The Playwrights Realm's 2019–2020 season will include the world premiere of Anna Moench’s play Mothers and Noah Diaz’s Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally. Beginning this fall, the Off-Broadway theatre will also pilot the Radical Parent-Inclusion Project (RPI), a new initiative with a mission to dismantle the barriers preventing artists with children from succeeding in the theatre.

“RPI does not aim to ‘solve’ the problem of children,” said Roberta Pereira, a mother and the Realm's producing director. “For those who choose to be parents, children are a fulfilling and important part of their lives and in many ways, make them better artists. We want to celebrate that, encourage visible parenting, and make life a little bit easier for everyone.”

RPI, which will illuminate, create, and track new pathways of access and approaches to theatrical productions, is a joint venture from the Realm and the Parent Artist Advocacy League for the Performing Arts (PAAL). The initiative will be integrated into the casting, rehearsal, and production process of Mothers, a satire about a Mom's group that turns into an apocalyptic survival tale.

“Mothers examines motherhood, fatherhood, gender, and race through the unifying thesis that the tug-of-war between fear and power is what drives us to create systems of inequality that replicate themselves over and over throughout human history," says playwright Moench. "The Playwright’s Realm production of Mothers aims to model the kind of world in which we aspire to be living, as the play itself is an unsparing indictment of the one we’re in.”

The play will begin previews September 13 at The Duke on 42nd Street ahead of a September 24 opening. Casting and a full creative team will be announced later.

Next spring, the Realm will present the world premiere of Diaz’s Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally at A.R.T/New York Theatres in a co-production with Baltimore Center Stage and in collaboration with The Sol Project, a national theatre initiative amplifying the voices of Latinx playwrights. (Learn more here.) The new play takes the classic Dick and Jane books about the "ideal" 1950s American family and forces them out of childhood fantasy and into harsh adult reality.

Performances will begin April 3, 2020, ahead of an April 14 opening. Full cast and creative team to come.

For more information on the Playwrights Realm and the upcoming season, visit PlaywrightsRealm.org.