy-thriller F*** Marry Kill, which will be released Fall 2024. Current theater projects include EST/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project commission BIGFOOT, astronaut murder mystery play A Seam (developed in the Geffen Playhouse Writers’ Room), sex tragicomedy/Much Ado About Nothing riff What Happened While Hero Was Dead, supernatural feminist rage musical These Girls Have Demons, and Hedy, a spectacle-forward German-language musical about Hedy Lamarr.

BY INVITATION ONLY:

Teenage Huntress

 by Allyson Morgan

A prehistoric teenage huntress. A contemporary female graduate student. Both extraordinary, yet underestimated, women search for meaning in what others cannot see.

Allyson Morgan is a writer, producer, performer, and the founder and Executive Director of the award-winning film and theatre collective F*It Club. Her first short film Need For Speed (Dating) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, while her next short, Sitting, made its world premiere at SCAD Savannah Film Festival and won “Outstanding Narrative Short” at Tallgrass Film Festival. First Date, her newest short film produced by 20th Digital Studio, is currently airing on Hulu in their “Bite Size Halloween” series. Allyson adapted First Date into a feature film for Hulu, titled Jagged Mind, which the LA Times called “edgy” and “powerful.” She has also been selected for the New York Stage and Film Filmmakers’ Workshop, been awarded “Best Teleplay” at Omaha Film Festival, twice been a top ten Finalist for Cinequest, a Finalist at Stowe Story Labs, and a Semi-Finalist at Austin Film Festival. Additionally, she has been awarded an Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Commission, an NG Art Creative Residency in France, a Monson Arts Residency in Maine, a Wassaic Project “Haunted Mill” residency, and multiple Juno Leadership Residencies through the Omega Institute. Allyson was a part of the Webby Award-winning producing team for Dave Holstein and Alan Schmuckler’s musical podcast “Wait, Wait, Don’t Kill Me,” and she also co-created and produced “Ghosted,” an AR experience which was awarded “Most Innovative Immersive Experience” at North Bend Film Festival. She has written two original novels for Tapas media, Don’t Want to Remember You and The Perfect Place, reaching almost 400K views online.

Frozen:The Egg Freezing Musical 

Written by Zhu Yi & composed by Yoonmi Lee

To counter their ticking biological clocks, two women, worlds apart, turn to the modern “ice magic,” venturing into the murky waters of reproductive justice and business.

Zhu Yi is a New York-based playwright from Shanghai. Her work has been performed and published in various languages around the world. She is an alumni of NYTW’s Emerging Artist Fellowship, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, and Clubbed Thumb’s Emerging Playwrights Group, a member of Ma-Yi Writers Lab, a member of the Royal Court Theatre’s International Playwrights Programme. MFA in playwriting, Columbia University. Stage plays include You Never Touched the Dirt (Clubbed Thumb, NYC; Edinburgh International Festival, UK), I Am a Moon (National Performing Arts Center, China; Theater Emory, Atlanta, GA), I Know You (National Theatre of Ireland), How Time Flies (National Theatre of China), A Deal (Urban Stages, NYC), Holy Crab! (Wellspring Theater, Taiwan; Círculo de Tiza, Mexico), Apene i Himalaya (Hålogaland Teater, Norway), It Rained on Shakopee (The Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra, Duluth, MN), Long Life (Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, China), Long Distance Affair (Bienal Arte Joven Buenos Aires, Argentina; Edinburgh Festival Fringe, UK).

Yoonmi Lee is a composer known for her contributions to musical theater, including works such as ‘Chef,’ ‘Good Butter,’ ‘Missing Parents,’ ‘The Unknown Life,’ ‘The Spindle,’ ‘Pit-a-pat Korean,’ and ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told.’ She holds an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU and a member of The BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. Currently, she is developing a new original musical, ‘The Polar Bear Show,’ which is a finalist at the Dramatists Guild 2024.

The EST/Sloan Project (Linsay Firman, Program Director), a pioneering collaboration between the Ensemble Studio Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is designed to stimulate artists to create credible and compelling new theatrical works that explore the worlds of science, technology, and economics and to challenge existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in popular culture. Since its inception in 1998, the EST/Sloan Project has commissioned, developed, and produced over 300 staged plays involving over 1,000 playwrights, actors, choreographers, composers, and theatre companies nationwide. Recent notable plays include Smart by Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, what you are now by Sam Chanse, Behind the Sheet by Charly Evon Simpson, Isaac’s Eye by Lucas Hnath, Fast Company by Carla Ching, and Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a New York–based, philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that makes grants research in science, technology, and economics; quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and public engagement with science. Sloan’s program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience and to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities.

The Foundation has an active theater program and commissions about 20 science plays each year from the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the National Theatre in London, while supporting select productions across the country and abroad. The Foundation’s pioneering theater program began with a 1997 grant to Ensemble Studio Theatre for Arthur Giron’s play about the Wright Brothers, Flight, and has helped usher in the science play as a regular part of the theater canon, making Sloan a coveted commission for any playwright engaging with a science and technology theme or character. Beginning with such renowned science plays as David Auburn’s Proof, Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, and Alan Alda’s QED, recent grants from Sloan’s Theater Program have supported Mary Elizabeth Hamilton’s Smart, Mark Rylance’s Dr. Semmelweis, Anchuli Felicia King’s Golden Shield, Sam Chanse’s what you are now, Charly Evon Simpson’s Behind the Sheet, Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes, Chiara Atik’s Bump, Nick Payne’s Constellations, Lucas Hnath’s Isaac’s Eye, Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51, Leigh Fondakowski’s Spill, and  Bess Wohl’s Continuity. The Foundation has also supported a 32-play radio series through L.A. Theatre Works. For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, please visit www.sloan.org or follow the Foundation at @SloanPublic on Twitter and Facebook.

Ensemble Studio Theatre (Estefanía Fadul and Graeme Gillis, Co-Artistic Directors) is a Hell’s Kitchen-based, Off-Broadway theatre focused on the development of new work and voices since its founding by Curt Dempster in 1968.  In those 55 years, EST has developed thousands of new American plays and has grown into a company of over 600 actors, directors, playwrights, designers, and stage managers. EST’s mission is to develop and produce original, provocative, and authentic new work. A dynamic community committed to a collaborative process, EST is dedicated to inclusion across all aspects of identity and perspective, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexuality, physical or mental ability, physical or mental health, and recovery, while acknowledging and working to end systemic marginalization and oppression at all levels of its organization. EST discovers and nurtures new voices and supports artists throughout their creative lives. This extraordinary support and commitment to inclusivity are essential to yield extraordinary work.