From Barnard to Off-Broadway

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This summer, theatregoers will have the chance to see the work of up-and-coming Barnard graduates in the Off-Broadway “Women in Agency Festival” at the Linney Theatre at Pershing Square Signature Center. The two-week event (August 3–17) is the brainchild of Jean Lichty ’81, the executive director and founder of La Femme Theatre Productions, a theatre company dedicated to the “exploration and celebration of the universal female experience.”

“I have been so inspired by Barnard students and recent graduates that I have selected five of them to showcase in our respective development programs,” Lichty says.

La Femme Theatre Productions will bring two initiatives to the stage at this year’s festival: A Woman’s Storyland and Women on the Verge. For the former program, Lichty has invited dramatists Abigail Duclos ’23 and Janvi Sai ’23 to write short plays around the theme of “agency,” which can be broadly interpreted, says Sai, as in “federal and state agency or as in individual and collective agency.” Meanwhile, Women on the Verge will highlight the work of director Britt Berke ’18.

The festival, Lichty explains, is also an opportunity for uplifting the work of current and recent graduates. “After seeing the recent senior thesis presentation of Tess Inderbitzin ’25, my first Barnard mentee, I was inspired to create the Corner Nest Lab, which Tess and Mikayla Gold Benson ’25, her director, will inaugurate,” says Lichty.

Lichty has asked Inderbitzin to also write a play based on the concept of “agency” for Corner Nest Lab and then, together with Benson, to present it at the beginning of the festival. “And after watching the rehearsals and readings of the other playwrights and theatre professionals, [they’ll] develop it for a redo at the end of the festival,” says Lichty.

This is by no means Lichty’s first time supporting emerging Barnard playwrights. In 2022, La Femme Theatre Productions presented Black Girl Joy, by Phanésia Pharel ’21, and helped secure a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to further develop the play for production.