SPARE RIB
“Spare Rib, a non-Aristotelian, nonlinear, quasi-comic drama about abortion.”
-Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker
ABOUT THE SHOW
Spare Rib follows two generations of abortion providers: Harriet, a member of the underground collective Jane in the early 1970’s, and Florynce, her daughter who is a contemporary abortion provider. The action rockets between three distinctive eras, early 1970’s, 30 years later and the present. Members of the cast play multiple roles as they time-bend and genre-bend, and naturalism collides with surrealism.
Monday, October 24 at 7:30PM at New World Stages - 340 W. 50th St.
NewYorkRep, will present a special one-night-only benefit reading of Spare Rib, a new play by Winter Miller, Monday, October 24 at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street). Directed by Mia Walker, Spare Rib features Obie and Drama Desk Award winner Kathleen Chalfant (Wit, Angels in America), with further casting to be announced. A talkback conversation with the participating artists will follow the presentation. Proceeds from the special event will benefit WRRAP, the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project. Tickets begin at $25 and available here:
CAST
KATE ARRINGTON (Florynce) has performed in film and television in Succession, George & Tammy, Winning Time, Mare of Easttown, Billions, Ray Donovan, Brittany Runs a Marathon, Showtime, The Good Wife, Knives and Skin, Madame Secretary, The Missing Person, and The Incoherents, among others. She is an Ensemble Member and Artistic Associate at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, where she has performed in over a dozen plays and is the founder of The 88-Seat Project. On Broadway, she has performed in Grace, The American Plan, and Our Mother’s Brief Affair; other NY theater includes The Iceman Cometh, The Qualms, The Wolves, Happy Now?, and King Lear. As a playwright, Kate’s first play will premiere at Steppenwolf Theater as part of their 2022-2023 season.
KATHLEEN CHALFANT (Harriet). Broadway: Angels in America (Tony and Drama Desk nom.), Racing Demon, Dance With Me. Off-Broadway: Four Quartets, A Woman of the World, Wit (Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, Connecticut Critics Circle, Obie Awards), For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, A Walk in the Woods (Drama Desk nom.), Tales from Red Vienna, Miss Ovington & Dr. Dubois, Talking Heads (Obie Award), Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Nine Armenians (Drama Desk nomination), Henry V (Callaway Award). Other NY Credits: The Vagina Monologues, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Endgame, Sister Mary Ignatius..., The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador. Film: Old, Isn’t it Delicious?, R.I.P.D., The Bath, In Bed With Ulysses, Lillian, Duplicity, The People Speak, Lackawanna Blues, Perfect Stranger, Dark Water, Kinsey, Laramie Project, Random Hearts, A Price Below Rubies, Murder and Murder. Select Television Recurring on “The Affair,” “The Strain,” “The Americans,” “House of Cards,” “Rescue Me,” “The Book of Daniel,” “The Guardian,” “Law and Order” “One Life to Live”; “Madam Secretary,” “High Maintenance,” “Elementary,” “MuhammadAli’sGreatest Fight”(HBO),“GeorgiaO’Keeffe”(Lifetime),“Voicesfrom the White House” (PBS). AWARDS: 1996 ObieAward for Sustained Excellence, 2004 Lortel Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance, 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the League of Professional Women. 2018 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement. She has received the Drama League and Sidney Kingsley Awards for her body of work and hold an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Cooper Union.
WILLOW LAUTENBERG (Vocalist) is an actress, writer & singer based in NYC. Off-Broadway: What It Means to Be Free (Brian et al), Mike Geffner’s Birthday Show (featured vocalist). Selected Regional: A Friend in Need (Vicki), Shrek The Musical (Shoemaker’s Elf), Tartuffe (Elmire), The Tempest (Adrian/Iris). Tours: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Puck), Animal Farm (Clover). Selected Film: Bishop’s Cove, Clementine. Writer: What It Means to Be Free (the play - Theatre Row), What It Means to Be Free (the screenplay - Short Screenplay finalist at the Harlem International Film Festival). Willow graduated with a BFA in Acting & Writing Minor from Emerson College. Much love & gratitude to her family & friends.
