We're excited to collaborate with Todd London to create a three-day retreat here at BECHDEL PROJECT this coming weekend as part of The Third Bohemia!!! Founded in 2011 by Todd London, The Third Bohemia is a series of national gatherings of independent theatre artists, along with artists and thinkers from other fields, focused on sharing, teaching, and making work. The goals of these working sessions—or mini-camps, include: 1) To inspire and energize the participants in hopes of fueling their ongoing work; 2) To incite cross-disciplinary thinking and creation; 3) To explore the potential of peer-artist-to-peer-artist teaching; 4) To seed the national theatre's native creativity by connecting its artists outside of existing institutional structures; 5) To create a fluid, self-determining national theatre of artists. Following Bechdel Project's values, which encourage its artists to bring their whole selves, this 3B will be unique. The retreat has been carefully structured a...

Bechdel Project, a feminist arts incubator, which awarded its year-long ROO Residency to Jeanne Dorsey in May, is launching its latest initiative, the FIFE Fellowship , and the writers that will make up the inaugural fellows. The FIFE is a multi-year, artist-led fellowship for feminist writers that provides support to develop stories that have the power to change the world. The fellowship draws inspiration from the writing of bell hooks' and takes its name from her book, Feminism Is For Everybody (FIFE), and focuses on the concepts of intersectional feminism, building diverse community, and the wholistic integration of art into life. (Bechdel Project is a family-positive space and encourages radical self-care for artists.) Throughout the fellowship, each writer will have access to Bechdel Project's studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to write, workshop, and present work along with guidance and support from the Bechdel Project staff. Fellows will be provided enrichment opportunitie...

NEW YORK CITY: The Bechdel Project has selected Jeanne Dorsey to receive the inaugural Room of One’s Own (ROO) Writer’s Residency. Named after the 1929 book by Virginia Woolf, the ROO Residency was created for feminist writers of any intersection looking to develop a new work based on women from history. Dorsey was selected from over 100 applicants from around the world to fully develop her new play The Kit: Made by Martha. A 2021 Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan Commission, the play is inspired by Martha Goddard, whose sexual assault evidence collection kit revolutionized how cases against sexual assault perpetrators were built and standardized the compassionate treatment of rape victims without revictimizing them. “We’re excited to work with Jeanne because we believe The Kit can do more than teach about a woman who has impacted the lives of millions,” said co-creative director Jens Rasmussen in a statement. “We believe it has the power to change the way people think.” The year-long res...

Bechdel Project has announced Jeanne Dorsey as the recipient of the inaugural Room of One's Own (ROO) Writer's Residency. During the residency, Ms. Dorsey will fully develop her new play "The Kit: Made by Martha," which was a 2021  Ensemble Studio Theatre /Sloan Commission. The play is inspired by Martha Goddard, whose sexual assault evidence collection kit revolutionized how cases against sexual assault perpetrators were built and standardized the compassionate treatment of rape victims without revictimizing them. This inaugural year the ROO Residency was open to feminist writers (of any intersection) looking to develop a new work based on women from history. Ms. Dorsey was selected for the ROO Residency from over 100 applicants from around the world. Jeanne Dorsey Jeanne Dorsey is a New York based writer of plays, screenplays, teleplays, and essays. Her work has been published by Seal Press, Smith and Krauss, Heinemann Press, and Applause Books and produced by Ensem...

By Caroline Kelly Franklin, author of The Bronte Girls A recurring theme of THE BRONTE GIRLS is women not needing a hero to stand in front and protect them but rather needing champions to fight on their side. From beginning to end working with the Bechdel Project to produce The Bronte Girls Trilogy Staged Reading Event was one of the best artistic experiences of my life. Finding someone willing to take on a trilogy felt nearly impossible before I started working with Bechdel Project. They have obliterated my expectations from the first "yes." The event included not only a rehearsed staged reading of all three parts but also food and cocktails between each piece making it a full-day endeavor. Bechdel connected me with directors to interview, assisted with casting where needed, provided a space to rehearse and perform, constant moral and creative support, helped curate an industry guest list, promoted the work, and collaborated on every element of production. Because of Bechdel...

Ever wonder why even many narratives written by women don't past the Bechdel test? Chimamanda Adichie explains the danger of a single story.

We all talk about the Bechdel Test all the time, because it's so simple: Does a story have two women who talk to each other, about something other than a man? But almost every time it comes up, we all dismiss it, because it's too simple or too arbitrary. But actually, the Bechdel Test is more important than anyone realizes. Alison Bechdel came up with the Bechdel Test in the panels of her comic Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985, and it was just in the form of one woman explaining her "rule" about movies to another: In the past, Bechdel herself has seemed weirded out by the attention to the Bechdel Test, and not sure whether she wanted some kind of all-encompassing metric named after herself. But she's recently become more open to the idea. In a blog post last year, she wrote: I have always felt ambivalent about how the Test got attached to my name and went viral... But in recent years I've been trying to embrace the phenomenon. After all, the Test is abou...