2024 Read and Rant

Athena Project’s Read & Rant program seeks to combine the sharing of theatrical work with the wider public and the new play development aspects of our former Plays In Progress Series while also fostering collaboration between playwrights and dramaturgs. Think book club for plays! Learn what makes a good script, discuss how it affects us, and explore the ways it links to the larger world. This monthly free offering to the community aims to raise awareness of the under-representation of women’s stories on stage.

Each month, we read two new and unproduced scripts selected from a nationwide call for submissions and typically meet every third Monday online via Zoom to discuss the works. Join us to converse with invited playwrights who bring an in-depth knowledge of the works and theatrical writing at large. Guided by a dramaturg, we also invite you to share your constructive comments, thoughts, and affirmations in order to aid in the development process of the pieces.

This month we will be featuring two playwrights selected from our Read & Rant lottery:

Emma S. Rund’ s Endlessly Failing to Save the World

Endlessly Failing to Save the World tells the inspirational story of Katalin Karikó, a scientist who, for over 30 years, refused to quit on her dream of using mRNA to advance the field of medicine. After immigrating to the United States from Hungary, Karikó struggled to find a lab that would take her seriously. No one believed her mRNA-based gene therapy could work. No one would publish her papers or give her the grant money she needed, but still, she refused to give up. She always felt that people’s lives depended on her work, and she was right. When COVID-19 began ravaging the world in 2020, Karikó became the unlikely hero of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patrice Hamilton’s The Good Old Days

The Good Old Days takes place in the near future; a committee of conservative women advise the President on all of the usual culture war issues involving race, identity, and self-determination. Although they propose an Orwellian feminist campaign entitled “The Real Female,” the real goal is to keep pressuring society to turn back the clock to the days when women found their value by supporting men. Conflicts develop when one of the women is suspected of being a liberal mole, one woman is sent away for civic re-education when she is recorded expressing doubts, and another woman is accused of enabling a young girl’s illegal abortion. In Act II, the group is disbanded, but one of the women forms a new hacktivist organization determined to take down the President before he becomes impossible to vote out of office. By the conclusion of the play, we don’t know if her group will succeed, but we feel some hope that our democracy has at least a fighting chance.

After you register for a session, you will receive information on how to access our featured scripts. We want everyone to participate who would like to learn more about these talented playwrights and their plays.