On July 22nd, Helen Shaw, wrote in the New Yorker, “After years of progress in diversity, many companies’ upcoming slates feature mostly, and in some cases entirely, male-writer lineups. The backslide has prompted an outcry.”Here’s the link! https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/women-playwrights-lose-the-limelight.

Here’s what I think about it all, as expressed through excerpts from my newest play “Run Wild” that was just presented on July 11th, 2025 in a sold out reading presentation at Carnegie Stage with Pittsburgh International Classical Theatre.

EXCERPT A – from “RUN WILD” by Anya Martin

ACTRESS 4 – Ok…Bye everyone.  Till next time? Maybe?  I wish I could say I was hopeful about this being produced.  But I’ve been in enough readings to know…

ACTRESS 5 – It should be!  It’s good.

ACTRESS 2 – It IS good.  

ACTRESS 3 – It’s wild.  But…good. 

ACTRESS 4 – I’ve never seen anything like it.

ACTRESS 5 – Which means they should do it.

ACTRESS 4 – Which means –  they won’t. 

ACTRESS 1 – I wish…well.  Whatever.

ACTRESS 2 – What?

ACTRESS 1- I just wish there was room…for more…more theatre about… well, more, that was good.  I don’ t know what I’m saying anymore.  I’m so tired.  I guess.  I wish there was more possibility.  Here.  For us.   For theatre.  In this city.  This country!  More possibilities for good…theatre.  But, you know.  There just isn’t…

ACTRESS 5 – Any money!  

ACTRESS 2 – Did they make any off of the reading?  For the fundraiser?

ACTRESS 3 – Only when the penises came out in the Satyr.

ACTRESS 5 – Ain’t that the saddest ass truth.

EXCERPT B – from “RUN WILD” by Anya Martin “They May Be Maenads”

ACTRESS 2 – I wish I could say this was the craziest, stupidest thing I’ve done on stage, but I’m not even sure anymore! AAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!! I think when I was doing the “most serious work” it might have all been THE BIGGEST FUCKING JOKE OF ALL! AAHAHAHHAHAHA

ACTRESS 1 – FUUUUUUUCCCCCK IT ALLLLLLLL!

DIONYSUS – (pleased) Exactly!

ACTRESS 2 – (turning to DIONYSUS) And maybe YOU should be next.

DIONYSUS – You can’t turn on me?! I’m the God of Theatre?

ACTRESS 2 – WHY? Didn’t you just turn on us? Taking their money, but turning on us your followers?!

ACTRESS 4 – We want our money!

ACTRESS 1 – We are done running for you!

ACTRESS 5 – Let’s tear it all down! Aahahhahah!

ACTRESS 2- The walls of this fucking theatre!

ACTRESS 4 -All I want now is blood!

ACTRESS 2 – For all of it!

ACTRESS 4 – Blood.

ACTRESS 5 – Tear them apart!

ACTRESS 4 – Blood.

ACTRESS 5 – Tear it all apart!

ACTRESS 1 – Tear it all down!

ACTRESS 4 – Limb from limb.

ACTRESS 5 – Dick from dick.

DIONYSUS, ACTORS 1 and 2 look confused, a little frightened. They laugh nervously. Maybe hold their real dicks.

ACTRESS 1 – Now run! RUUUUUUUUUUN!

ACTRESSES 1, 2, 4, 5 – RUN! Limb from limb! Run you mother fuckers! BLOOD! Tear it all down! GRAB YOUR DICKS AND RUUUUUN!

EXCERPT C – from “RUN WILD” by Anya Martin

ACTRESS 2 – DON’T FUCKING TELL ME IT’S DIFFERENT. Because you know who went to your theatre in ancient Greece? MEN. FUCKING RICH GREEK MEN. And maybe their slaves, and their concubines. And concubines were just little girls made into sex slaves. We just give them a different label. Because it feels somehow more normal that way. But there was never a woman, as a full human, at your theatre.

Even though it was WOMEN who kept your spirit alive, in all its wildness and glimpses of freedom. WOMEN. FUCKING WOMEN. Dancing in the woods. In secret. Believing in transformation and community power. Those maenads. So maybe they could rip someone apart. Rage runs deep. And sometimes you gotta RIP SHIT APART. Even if you love it.

RUN WILD: A Trilogy of of 10-minute Inspired Greek Goddess Plays + A Satyress Heroes and monsters become entangled in mythic misogyny and modern tragedy with absurd and genre-breaking irony as Demeter questions the drills that mine her mother’s heart in “Demeter’s Fracked Heart,” Eve and Pandora step outside the box of woman-blaming in “Eve and Pandora Revise Herstory” and Helen runs through centuries of femicide canonized within our hero stories in “Helen at the Gym (Again).” Meanwhile, as a cast of local actresses move through the grueling performance demands required of them in “RUN WILD,” Dionysus headlines a cabaret fundraiser to save the theatre in “Satyress,” questioning if the theatre today is just a running joke or perhaps our biggest hope.