West Stockbridge, MA – American Woman is an ongoing series of solo shows presented by NYC’s The Dramatic Question Theatre (DQT) about women living in the United States. Rita is the Goat, written and performed by Melanie Maria Goodreaux , was developed during her fellowship with DQT’s American Woman and will be co-produced by DQT and The Foundry in West Stockbridge, August 13-15. The solo piece is a fantastical reimagining of a mundane last will and testament reading, a family at odds, poorly placed crawdad juice, a fallen matriarch, a legacy in question and a sibling rivalry so fraught it raises the dead. 

Goodreaux is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, actor, and director-dramatist from New Orleans, Louisiana, living, writing, and creating theater in New York City.  Her plays are surreal, stylistic, poetic, racial, unconventional, and often blend genres for dramatic effect. Douglas Turner Ward of the original Negro Ensemble Theater Co. called her work, “a cornucopia of imaginative theatricality, written with enormous energy and poetic sensibility.” 

The production is directed by Heather Harvey, a Brooklyn-based director/producer/writer who specializes in nontraditional storytelling for stage, audio, and screen. 

Founded in 2009, by former members of the Professional Playwrights’ Unit of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Dramatic Question Theatre (DQT) has developed plays that have both received a wide array of national honors and been nominated for major awards including the John Gassner Award for New Play, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, Drama Desk Award for Best Play, and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play. The company develops plays by women and people of color that deal with race, culture, and class. Concurrently, it builds a diverse audience from the Latinx and Black communities it regularly serves.

The Foundry and DQT began collaborating in January during the series’ online playwriting lab with Amy Brentano, The Foundry’s Producing Artistic Director, acting as a guest dramaturge.

More information about DQT can be found at thedqt.org and tickets to the August performances may be purchased at thefoundryws.com.