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Since 2014 an advocacy group known as The Kilroys has been promoting its equivalent of Hollywood’s The Black List: excellent new scripts that should be greenlit for production, now. But whereas The Black List is about worthy unproduced screenplays, The Kilroys urge theaters to produce new stage works authored by female and trans playwrights. The Kilroys founders are (pictured above) Zakiyyah Alexander, Bekah Brunstetter, Sheila Callaghan, Carla Ching, Annah Feinberg, Sarah Gubbins, Laura Jacqmin, Joy Meads, Kelly Miller, Meg Miroshnik, Daria Polatin, Tanya Saracho and Marisa Wegrzyn.
According to the press release: “Regional surveys routinely show significant bias towards production of plays by male-identified authors. In three widely-discussed surveys of plays produced in the 2012-2013 season, only 10.5% on Broadway, 21% in Washington, D.C., and 22% in Los Angeles were written by women.”
In the first two years of its existence, the list has featured 99 plays, and over 1,000 plays have been nominated by upwards of 450 industry professionals. Since then, more than 100 productions of plays on the list from both years have been mounted or announced. We hope (and expect) the numbers to rise.
Below is the 2016 Kilroys List:
The Art of Gaman by Dipika Guha
Kings by Sarah Burgess
Curve of Departure by Rachel Bonds
Laura and the Sea by Kate Tarker
Air Space by Tori Keenan-Zelt
Radio Island by Liz Birkenmeier
Cost of Living by Martyna Majok
Dance Nation by Clare Barron
Cygnus by Susan Soon He Stanton
Pilgrims by Claire Kiechel
Pretty Hunger by Patricia Ione Lloyd
School Girls; or The African Mean Girls Play by Jocelyn Bioh
381 Bleecker by Gia Marotta
Brilliant Works of Art by Donna Hoke
Collective Rage: A Play in Five Boops by Jen Silverman
Merit by Lenelle Moise
Out of Orbit by Jennifer Maisel
The Rug Dealer by Riti Sachdeva
Transfers by Lucy Thurber
Wild Goose Dreams by Hansol Jung
Wink by Jen Silverman
Against the Hillside by Sylvia Khoury
Eat and You Belong to Us by Mj Kaufman
Firecracker by Rachel Bonds
Good Grief by Ngozi Anyanwu
Orange by Aditi Brennan Kapil
Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu
Roz and Ray by Karen Hartman
Sofonisba by Callie Kimball
Somebody’s Daughter by Chisa Hutchinson
Welcome to Fear City by Kara Lee Corthron
Wolf at the Door by Marisela Treviño Orta