TANIS PARENTEAU (Stage Directions) is an Indigenous (Métis/Cree) actor, producer and casting director. As an actor, she has appeared on Billions, FBI: Most Wanted, Gossip Girl, Designated Survivor, House of Cards and Tribal. New York theatre: The Public Theater, Signature Theater, 59E59 Theaters and La Mama. Regional: Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her production company, TDEP Productions, focuses on decolonizing the entertainment space by uplifting contemporary Indigenous stories by Indigenous writers, smashing harmful Indigenous stereotypes and creating opportunities for Indigenous people above and below the line. Her debut short film, ‘A Big Black Space’ had its broadcast premiere on ARTÉ in Europe, she is currently developing multiple Native-led series and features and is a Vision Maker Media Creative Shorts Fellow. Tanis is on the SAG-AFTRA National Native Americans Committee, a member of the North American Indigenous Center of New York and the Tribal Liaison at AlterTheater. Master of Fine Arts in Acting from The New School for Drama. www.tanisparenteau.com
EMMA RAMOS (Marie) is a bi-lingual Mexican-American actress and screenwriter. She won the CenturyFox/Disney Women of Color T.V. Pilot Incubator and the Warner Media 150 Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Emma’s screen credits include a recurring role on New Amsterdam, Law & Order: SVU, Unforgettable, Marisol on HBO (nominated for “Best Actress” next to Olivia Thirlby and Jennifer Morrison), Gringa with Steve Zahn, and Barbie (official short selection at the Cannes Film Festival 2021). Her theater credits include Ivo Van Hove’s Scenes from a Marriage, Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes, Pablo Neruda’s R&J for the Public Theater’s Mobile Unit, and Frontiers Sans Frontiers (“Ramos should win a prize for this”—Time Out.) Emma currently writes for Nickelodeon on the reboot of Dora the Explorer. Watch her TEDx talk “Dead Laughing, Not Dead” and her music video Cochera at www.emmaramos.com.
KATE RIGG (Audre) is an award winning artist and activist. Upon graduation from the Juilliard School of Drama, she immediately hit the New York comedy clubs, poetry spaces and downtown haunts for multi-hyphenate performers with restless hearts. She writes, performs and produces work for television, film, stage and dive bars around the world. She is one of only two winners of the Juilliard Interarts Award given to artists who cross disciplines to create work with collaborations across the school’s different divisions. Acting: World Premieres: Wilder Rediscovered (ATL) Most Fabulous Story Ever Told (NYTW), Cygnus (Women’s Project), Three Kinds of Exile (Atlantic), BFE (Playwrights Horizons), The World of Extreme Happiness (MTC), Collective Rage (Wooly Mammoth), A Thousand Splendid Suns (ACT), Other Theater: The Jammer (Atlantic), Dogeaters (NYSF The Public Theater), Lifespan of a Fact (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park) . Solo shows: Birth of a nASIAN (CTGLA, La Mama ETC., Comedy Central Theater, The Smithsonian Institute), Americasiana (MACLA, Dixon Place, The Smithsonian Institute), Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Panda Dragon Good Time Fun Fun Show (La Mama ETC. / Edinburgh Fringe/ film), Zombie Asian Moms, (La Mama ETC), TV: New Amsterdam, Tales of The City, Punisher, The Path, Law and Order SVU, Law and Order CI, Law and Order, Family Guy, The Dr. Phil Show. Film: Mile 22, Race Is the Place, That’s What She Said. I see you and you see me, Family Guy Movie. Stand Up Comic and rapper in stadiums and dive bars around the world. Training: Juilliard. www.katerigg.com
STEPHANIE WEEKS (Wilma) is an award winning actor and director. She has performed at renowned theaters including The Public, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, La Jolla Playhouse among others. With Target Margin Theater she was awarded for her years of dedication, the OBIE for Recognition of Artistic Achievement and Commitment to Excellence in Theater as an Associate Artist. Stephanie also starred in the film “Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted-Mutha,” Official. Selection of the Tribeca Film Festival directed by acclaimed director Melvin Van Peebles. Television Credits include Tales of The City starring Laura Linney on Netflix, The Good Fight (CBS) and Law & Order (NBC). She holds an MFA from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and has a certificate of study from London Academy of Music and Drama.
