Female writers, directors take the spotlight at SATE's 6th Aphra Behn Festival

 SATE returns to live, in-person performance with the sixth annual Aphra Behn Festival, to be presented April 29-May 1 at the Centene Center for the Arts. The festival kicks off the company’s 2022 “Season of Party.”

Each night, the showcase for original plays written and directed by women will feature three short works: Hazel McIntire’s “Go Before I Do,” directed by LaWanda Jackson; Michelle Zielinski’s “Repurposed,” directed by Elizabeth Van Pelt; and Lize Lewy’s “The Super Fun Time Party Palace,” directed by Rae Davis.

Last year, the festival named for a 17th-century English playwright was held virtually, and in 2020 it was presented in March just before the pandemic brought in-person staging to a halt.

“We actually were able to do a live production,” says Ellie Schwetye, co-producer of SATE. “The next weekend, everything shut down.”

Originally, the idea behind the festival was to provide women with opportunities to direct for the stage, she says. That idea was expanded to include playwriting.

“Our first year, we asked playwrights that we knew if we could produce a short play that they had written,” she says. “After that, we (came up with) the idea of pairing a director with a new play. And that’s the model that we’ve followed ever since.”

The three plays promise to make for an interesting theatergoing experience. McIntire’s “Go Before I Do” involves a woman coping with the loss of both parents. Zielinski’s “Repurposed” revolves around an encounter with modern art. And Lewy’s “The Super Fun Time Party Palace” takes a look at the downside of parenthood.

“Go Before I Do” is set in a bar in a nightlife district. McIntire says the play reflects her experience of moving from a small town to a big city. Among the themes it touches on, she says, is coming to grips with the fact that “things aren’t always greener on the other side.”

Each play receives a full production, Schwetye says, but one that’s “maybe just lighter on some of the scenic elements” because of practical considerations involved in producing three different plays per night.

Aside from presenting new plays by women, the festival also helps to focus attention on its namesake. Behn, who died in 1689 at age 48, is believed to be the first Englishwoman to make her living as a playwright. Schwetye says her introduction to Behn’s work was the 1677 play “The Rover.”

Behn, who is among the female authors cited in Virginia Woolf’s classic essay “A Room of One’s Own,” was also a notable poet, prose writer and translator.

“She was a first of her kind,” Schwetye says. “So we decided to name the festival after her.”