CLASSIC PLAYS BY WOMEN
ABOUT
Airmid has exciting news! We will soon be bilocated! We are in the process of setting shop so we can begin production in the Sunshine state, specifically in Upper Pinellas County. Our hope is that in time we will be presenting work in both Florida and in New York. At the moment our focus is shifting to warmer climes and getting through the challenges of the last few years. We are planning for more outdoor productions, new programs, new friends and coming back together with all those who have supported us over these many happy and successful years.
Wishing good health and happiness and looking forward to seeing all of you again in the not too distant future.
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The Airmid Theatre Company, founded in 2000, is a National Endowment for the Arts award winning theatre company. Among the many works we bring to life, we produce, recover, and collect classic plays by women. Airmid is committed to telling stories that are life-affirming and span the spectrum of human emotion. Comedies that make us laugh. Dramas that touch us. Universal stories written by women that help us all to better understand society across the centuries and our own individual place as part of the world today.
Over the years, Airmid has presented over 40 plays in full productions, readings, commissions and engagement programs that are entertaining and thought-provoking for both theatre lovers and scholars alike. Airmid aims to:
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Produce performances of significant dramatic works written by women throughout history;
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Engage in the ongoing research and recovery of classic plays by women;
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Expand the dramatic canon of works by women for study and production;
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Mentor emerging female theatre practitioners;
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Commission translations of non-English classic works of theatre by women.
Airmid’s fresh perspective on these forgotten works reminds us that there is a long, rich theatrical history that has been lost. By establishing the history of playwriting by women and professionally producing their work with actors of both genders as the playwrights intended, we open the door to broader discussion on women’s roles today, and in the future.
Our Art and Our Philosophy
Airmid Theatre Company addresses the systematic problems that affect the daily lives of women and girls through our various programs. With theatre as our method of delivery, we present the concerns of women writers and artists to audiences who are challenged to see and comprehend the world in new ways.
We watch, we hear, and we are affected by the artistic vision of someone who felt the need to express herself, often at great personal risk. Without women’s voices, past and present, we lack an historical and cultural vocabulary beyond the ones that have been provided by men like Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Miller, and Williams or even by the media today. Each of those men provided images of women that are, for better or worse, part of our western cultural experience. Those images are often in opposition to the needs and realities of women’s lives.
However, the women who wrote with the same ambition--to illuminate and educate an audience about the world around them--their visions have not been allowed to become part of our cultural lexicon. We remember Nora but not Berta; we are touched by Blanche, but somehow Frank (a female using the male spelling of her name in order to make a living as a writer in 1909) has been lost to us.
Our objective is to produce various plays written by women from previous centuries that present a range of images of women that can be used as a starting point for discussions on the roles of women and men in society today so that we might dismantle the barriers facing women and girls in their personal and professional lives.
HROSTVITHA
OF GANDERSHEIM
APHRA BEHN
MERCEDES DE ACOSTA
ANGELINA GRIMKE WELD
DJUNA BARNES