2Cents Theatre Group‘s popular 3-day festival of female playwrights, Acting Out INK Fest is back for year five gathering around 100 artists for this one-of-a-kind event, from playwrights to directors to actors and street artists, to celebrate the female playwright and art.

The Fest will take place March 9-11 at the Hudson Theatres in Hollywood, right in the heart of Theatre Row and the Los Angeles 99-seat community.

Showtimes begin at 2pm on Friday March 9, and continue every 90 minutes through Sunday night, for a total of 20 45-minute performances over the course of the weekend.

The 2018 Acting Out INK Fest lineup includes 19 short plays all under 30 minutes plus 3 feature length one-acts. Special events of the weekend include the Opening Night Feature and Opening Night Party on Friday night, our exciting Saturday Late Night Feature, and the inspiring closing night ceremony on Sunday, featuring live performances and special guests, celebrating the weekend.

Art will flood not just the theatre, but also the street & the Hudson Cafe. The INK Street Fair will be in full swing all weekend long, kicking off at 1pm on Friday March 9. The Street Fair will feature live music, art displays, snacks and refreshments, appearances from women’s rights group, social media games and opportunities to win prizes, raffles, photo ops and more.

2Cents is a young not for profit theater company in Hollywood, fiscally partnered with Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Project. The women of LAWTP who inspired this venture, with their dedication to the often overlooked female playwright have spent several months reading submitted plays by women and have selected approximately 20 works, all unique and varied in subject, theme, characters, everything. Each year, the collection of plays for INK Fest is meant to represent the female artist as versatile, unpredictable, and ultimately undefinable.

See the complete Festival schedule and purchase tickets.

INK Fest 2018 features 22 female playwrights and their fully-produced plays, ranging from 7-75 minutes:

World Premieres:

• Extra, Extra! by Iona Cruey Holder
• Follow Through by Jaime Becker
• I Can Speak: The Does by Juanita Chase de Lamont
• If I Fell I by Laura Stribling
• The Baby Shower by Stevie Stern (former staff writer for TV’s “Melrose Place.”)
• The Dreamy One by Brittny Roberts
• The Misfit Mantra by Amy Dellagiarino
• The Porch Swing by Alli Miller
• Thunder by Wendy Gough Soroka
• Woman On The Bridge by Julia Pascal (First woman director at the National Theatre, worked at The Royal Court Theatre, The National Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse, The National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company, BBC Television and radio, NESTA Dreamtime Fellowship, an Alfred Bradley BBC Award , Moondance Award and she was a finalist in the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Award of Excellence in Playwriting. Julia was nominated for the 2017 Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award.)

West Coast Premieres:

• Ava Maria by Anne Flanagan (Won the BPP/Reva Shiner Comedy Award, the Julie Harris/Janet and Maxwell Salter Playwrights Award, the McLaren Memorial Comedy Award, the Mountain Playhouse Comedy Award and thePlaywright’s Theater “Plays for the 21st Century” Award, Top 12 finalist for Project Greenlight’s “The New Normal” competition (2016) and a semi-finalist for the 2015 ARHO Shakespeare’s Sister Fellowship)
• 34B by Rosemary Frisino Toohey (Won the British Theatre Challenge in London, the Next Generation Playwriting Contest in New York, the Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival (three times), the Oglebay Institute National Towngate Theatre Contest (twice) and made Finalist for the Heideman Award and the Julie Harris Playwriting Award among other national competitions)
• Jim Reaper by Tracey Jane Smith
• Little Swan a Pas De Deux by Allie Costa
• Mirror, Mirror by Laura King
• Phoenix by Penny Jackson (Best plays in an Off Broadway production theater by NYTHEATER.COM, finalist for The Kenneth Branagh Award for Drama, The Elizabeth Janeway Prize for writing from Barnard College, a Mirrelieis Fellowship for writing from Stanford University and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship)
• Young Savages by Skyler Barrett

Los Angeles Premieres:

• This Almost Joy by Barbara Lindsay (NY Drama League’s 1989 Playwriting Competition, Women in Arts Award at UM St. Louis, 2008 Goshen Peace Play Prize)

Also:

• All We Know Is Not Enough by Darcy Parker Bruce (Faculty at Eastern Connecticut State University, 2016 Semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and a 2016 Semi-finalist for Kitchen Dog Theatre’s New Works Fest, finalist for the 2016 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, as well as a runner up for the WomenWorks Festival at the University of Tulsa, published in Applause/ Hal Leonard’s Best American Short Play series)
• The Ethel Party by Lolly Ward
• We Will Not Describe The Conversation by Eugenie Carabatsos
• Dalton by Dagney Kerr

These 22 plays will be helmed by directors Kristin Towers Rowles, Gary Lamb, Tom Lazarus, Andy McQuade, Kristen Boulé, Anthony Sherritt, Laura Stribling, Aurora Culver, Joanne Mcgee-lamb, Nicholas Acciani, Dalia Anderton, Joel Asher, Josh Galitsky, Sophie Goldstein, Rebecca Lynne, Madison Mellon, Roe Moore, Mikey Mulhearn, Amanda Newman, Nancy Dobbs Owen, Matthew Robinson, and Stephen Weston.

The 56 actors that make up the casts of Acting Out INK Fest are led by veterans Stasha Surdyke, Julia Sanford, Constance Jewell-Lopez, Eve Sigall, Bruno Oliver, Dannon Dastugue, Terry Woodberry, Brynn Alexander, Julia Silverman, Shirley Jordan, Kim Dalton, Eric Geller, Katherine McKalip, David Westberg, Frances Brennand Roper, Carl Weintraub, Francesca Manzi, Marian Gonzalez, Kate Bowman, Jennifer Ashe, Alli Miller and Diane Linder, and young talents Kevin Herrmann, Madison Boyd, Julius Lambrecht, Kelley Mack, Sam Sheeks and others.