WHERE AND WHEN:
MAY 30 - JUNE 29, 2025
WP Theater - 2162 Broadway @ 76th St
Presented by Woodie King, Jr.'s New Federal Theatre, Elizabeth Van Dyke, Producing Artistic Director
Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:00 PM, Sundays at 3:00 PM
Tickets $30-$45, buy tickets: https://tinyurl.com/3vsy6527

NEW YORK, April 20 -- In 1881, Black laundresses in Atlanta led a strike weeks before the International Cotton Exposition came to town, demanding $1/week. The Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike of 1881 was the first successful interracial, organized labor strike of the post-Civil War era. "The Wash" by Kelundra Smith offers an intimate and often funny look at ordinary women who initiated and led the strike, transforming themselves from workers to fighters. Woodie King, Jr.'s New Federal Theatre will present the play's New York premiere May 30 to June 29, directed by Awoye Timpo.

The play, based on true events, introduces us to Anna, Jeanie, Tommie, Jewel and Charity, who went from workers to fighters and won. Working in a laundry co-op, barely making 40 cents a week, they were unable to make ends meet. Although each of them had something to lose, they decided to go on strike. They canvassed door-to-door to widen their membership and urged laundresses across the city to join or honor the strike. They even involved white laundresses, who were less than two percent of laundresses in the city—an extraordinary sign of interracial solidarity for the time. In the end, the strike not only raised wages, it more importantly established laundresses—and all black women workers—as instrumental to the New South's economy. The white establishment was forced to acknowledge that black women workers, who were former slaves, were not invisible.

This play has the potential to become an important part of our American cultural archive, helping to ensure that the truth of this strike is remembered even if today's authoritarian forces attempt to rewrite or suppress its history.

Kelundra Smith is a critic, arts journalist, and playwright whose mission is to connect people to cultural experiences and each other. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Theatre Critics Association, where she serves on its executive committee and its equity, diversity & inclusion committee. She has been a fellow at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Critics Institute and guest critic at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. She was inspired to write this play after a visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

"The Wash" is officially the recipient of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. It is part of the playwright's "Reconstruction Trilogy," set in post-Civil War Georgia, which also includes "The Vote," a drama of the “Original 33” Black men who were elected to Georgia’s first state legislature, and "The Knot," a romantic comedy in which a couple's commitment to their upcoming wedding is tested by their new-found freedom. Her other plays include "Monarchs," about a Black couple's reconciliation after being separated by the Great Migration in 1935, and "Other Paths to God," in which ICU nurses are scapegoated when federal grant money goes missing in an Ohio medical center.

Director Awoye Timpo is a Brooklyn-based director and producer. She recently staged Ngozi Anyanwu's "Leroy & Lucy "at Steppenwolf. Her Off-Broadway credits include "In Old Age" by Mfoniso Udofia (New York Theatre Workshop), "Good Grief" by Ngozi Anyanwu (Vineyard Theatre), "The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll’d" by Jonathan Payne (Playwrights Realm), "The Homecoming Queen" by Ngozi Anyanwu (Atlantic Theater Company), "Carnaval" by Nikkole Salter (National Black Theatre), "Ndebele Funeral" by Zoey Martinson (59E59, South African tour, Edinburgh Festival), and "Sister Son/Ji" by Sonia Sanchez (Billie Holiday Theater). She also directs prolifically in regional theaters.

The cast includes: Rebecca Haden, Bianca LaVerne Jones, Alicia Pilgrim, Kerry Warren and Eunice Woods.

Set design is by Jason Ardizzone-West. Lighting design is by Victor En Yu Tan. Costume design is by Gail Cooper-Hecht. Prop design design is by Belynda M'baye. Choreography is by Adesola Osakalumi and Jill Vallery.

This is New Federal Theatre's second production at its new home, WP Theater, located at 2162 Broadway @ 76th Street. NFT had previously been in residence in the former home of All Stars Project, 543 West 42nd Street, which has moved to new digs nearer to Times Square.

# # #