ABOUT THE SHOW
It’s the summer of 1972. The battle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment is ramping up across the nation. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm is campaigning for president. And in midtown Manhattan, a group of women have created a magazine “for feminists who love fashion.” As the war in Vietnam intensifies, and the Watergate scandal erupts, the charged political and social climate challenges friendships and the future of the magazine itself. Poignant and hilarious, The Inferior Sex looks at finding your politics, your community, and your voice in an ever-changing world.
“I am very excited for our audiences to experience Jacqueline E. Lawton’s wonderful new play, The Inferior Sex,” Artistic Director Curt Columbus said. “Lawton's beautiful, comic take on the historic events of 1972 is a rare theatrical gem. It is a story populated entirely by women, and it centers the story on their struggles to make a world of their own. The production, helmed by our brilliant company member Tatyana-Marie Carlo, is at turns funny, serious, and straight-up glamorous.”
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Jacqueline E. Lawton is a playwright, dramaturg, producer, and racial equity facilitator. Her produced plays include Anna K; Behold, A Negress; Blood-bound and Tongue-tied; Deep Belly Beautiful; Edges of Time; The Hampton Years; Hotel Berry; Intelligence; Mad Breed; and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Her work has been developed and presented at the following venues: Classical Theater of Harlem, Folger Shakespeare Library, the Hangar Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Pasadena Playhouse, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Rep Stage, Rorschach Theater Company, Round House Theatre, Theater J, and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company. Lawton has received commissions from Arena Stage, Adventure Theatre – Musical Theatre Center, National New Play Network, National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of American History, Round House Theatre, Tantrum Theatre, and Theater J. She received her MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. Currently, she is an associate professor in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a production dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Company. She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild.
"I'm excited to bring The Inferior Sex to Trinity Rep,” Jacqueline said. “With this play, I'm hoping to honor the contributions of women, highlight the extraordinary legacy of Shirley Chisholm's presidential campaign, and call attention to the power and importance of intersectionality in the women's movement. As a nation, we've got a lot of work ahead of us to achieve justice and equity for marginalized communities. We can certainly learn a lot from the successes and failures of social, racial, and political revolutions of the 1970s. So, I'm delighted that we have an opportunity to laugh, cry, and roar with these women!"
CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM
Tatyana-Marie Carlo is a proud Puerto Rican director from Miami, Florida. She received her MFA in Directing from Brown University/Trinity Rep and her BFA in Acting from New World School of the Arts. A resident artist at Trinity Rep, she is the former artistic director of MicroTheater Miami and associate director of Seminole Theatre in Homestead, Florida. At Trinity Rep, Tatyana directed 2022’s Sueño and 2019’s Fade. Additional directing credits include Subliminal, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, She Kills Monsters, Real Women Have Curves, References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, Clybourne Park, A Little Less Lonely at Dallas Theater Center, and several bilingual adaptations of Shakespeare with La Bulla Collective. Tatyana previously directed the world