Fun Home Writer Lisa Kron Invited to Join Women's Voices Theater Festival

Tony Award-winning playwright Lisa Kron will be a featured guest and participant at the launch party of Washington, D.C.'s Women’s Voices Theater Festival on September 8 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Kron recently won two 2015 Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Score for the Tony-winning Best Musical Fun Home, written with composer Jeanine Tesori. Kron was also one of the original resident playwrights of the American Voices New Play Institute at D.C.'s Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater.

The invitation-only event kicks off the Festival, which offers opportunities for collaboration among professional theater companies to present more than 50 world-premiere productions of work by female playwrights. The launch party features a creative conversation between Kron and National Public Radio’s Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg, focused on gender parity in the arts in the Museum’s Performance Hall, followed by a celebratory party and toast to officially declare the start of the Festival.

Additional workshops and discussions will be sponsored by The Washington Post, featuring participation from local and national playwrights including Kathleen Akerley, Sheila Callaghan, Jennie Berman Eng, Allison Engel, Margaret Engel, Yaël Farber, Caleen Sinette Jennings, Julia Jordan, Clare Lizzimore, Mary Hall Surface, and Karen Zacarías, as well as performers such as Tracy Lynn Olivera and Nova Payton, directors, artistic leaders, and collaborators. The Festival-sponsored events will cover a variety of topics, including the local playwriting landscape, women in musical theater, gender parity, playwrights as hybrid artists, female leaders in the entertainment industry, feminist theater, training for women in stage combat, and the historical silencing of women’s voices.

Free readings, concerts, and panel discussions will also be offered by various Festival participants, including Mosaic Theater Company of DC, Tonic Theatre, Imagination Stage, Guillotine Theatre, Venus Theatre, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

First Lady Michelle Obama serves as Honorary Chair of the Festival. In addition to the First Lady, the Honorary Committee for the Women’s Voices Theater Festival includes Jane Alexander, Karen Allen, Paula Marie Black, Lydia Diamond, Heidi Lennard Dupler, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Zelda Fichandler, Katori Hall, Marg Helgenberger, Beth Henley, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, Quiara Hudes, Allison Janney, Téa Leoni, Marsha Mason, Audra McDonald, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, Anika Noni Rose, Sarah Ruhl, Julie Taymor, Kathleen Turner, Paula Vogel, and Mare Winningham. Jojo Ruf and Nan Barnett serve as coordinating producers for the event.