NEW YORK CITY: The Playwrights Realm, an Off-Broadway theatre, has launched its Radical Parent-Inclusion Project (RPI), which aims to make rehearsals and performances more friendly to working parents. This includes free child care during auditions and rehearsals, and family-friendly work scheduling.

“RPI does not aim to ‘solve’ the problem of children,” said Playwrights Realm producing director Roberta Pereira in a statement. “For those who choose to be parents, children are a fulfilling and important part of their lives and in many ways, make them better artists. We want to celebrate that, encourage visible parenting, and make life a little bit easier for everyone.” Pereira is a parent herself.

This new initiative includes family-friendly scheduling (5-day, 6-hour-per-day work weeks), free child care during auditions and rehearsals, intentional hiring of artists who are parents, welcoming children into the work space at specific moments, increased support for parent-artists during high-demand instances such as tech week and opening night, and family-friendly housing for early-career playwright and mother/artist Anna Moench. The initiative is made possible with the help of the Parent Artist Advocacy League for the Performing Arts.

In conjunction to this new initiative, the Realm also announced the two productions of its 2019-20 season. It will open with the world premiere of Moench’s The Mothers as part of its 2019-20 season (beginning Sept. 13), a satire about raising children in a disintegrating world.

The second production will be the world premiere of Noah Diaz’s Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally, which imagines complex adulthoods for iconic children’s book characters (beginning April 3, 2020). The play is a coprdouction with Baltimore Center Stage, in collaboration with the Sol Project.

The Playwrights Realm, founded in 2007, produces and supports early-career playwrights.