Open Stage of Harrisburg is looking for a few good women.

Even as the regional theatre prepares for its first annual women’s festival, "WomenSpeak" in June, planning is already underway for the second annual event. The idea for the series came out of collective suggestions and serendipitous contacts. The eclectic result is what project director and Open Stage board member Dr. Clair Myers claims is clearly what the regional theatre should be doing.

"We’ve always been about a diverse audience, intimate space, and new voices," Myers pointed out, "and there’s nothing more intimate than one woman on stage, in a minimal setting with few or no props and no set. These performers present human stories from a woman’s perspective, but their stories cross gender lines."

This year’s "WomenSpeak," sponsored by Penn State Geissinger Women’s Health Center, runs through the month of June, culminating in a one-time only performance June 26 by nationally acclaimed playwright/actor Lisa Kron, presenting her Obie Award-winning play "2.5 Minute Ride." It took approximately five years for the piece to go from inception to being finally "set" last spring, although it has been performed many times all over the country as it evolved. While touted as "an emotional roller coaster ride through the Kron family album," the artist hopes audiences will be able to see their own life experiences.

"The piece appears to speak to children of the Holocaust, gays, mid-westerners, and amusement park visitors," Kron observed in a telephone interview from New York, "but I think it transcends that, and people respond to the underlying humanity of it. It evokes emotional extremes — very funny, moving, shocking — but the audience isn’t directed to feel, they have to find their own responses. That’s what is so theatrical and exciting for me — that interaction with the audience."

All the pieces in this year’s WomenSpeak are autobiographically based, though the performers have taken different paths and use different styles to bring their words and characters to life on-stage.

Camp Hill native Vicki Juditz (pronounced "Yuditz"), who now lives in Los Angeles, is the daughter of retired Cedar Cliff High School speech and theatre teacher and coach Lillian Juditz, one of the forces behind the development of "WomenSpeak." Juditz evolved from character acting in commercials to storytelling, and from German Lutheranism to Judaism (interestingly, her last name means "Jewish" or "of things Jewish"). She describes her work as usually humorous with a serious thread, and always about things that have changed her life. Such is "Teshuvah, Return," which will be performed at Open Stage June 1, 2 and 3 at 8 p.m.

"In Hebrew, ‘teshuva’ means to return to the right path in your life, or for non-Jews, it can mean ‘return to the fold,’" Juditz said. "Rabbis believe converts have Jewish souls, and as I became acquainted with, and later studied Judaism, I found I believed in its main principles, and found a place to belong where I believed in the tenets."

Juditz’ path also took her to Germany, where she met and tried to understand relatives who, she says, were ordinary people vulnerable to Hitler’s charisma and the promises of Nazism.

"The heart of Judaism is ‘tikkun olam’, which means ‘to repair the world,’ she explained. "If you have this deep sense, whether or not you’re Jewish, you won’t be drawn into evils against society. This, then. is what ‘Teshuva, Return’ is about — my growth into moral and personal responsibility to my world."

Lancaster comedic and movement artist Terri Mastrobuono’s personal pilgrimage is also the basis for her piece, "Andata e Ritorno" (Round Trip), that will be performed at Open Stage June 8, 9, 10 at 8 p.m., and Sunday, June 11 at 2:30 p.m. Always interested in acting, Mastrobuono started investigating mime and other physical theatre when as a teenager her trachea was fractured in an automobile accident and she couldn’t talk. Over the years she has frequently performed "street theatre" in such venues as the Renaissance Faire, and was the co-founder of the improvisational troupe "Co-Motion" in Lancaster. It all came together in three years ago when she went to Morcone, her grandfather’s home town in Italy’s Campagna region — and then the following year when she went to Emilia in Tuscany to study the 500-year-old theatre form known as commedia del’arte, in which ordinary people and circumstances are humorously exaggerated and broadly humanized in a physical way.

"In commedia del’arte, everything I had been doing and studying theatrically coalesced," Mastrobuono observed. "This art form is a major theatrical force, but it’s also an art form that is indigenous to my culture. I hadn’t realized how much my identity connected to that culture. I was in the midst of a personal and professional upheaval at the time. Finding my family was a surprise, but profound, and an act of personal recovery. Studying commedia del’arte was an act of artistic recovery."

In "Andata e Ritorno," Mastrobuono plays two lower class Italian servants — one male, one female — whose escapades as they adjust to life in the city closely parallel the American Italian immigrant experience.

"I’d like the audience to leave with a sense of importance of their roots, an awakening to the importance of their need to belong," she commented. "In our American culture, we’re all or have been displaced persons, and I think it is important to know who are, how you came to be, and where you belong."

The third local performance artist to be featured in WomenSpeak is Harrisburg master of comic character, Karen Gray. Her latest work, "Eleven Ex-Boyfriends Defend Their Actions," directed by Clair Myers, will be presented at Open Stage June 15–17, and 22–24, at 8 p.m., as well as Sunday June 18
at 2:30 p.m.

Gray has now created three solo performance pieces (her "Swirlies" was seen this past March at Whitaker), and believes the process has taught her about narrative freedom.

"I’ve gotten to explore combinations of character and stand-up comedy, and now I’m bringing in Karen more," she elaborated. "I’m experimenting with different devices — from stand-up comedy, to improvisational/interactive theatre, to character monologue, plus traditional stage plays. I’m working on combining these elements in my writing — mining the cheap little specks of copper down in my soul!"

There is not, in fact, anything "cheap" or "little" about the rich creative lode these performance artists are mining. They will be embracing their experiences, digging down into their souls, and reaching out to their audiences in June at Open Stage of Harrisburg. Don’t miss WomenSpeak.