Congratulations to Nora’s Playhouse collaborator Martha Pichey on the Off-Broadway premiere of her play Ashes & Ink, being presented by Paper Birch Productions at AMT Theater October 16-November 3, 2024. All of us at Nora’s Playhouse are so excited that New York audiences are getting chance to see this play!
The Nora’s Playhouse team first met Martha in April 2016 after reading her play submission, Ashes & Ink. Following some dramaturgy, discussions, and a developmental table read, we presented our first staged reading of the piece at the Episcopal Actors’ Guild in NYC in May 2017. A second staged reading followed at the debut of Nora’s Salon South at Mission House in Montgomery, Alabama in October 2018. We were enjoying working with Martha on the play’s continued development with an eye toward a full production in Alabama in 2020 when our plans–everyone’s plans–were interrupted by the pandemic. In September-October 2022, we were thrilled to finally bring Ashes & Ink to the stage in its world premiere production at The Sanctuary in Montgomery, Alabama.
Read on for Martha’s recollection of working with Nora’s Playhouse on her debut play:
Two years ago, something amazing happened: Nora’s Playhouse produced ASHES & INK, my first play. After a slew of readings and ‘development opportunities for emerging playwrights’, I’d just about given up on seeing it produced. So when it was chosen for Nora’s first production in Montgomery, Alabama, I was thrilled!
We had a reading there too, a reading with a big plan. It was wonderful way to meet so many people committed to the play. It was a successful money raiser, and the energy kept on building, thanks to Artistic Director (and the play’s director!) Caroline Reddick Lawson, along with an incredible team of dedicated Nora’s Playhouse members and supporters. Then came covid, and I thought, ‘Well, there goes that opportunity…” But that didn’t throw them. And in August of 2022, I found myself in Montgomery listening to actors read my words, learning their lines, and asking me incisive, challenging questions about character motivation.
What a gift for a new playwright who had never been produced before! Here was a development process with a deadline: characters deepened, the story tightened. Some scenes lengthened and others went the way of ‘kill your darlings’. I loved getting to know Montgomery too, a city that was once the epicenter of America’s domestic slave trade. I came away feeling so strongly that every American should make a pilgrimage to this heartening, and heartbreaking, city.
AND NOW? What makes this moment different from any other?!
ASHES & INK is opening Off Broadway on October 16th! And I would never be delivering this great news if it weren’t for Nora’s Playhouse believing in me from the start.
I owe my biggest and loudest THANK YOUS to this wonderful group of dedicated women.
Tickets to Paper Birch’s production of Ashes & Ink are available now at www.ashesandinktheplay.com. Use the promo code Sparrow35 for a discount. (Thanks for the code, Martha!)
