WHAT IS UPSTART CROW?

The Upstart Crow Project pairs rising and established female dramatists - from a variety of cultural backgrounds and writing in a wide-ranging assortment of styles - with all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays, creating a complete cycle of contemporary plays inspired by Shakespeare, as well as a national event showcasing this work.

William Shakespeare – genius though he was – is exactly the kind of playwright most frequently produced in the American theater. A dead, white man. Though there are plenty of live female playwrights of all colors writing today, it's a constant challenge to get plays by women produced. Whether audiences are unused to attending new plays by women writers, or theaters are nervous about producing them, or both, the end result is a consistently frustrating situation, for theatregoers who want to see new work by women, or women who want to see their work produced, and for theaters who'd like to produce it, but can't find a way.

The Upstart Crow Project takes a page from Shakespeare - literally - and steals some stories (and name recognition) from a master. William Shakespeare borrowed liberally from the plots of those who went before him, shuffling things together, and throwing it all up against the wall, mixed with a hefty dose of his own highly specific genius for gorgeous words. He ended up with 37 plays, some of them brilliant, some of them problematic, some of them brilliant AND problematic.

To date, no adaptation project has taken on the entire canon.

The Upstart Crow Project will take all of Shakespeare’s plays – from Titus Andronicus to The Tempest - and put them in the hands of a wide-ranging collective of America’s female dramatists, women who are, like Shakespeare’s plays, all over the map. Some are just beginning their careers, and some have spent years in the theater. Some are best known for their one-woman shows, and some are champions of larger-cast epics. Some write about politics. Some write comedy. Some write tragedy. Some write all of the above. All of them have strong voices, fervent opinions, and unique takes on any material that crosses their desks.

Successful theater depends now, as it always has, on creating new models for attracting new audiences, as well as on satisfying committed theatergoers. The plays created by The Upstart Crow Project will address tradition, while also taking on the contemporary world. This is the future. It's bright.

"...For there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tyger's hart wrapt in a Player's hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country."

 - Robert Greene

"I am woman.

Hear me roar."

- Helen Reddy