Axial Theatre is a Grant Award Winner! Thank you ArtsWestchester for selecting us for the 2026 Matching Grant!
Axial Theater is an ensemble based not-for-profit theater company currently in its 24th season. We are dedicated to supporting the professional development of playwrights and actors through presenting staged workshops, development readings, and full productions.
The SAFEHOUSE new play reading returns with
The Widow Underwood"
by Rita Anderson
Directed by John Hickok
Axial Theatre is proud to welcome back playwright Rita Anderson with her new play “The Widow Underwood” at the SAFEHOUSE play reading series, starring Cady McClain and Susan Ward.
Rita’s short play “Today I Met the Pacific Ocean” was read in the Cactus Flowers short play reading series in 2022.
We hope you will join us this year on MAY 30th at 5PM for a staged reading of her new full length play “The Widow Underwood” at St John’s Episcopal Church - 8 Sunnyside Ave, Pleasantville, NY
Tickets are available at the door or via link in bio. All tickets are suggested donation only and are non-refundable.
ABOUT THE WIDOW UNDERWOOD:
KEELY and UTA are Grand Dames of Theatre who have seen it all—and they have done most of it too. Enter their home where we catch the wives in their natural habitat with guards down. Here, swimming in a sea of theatre mementos, are two women with a rich past who have spent a lifetime together, and they are in that sweet-spot chapter of how Life Goes On, after the curtain falls. An authorized but highly fictionalized portrait of two real artists who starred in and directed over 200 theatrical productions, including a USO tour in Viet Nam. Real names have
been changed.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT:
BIO: Rita Anderson has an MFA Creative Writing and an MA Playwriting. She served as Dramatists Guild Regional Representative and as Faculty for Interlochen. She went on scholarship to The O’Neill, and she won the Ken Ludwig Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center for “Best Body of Work.” Early Liberty, Final Conversations, The 27 Club, Woman Hollering Creek, and Saint Somebody are “Best Selling Plays,” and Rita has a play in She Persisted: Thirty New Ten-Minute Plays by Women 40+. (Introduction by Theresa Rebeck. Applause Books.) Rita has had100 productions and literary publications to include Smith & Kraus’s BEST NEW 10-MINUTE PLAYS and their BEST WOMEN’S MONOLOGUES (2019, 2020, 2022). Rita was a pilot playwright for Hyde Park Theatre Writers’ Group, but the highlight of her emerging career so far was sitting on a playwriting panel with Christopher Durang—and sharing a playbill with Caridad Svich.
* Cady McClain as "Keely"
*Susan Ward as "Uta"
* appearing courtesy of Actors Equity
St John's Episcopal Church
8 Sunnyside Ave
Pleasantville, NY
Axial Theatre’s SAFEHOUSE series continues this season with four compelling new works that spotlight a range of bold theatrical voices.
The lineup includes "The Widow Underwood" by Rita Anderson, a sharp exploration of two theater women navigating legacy and survival; "A Little More Than You Wanted to Spend" by Chris Clavelli, a darkly comic look at value and consequence; "Silenced Voices" by Brian Rose, which confronts the cost of being unheard; and "Fear Less" by Jacquelyn Reingold, an urgent meditation on courage in the face of uncertainty.
Brought to life by a dynamic group of directors including John Hickok, Dan Held, and Cady McClain, these staged readings reflect SAFEHOUSE’s commitment to developing both emerging and established playwrights.
Originally developed in collaboration with Nathan Flower, Samuel Harps, and Evelyn Mertens, SAFEHOUSE continues to serve as a vital creative home for new work and meaningful audience engagement.
An intimate reading of "Building the Wall"
by Robert Shenkkan
Directed by John Hickok
Starring Axial Ensemble members Dan Walworth and Lauren B. Martin
Directed by John Hickok
THE STORY: On January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. Over the next sixteen months, events would unravel that test every American’s strength of character: executive actions, an immigration round-up of unprecedented scale, and a declaration of martial law. Rick finds himself caught up as the frontman of the new administration’s edicts and loses his humanity. In a play that recalls George Orwell’s 1984 and the Nazi regime, BUILDING THE WALL is a terrifying and gripping exploration of what happens if we let fear win.
“[A] terrifyingly plausible work of dystopian fiction…Step by step, Schenkkan gets us to see the way the collapse of institutions leads to the collapse of morality and the rule of law.” —Los Angeles Times.
“In his mesmerizing two-hander, Schenkkan illustrates the chilling speed at which fascistic tendencies can overtake ordinary Americans.” —The Hollywood Reporter.
“At present, BUILDING THE WALL sounds far-fetched; one lesson of the first 100 days is that even presidents must operate within legal confines…but Schenkkan’s project puts down a marker declaring that the American theater always can be—and had better be—a swift-moving imaginative and intellectual platform.” —Washington Post.
“There’s a hold-your-breath inevitability to what is finally disclosed in BUILDING THE WALL, [a] powerful dystopian drama about life in the Donald Trump era…what the writer imagines is not so much a fanciful futurist leap but a calculated cautionary tale…[a] scorcher of a play…” —Variety.
When: Sunday, APRIL 12th at 5PM
Michael Howard Studios
152 West 72nd Street
10th floor
NY, NY 10011
Tickets are suggested donation only.
Dan Walworth as "Rick"
Lauren B. Martin as "Gloria"
