Joyce Van Dyke

The untold story of five women working at the Harvard Observatory over 100 years ago. Hired as low-paid "computers" like the women in the movie "Hidden Figures", they were in fact trained astronomers. Working together, inspired by each other, these women were the first human beings to discover how we could tell the distance to the stars -- and to figure out for the first time what the stars are made of, the discovery of the play's main character, Cecilia Payne. They opened doors to our understanding of the universe -- and for the women who came after them.

The play was originally commissioned and produced by Central Square Theater as the inaugural Brit D'Arbeloff Women in Science Production.

A 50-minute version of the play commissioned and adapted for schools has been touring schools in Maine. (For information about the touring version, contact Sara Valentine, [email protected].)

Do women's lives matter? In this one-woman show, the charismatic human rights activist who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Up at 4:00am, Julia Ward Howe is rehearsing a talk urging votes for women when she has a prophetic vision that's astonishingly apt for our national crisis today. Seeing American women living under tyranny, she prophesies that our country will lose its democracy if we allow it to remain an America for some of us, and not an America for all of us. www.Representationtheplay.com

In this time-shifting, dream-like play, two women use theatricality, storytelling and humor to remake the world of their fractured past. DAYBREAK is a lyrical story of two friends, survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide, who are transported with their families into the 21st century future. Inspired by the true stories of my Armenian grandparents, DAYBREAK is an intimate emotional story with epic political and cultural reverberations.

Amy, a 47-year-old petroleum geologist, fights to maintain a love triangle with two men - Rex, an actor and her longtime partner, and Aleksi, a young translator who works for her oil company. Her actions are challenged by both men, while Amy insists on her exploration of life and self. As the three of them fight for power, the conflict deepens psychologically and politically, and their personal struggle plays out against the climate crisis. The upheaval forces Amy and both men to confront the coming end of oil, love, time. What do we do when – as Amy says – “we’ve fallen in love with something we can’t have”?

A New York model goes home to a civil war of ethnic cleansing, after her brother is killed in Karabakh, an Armenian region in the Caucasus Mountains.

A Russian hotel maid in New York discovers a diamond earring on the floor while vacuuming a room. She calls her son downstairs to say she wants to give it to him, but while they're on the phone the earring's owner and her boyfriend walk into the room in search of it. Luckily, there are language barriers.

AMERICAN OTHELLO is inspired by the 1940s wartime production of OTHELLO starring Paul Robeson, José Ferrer, Uta Hagen (then married to Ferrer), and Margaret Webster who also directed the show and co-produced it along with Robeson. The first major production of the play in America with a multiracial cast, it changed theatre history, and upended the lives of all four actors. Now, a surprise reunion years later fans new flames.