JEENA YI (Margaret) is a NYC based actor and avid DIY’er. Recent credits include Network (Broadway, Dir. Ivo Van Hove), Judgment Day (Park Ave Armory), Somebody’s Daughter (2nd Stage), Rape of the Sabine Women (Playwrights Realm) TV/Film: The Resident (FOX), Only Murders in the Building (HULU), Modern Love (AMAZON) Succession (HBO) Upcoming: Good Enemy (Audible Theater) Nyad (Netflix) @JeenaYi
CREATIVE TEAM
WINTER MILLER (Playwright) Raised by activist feminist parents and schooled by Quakers, Winter Miller is surprisingly amusing. She makes and champions art to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Eartha Kitt once held her left hand for five minutes. Winter is a founding member of the Obie-winning collective 13Playwrights. She graduated from Smith College with Latin honors and holds a Masters in Playwriting from Columbia University. Her plays are published by Concord and Broadway Licensing, her autobiographical essays feature in multiple anthologies. She published a children’s picture book, Not a Cat. She has worked with youth in refugee camps in Northern Uganda and Palestine and with LGBTQI+ youth in New York city making theater. Winter is profiled in The New Yorker and Bomb Magazine
MIA WALKER (Director) [she/her] is an award-winning theater and film director. In theater, Mia has been on the original creative teams of the A.R.T./Broadway productions of Jagged Little Pill, Waitress, Pippin, Finding Neverland, and Porgy and Bess; and has gone on to direct the national tours of Pippin and Finding Neverland. Off-Broadway and regional directing credits include world premieres at The Flea, Ensemble Studio Theatre, West Virginia Public Theatre, and The Encore Michigan. Mia has developed new work with The Vineyard, Bushwick Starr, Broadway Video (Lorne Michaels), Jewish Plays Project, Fault Line Theatre, American Repertory Theater, Montclair University, Premiere Stages, Bay Street Theatre, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Yale School of Drama, Audible. In TV/Film, Mia was awarded the Drama League TV Directing Fellowship, for which she shadowed on an ABC network show, and recently directed the short film Pippi, which has played at Oscar-qualifying festivals around the U.S and was a Film Shortage Daily Pick. Currently in pre-production for a music video. B.A. Harvard University.
MEGAN SCHWARZ DICKERT (Stage Manager) New York: Roundabout, Lincoln Center/LCT3, Atlantic, Vineyard, Playwrights Horizons, Civilians, TFANA, NYTW, Page 73, Public, Clubbed Thumb (affiliated artist), WP Theater, CSC, Playwrights Realm, Play Company, Juilliard, Rattlestick, Foundry, Bedlam, Working Theater, 13P, Flea, Builders Association, New Georges. Regional: Kennedy Center, NYSAF, Westport, Bard SummerScape, Hartford Stage, Williamstown, Long Wharf, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Trinity Rep, Adirondack Theatre Festival, Big Apple Circus, Capital Rep, and Idaho, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska Shakespeare Festivals. Current: peerless at Primary Stages/59E59. Megan is an advanced open water scuba diver and has run five marathons. www.megandickert.com
PRESS
Cold Read
by Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, December 6, 2015
A Conversation With Winter Miller
by Corey Ruzicano, Stage and Candor, June 14, 2016
The ‘A’ Word: Plays About Not Having the Baby
American Theatre, Carey Purcell, August 23, 2016
NewYorkRep develops and produces new plays and musicals that inspire and compel social change by telling stories that expose our humanity. By illuminating social and ethical questions through art, we strive to create provocative theater that promotes empathy, compassion, and inclusion. In order to increase access to the stories we tell, NewYorkRep, produces content across artistic mediums. NewYorkRep is a 501(c)(3) organization.
WRRAP, the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, established in 1991 and headquartered in Los Angeles, is the only independent 501 (c) 3 abortion fund that provides urgently needed financial assistance, on a national level, to those seeking abortion or emergency contraception. The surge of anti-abortion legislation has triggered more insurmountable financial barriers for thousands of individuals needing abortions. WRAAP’s mission: To ensure that marginalized individuals of all ages, ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, gender identities, and sexual orientations can access abortion care and emergency contraception. WRAAP evaluates each patient solely on the basis of need. Once approved, WRRAP sends funds earmarked for the patient to the WRRAP-affiliate health clinic or doctor of the patient's choice. Those clinics and doctors are members of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, National Abortion Federation, the Abortion Care Network, and/or independent health clinics. And, we have over 700 clinics, doctors, and hospitals that we work with across the United States.