Clockwise from left: Agnieszka Kazimierska, Cindy Coulter, and Nicolas Ballas will take part in the 2024 edition of the Fearless Female Voices Festival.
Clockwise from left: Agnieszka Kazimierska, Cindy Coulter, and Nicolas Ballas will take part in the 2024 edition of the Fearless Female Voices Festival.
The opportunities that Talia Pura wanted to see in the world didn’t exist.
So she had to create them.
Pura, the founder of Santa Fe’s Blue Raven Theatre, created the Fearless Female VoicesFestival because she wanted to correct an imbalance in the playwright world. And now, as it enters its fourth season, its purpose is as clear as ever.
“There’s a really serious imbalance in terms of major theaters presenting works by women as opposed to works by men,” she says. “Overwhelmingly, theaters are presenting works by male playwrights, and this is historic, and it’s slowly changing and getting better. If you look at any season, you can carve out how many plays are written by women and how many are written by men. You’ll still see the majority are written by men in all theaters across North America. It’s improving slowly, but this is an effort to really showcase the voices of women.”
This year, though, there’s one change in the format.
Pura says she has only accepted plays written by women in the past, but this year, there are three selections written by men that fell under the festival’s bailiwick because they feature strong female characters. Last year, Pura says, the festival had 12 plays, and it was a little bit too much. This year, there are nine plays, and Pura hopes the entire day will be completed in under two hours.
“They’ve got a limit of 10 minutes. I’ve told them if they go 11, it’s not a problem,” she says. “If they go 12, they’re still getting the hook from the stage manager at the side of the stage.”
Many of the playwrights are performing their shows for the first time at this festival; Pura says that besides herself, she believes only two other playwrights have been part of the festival before. Many of the plays are relationship dramas, she says, and two of them are one-woman monologues. The set will change a bit from play to play; Pura says she’s told playwrights they can augment the stage in any way as long as it takes less than two minutes.
There are no ticket prices listed for the festival. Attendees are encouraged to make a donation. Eventually Pura hopes to expand the festival into a multi-day event that includes workshops and readings in addition to performances.
Pura says that one thing is certain about the festival; this is the final year it will be held in its present location at the Fashion Outlets mall. The mall has been sold, and Pura does not think it will be available as a venue for the fifth incarnation of Fearless Female Voices.
“For this space, it’s absolutely the grand finale,” she says. “The festival will continue; I don’t know where it will be, but it will continue somewhere next year.”
