SheATL, the summer theater festival that first began as SheNYC and SheLA, will host live performances this week in its first in-person staging after last year’s all-digital debut. The festival specializes in elevating new, young, and emerging women and non-binary theater writers in Atlanta, and also empowers writers by facilitating production needs that, for new artists, can be difficult to source and fund. SheATL executive producers Erika Miranda and Caitlin Hargraves joined “City Lights” senior producer Kim Drobes along with playwright Grace Aki, whose play “To Free a Mockingbird” will be on the stage at this year’s festival.
The event aims to tip the scales in an art form historically dominated, like so many others, by men. “Out of… the disproportionate amount of plays being produced on Broadway that were written and produced by male-identifying artists, versus female-identifying or non-binary artists, that’s sort of the seed that was planted by SheNYC,” said Hargraves. “Erika and I were approached by the SheNYC team and thought that Atlanta would make a really good home for this as well, with all the amazing artists we’ve got. Overall, our mission is to prove that there’s no reason for male artists to have the overwhelming majority of produced work.”
In addition to providing assistance to playwrights in staging, lighting and set design, a unique benefit of working with the festival is its mentorship program. “That’s another part of our festival that I think makes it really special,” said Miranda. “Each festival provides a mentor to each of the shows… and it’s all so versatile in how that tool gets used.” The mentors bring in knowledge from many different areas of play production, and any given playwright might seek to focus on rewrites, production, stage strategy, or other aspects. “Caitlin and I work together to try to find the perfect mentor for that specific show, so that those skill sets come together in a beautiful collaboration,” Miranda said.
The festival producers put out a call for play submissions in the fall preceding this summer’s festival, and Hargraves and Miranda themselves combed through manuscripts looking for the right selections, with the occasional help of teammates from New York or participating readers in Atlanta. Aki’s play, “To Free a Mockingbird,” was among the few chosen.
“We were looking for very unique voices, and… Grace’s is just about as unique as they come,” said Hargraves. “One thing we were really thinking about this year, coming through a pandemic, is these stories of experiences and home. And that’s something that really stuck out for me, of Grace’s beautiful piece.”
