If it were up to Susan Bernfield, no one would notice that New Georges — her New York City-based theater company — is a theater hub specifically geared toward female playwrights and directors.
“I want to be like, ‘come see our play, it’s great!’” she said at a talk at the Platt Performing Arts House yesterday. “Not, ‘come see our play and support women’s work.’”
Bernfield, a 1986 Penn alumnae, is in Philadelphia for the production of her play Stretch (A Fantasia), running from March 31 to April 25 and presented by the People’s Light and Theatre Company in Malvern, Pa. Though it is a “Republican play” — that is, a fictional take on Richard Nixon’s secretary and the Watergate tapes, Bernfield was more inclined to discuss the ins and outs of theater and the mission of her company.
“Ninety percent of the plays we produce have women protagonists. But when we became ‘just a theatre company,’ it was a huge triumph,” she said. She emphasized that New Georges—founded in 1992 and so named for George Sand and George Eliot, the masculine pen names for two female writers — is more about the quality of work than the gender of the people producing it.
“My job is to present the best work I can,” she said.
If the accolades are any indication, that work is pretty good: New Georges has received numerous prestigious theater awards and just yesterday received a very positive review for the staging of The Diary of a Teenage Girl, running Off-Off-Broadway until April 10.
But Bernfield has the same concerns as most others involved in the theater world.
“It would be great to have more money,” she said, noting that she feels as if the artistic quality of the company is high but the quality of its infrastructure is much lower.
Bernfield acknowledged that it might have been easier to start her company somewhere other than New York City, but that’s not what she wanted to do. However, as a former member Penn Players, she is impressed with how much Philadelphia’s theater scene has evolved.
Ty Furman, director of the Platt House, agreed. “Philly’s done really well with being a center of generating good work,” he said.
“It’s so happening now!” Bernfield said.
Through New Georges, Bernfield has witnessed a similarly impressive evolution. With its growing popularity, more people were sending in plays for New Georges to produce, and it was beginning to get overwhelming.
“We went back to the basics, because the stakes felt too high,” Bernfield said. “It’s an interesting, fertile time for plays.”
