These women of the arts hail from different disciplines, but they all have an indomitable spirit and a luminescent spark that makes them amazing human beings who are out there every day, doing amazing work.

Today we continue our series with Robin Rice Lichtig.  Robin is no stranger to The Happiest Medium; I’ve had the opportunity to review her work as well as sit on a panel with her last December to discuss the role of women in Off-Off Broadway.  But when you’re as prolific a playwright as Ms. Lichtig a few months makes a world of difference so I’m pleased she’s joining us again to give us an update on her work, as well as share with us her experience of what it’s been like to be a woman in her business.  I’ll let Robin tell you in her own words:

Robin Rice Lichtig

Things are bursting at the seams these days. Playwrights have a rough row to hoe — rougher even if you’re a woman. I can offer as encouragement these facts: I was fortunate last year with world premieres of full length plays in New York and South Africa, a reading in Berlin, and a number of workshops and reading in New York.

So far, 2011 is jam packed with short play productions and my full-length PLAY NICE! opened last night at 59E59 Theatre in New York. (It runs through March 27) I would like to encourage women playwrights to get their short plays into festivals whenever they can. It was through a ten-minute play presented for only two nights at Abingdon Theatre in New York that the producer of PLAY NICE! found me. Ego Actus is also going to produce FRONTIER in the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity in New York in June. At a meeting of the Planet Connections personnel early last Sunday morning, it was exciting to see that about 99 per cent of the people running this large, eco-friendly event are women.

We all know that the percentage of plays written by women is abominably low. Add ageism to that and anyone without fierce drive and focus will quit in a heartbeat. It’s an uphill climb, but it’s not impossible. I suggest joining the International Centre for Woman Playwrights and get on their listserve — a very supportive group.

Last Monday the League of Professional Theatre Women had a benefit to raise money for the organization at New World Stages in New York. Not only the writers, but the producers, backstage workers and technical people were women. Over 200 people were in the audience at $50 a ticket. The atmosphere was charged. It was a fabulous evening celebrating successful women in theater. I was also part of a SWAN Day production in Ontario, Canada, last weekend. SWAN Days are taking place all over the country this month, giving shouts out to women in theater. Loads of encouraging new things happening.

Gotta run. Submissions to make, networking to do. Speaking of which, conferences are an excellent way of getting your name out there. Hope to see some of you at Humana the first weekend in April.

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Thanks so much, Robin – we celebrate you today!

A little more about Ms.Lichtig:

• Robin Rice Lichtig – See www.dramamama.net for details on upcoming gigs, synopses, and other cool stuff.
• March 8-27: PLAY NICE! at 59E59 Theatre, NYC.
• March 20: MOM from LISTEN! THE RIVER. Cornelia Street Cafe, NYC.
• Spring: ALICE IN BLACK AND WHITE. Staten Island, NY.
• June: FRONTIER. Planet Connections Theatre Festivity. NYC.
• June 18: SECRETS ON A CHINESE BED. Marblehead Little Theatre, Marblehead, MA.
• In the works: SUKI LIVINGSTON OPENS LIKE A PARACHUTE.

Related Posts:

• Women’s History Month: Celebrating Women In The Arts – Spotlight On Alex Bond
• Women’s History Month: Celebrating Women In The Arts – Spotlight On Glory Kadigan
• Women Of Off-Off-Broadway: Spotlight On – Robin Rice Lichtig
• It’s A Triple Play For Natalie Menna!
• A Brief History Of Thyme (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)

A few weeks ago I was honored to be able to sit on a panel of women brought together by Monica Bauer to discuss the specific challenges (and joys!) of being a woman in the Off-Off Broadway community.  My fellow panelists were from many different paths, but we all came together with the same spirit and goal – to color an area of the larger picture with our own story in order to present a richer canvas to the  audience.

Our discussion was lively, energetic, informative and surprisingly fun.  Since I was the only one of the bunch with an actual tool to preserve what had happened that evening  (this website you see before you) I offered to turn our discussion into a web series for posterity.  Over the next few weeks I’ll feature a different, amazing Woman of Off-Off Broadway who will share her journey with us all.

Kicking us off this week is playwright  Robin Rice Lichtig.    The author of over 40 plays, including 12 full lengths, Lichtig’s plays have been produced worldwide.  She is currently working on an autobiographical play (SUKI LIVINGSTON OPENS LIKE A PARACHUTE), a play about the Victorian photographer Alice Austen, and a puppet theatrical to be produced in a Manhattan park next summer. PLAY NICE! will have a New York premiere in May. SEARCHING FOR A NEW SUN will have a New York workshop and/or premiere next spring following a reading in Berlin.

We were all asked to give one of our best and worst experiences working in Off-Off Broadway.  Robin, what was yours?

One of the worst experiences I have had with a theater happened in New York about six years ago. A long one-act play (now titled O RUMBLES OF JOY!, published by JAC Publications and Promotions) was cast, rehearsed, and on stage while I was intensely involved with a residency at The Lark so I couldn’t keep an eye on the proceedings at the unnamed theater. I dashed from the closing feedback session at The Lark around the corner in time to catch the very last performance. To my horror I found that not only had the director cast one of the male characters with a woman in the cast of three, she then apparently didn’t know what to do with the character (since this was totally absurd) so she took the liberty of having the character exit half way through the play and never enter again. This was the pivotal character. He was never supposed to leave the stage. With him being given a sex-change operation, and then killed off (along with what he said) way before the end of the play, the result — well I wouldn’t even call it chaos. Nothing that exciting. It was plain stupid. I wrote a very strong letter to the artistic director, who phoned me and defended the director. Needless to say I want nothing to do with that producer ever again. The only good thing was that I had told nobody about the production so no one I knew wasted their money on it. I’m not naming the theater here, but when people ask me personally I don’t hold back! I firmly believe that we playwrights need to support each other.

Give one thing you learned from a fellow panelist that illuminated something for you, or sparked something in you – even if it was in response to your own story – actually ESPECIALLY if it made you see your own story differently!

What I learned from #2 and from other experiences along the way is that I need to (1) not accept just any old offer of a production and (2) interview a director before giving the green light. The best way to do this is, I think, to ask a director to describe his or her vision of the play before I say anything about it. Does this vision match my own or are we on different pages? Does he or she seem to want to impose a vision that is different from that of the play? Of course new playwrights are anxious to take any production they’re offered, but if the director and writer aren’t seeing eye-to-eye, if the director’s goal isn’t to realize the play that the writer has written, then the play won’t be served.

I think the overall message that came through in the panel is that all our experiences have valuable learning components for the part of this business that happens once a play leaves the beautiful solitude of our studies. Those of us who can turn hurtful experiences into learning experiences will continue forward strengthened.

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Robin Rice Lichtig is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the League of Professional Theatre Women, Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America, and a founder of Manhattan Oracles, a developmental playwriting group now in its eighth year.

More information can be found on her website.

Related Posts:

• Women’s History Month: Celebrating Women In The Arts – Spotlight On Robin Rice Lichtig
• Keeping Her Balls In The Air – Monica Bauer Tells Us How She Does It
• “The Power Of Birds” – A Family Learning To Fly In Formation