SARASOTA, FLA.: Florida Studio Theatre has commissioned four playwrights to write original plays about women’s voices and voting rights. The new play commissions are part of the Suffragist Project, a program created by FST commemorating 100 years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
Playwrights Jacqueline Goldfinger, Rachel Lynett, Sandy Rustin, and Mark St. Germain will each receive $10,000 and developmental support from FST, culminating in public readings of their plays in August 2020. Each play will also be considered for programming as part of the theatre’s 2020-21 winter season.
“Jackie Goldfinger, Sandy Rustin, Mark St. Germain, and Rachel Lynett share unique points of view, and immediately knew how they wanted to tell stories of the suffrage movement through an entertaining and historical lens,” said FST associate artist Catherine Randazzo in a statement. “By choosing these four playwrights, FST’s hope is to have each one leave their thumbprint on the suffragists’ stories.”
Jacqueline Goldfinger is a playwright and dramaturg known for her work in the Southern Gothic genre. Her plays include Babel (Smith Prize for Political Theatre), Bottle Fly (Yale Drama Prize), and Slip/Shot (Barrymore Award). She is a member of the writers’ labs at Azuka Theatre.
Rachel Lynett is an Arkansas-based playwright and theatre artist. Her plays include He Did It (reading at Equity Library Theatre), Refuge (Z Space’s Problematic Play Festival), and Good Bad People (American Stage Theatre Company’s 21st Century New Voices New Play Festival).
Sandy Rustin is an actress and playwright. FST will produce the regional premiere of her comedy of manners play, The Cottage, this summer. Rustin is also developing stage versions of the films Clue (1985) and Bad Moms (2016).
Mark St. Germain has written plays including Freud’s Last Session (Off-Broadway Alliance Best Play), Camping with Henry and Tom (Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award), and Forgiving Typhoid Mary (Time‘s “Year’s Ten Best”). His play Relativity was presented with the National New Play Network at FST in 2016.
Florida Studio Theatre is devoted to making the arts accessible and affordable to a broad-based audience, developing theatre that speaks to our living, evolving, and dynamically changing world.
