SPF 13: The Ordeal of Water
1978. The first two female longshoremen at the Port of Los Angeles are trapped by their male co-workers in the cargo hold of a container ship just as it is heading to Shanghai. As they struggle to survive, they are visited by witches, who both help them and test them. This play is inspired by the first women to work at the Port of Los Angeles as Longshoremen.
Development
Developed as part of the 2019 Playwrights Union’s February Challenge
Finalist, Local Lab 2020, Local Theatre – Boulder, CO, 2020
Finalist, BAPF, Playwrights Foundation, 2020 Semi-Finalist, PlayFest 2020, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, 2020 Finalist, Screencraft Stage Play, Screencraft, 2020
Readings: Playwrights’ Union’s First Peek Festival 2019 and the VS. Tuesday Night Reading
Stephanie Alison Walker is an internationally produced, award-winning playwright. She is the 2019 Winner of the prestigious Primus Prize for her play THE MADRES. Her play THE ORDEAL OF WATER was a 2020 ScreenCraft Stage Play Finalist and a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. The Road Theatre Company’s production of her play FRIENDS WITH GUNS was a L.A. Times Critics’ Pick and was called a “subtle, savage feminist parable” by the Times. Her newest play, SOPHIA HAYDEN DESERVES BETTER, tells the untold story of the sole female architect at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. She is a proud alumni of the Playwrights Union, a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Antaeus Playwrights Lab and Honor Roll! – an advocacy and action group of women+ playwrights over forty whose aim is to significantly increase inclusion and representation on stage and in the theatrical canon. Stephaniealisonwalker.com
Randee Trabitz is a director based in Los Angeles. Most recently, she directed The Solid Life of Sugar Water for Deaf West, Friends with Guns Stephanie Walker, and her long-time collaborator John Fleck’s Blacktop Highway at the Odyssey Theatres, as well as previous versions at RedCat (LA) and Dixon Place (NY). This fall, she will stage No Place Like Gandersheim by Elizabeth Dement at The Skylight Theater and Bernardo Cubria’s, Loop Group, or Shia La Beouf’s Version, at CalStateLA. Randee directed a run of new works at Berlin’s English Theater in Germany, took her own version of Sophocles’ Electra to an international festival Delphi, Greece and staged a pirate musical on a Disney Cruise Ship. She’s directed many solos works with satiric-puppeteer Paul Zaloom. Her work (The Mystery of Irma Vep and Hedwig and the Angry Inch) has been seen at regional theaters in Atlanta and Sante Fe. She teaches at Cal State LA where she is also the Director of the MFA Program in TV-Film and Theater.
“The Ordeal of Water”
Margo Strand – Kaitlin Huwe*
Ray Rosas – Thais Menendez
Else Knutsdatter – Ann Noble
Thema Okoh – Veralyn Jones
Sunita – Minita Gandhi
Stage Directions – Julia Manis*
*Road Company Member
