Awards Ceremony & Celebration, October 16, 2019 at Theaterlab. Pictured (left to right): Dani Martineck as “Ambrose” and Pooya Mohseni as “Laureline.”
Photography by John Quilty.

An early 1900s light blue, pale yellow, and ivory tinted photograph of four people around a table drinking tea. In the center a purple transparent rectangle with white text reads “CERCLE HERMAPHRODITOS by Shualee Cook”. Above to the left is an orang…
SYNOPSIS

In 1895 New York, trans man Ambrose Carlton finds a rare opportunity to beat the restrictively gendered system around him when he meets Laureline Reeves, founder of an underground social club for trans femmes known as the Cercle Hermaphroditos. Ambrose hopes to find a lady at the club he can legally marry, then play the roles expected of them in public while pursuing the life they want in private. But finding the proper match becomes more difficult than he expected, especially after the club is raided by police and the fragile safe place Laureline has created threatens to break apart for good. Based on true historical events.

 

About the Playwright:

Shualee Cook (she/her) writes theatre as a way of asking questions and figuring out what she thinks of some of the world's proposed answers. She is the winner of a 2020 Parity Commission, has been a fellow of the Confluence Regional Writers’ Project, and a resident playwright at Tesseract Theatre in Saint Louis and Stage Left Theatre in Chicago. Productions, readings and workshops include And Certain Women (Shakespeare Festival St. Louis) Earworm (Tesseract Theatre, Campfire Theatre Festival), Cercle Hermaphroditos (Stage Left Theatre Summer Reading, Queer Village Reading Series), An Invitation Out (Mustard Seed Theatre, Quantum Dragon Theatre, Benchmark Theatre Fever Dream Festival), Sunset Artists of the American West, (2016 Chicago New Work Festival, About Face Theatre) and Tempest In A Teapot (R-S Theatrics, 2016 Idle Muse Athena Festival). She has been a finalist for the 2019 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, the 2016 Jane Chambers Award, the 2016 David Calicchio Award, and a two-time finalist for the Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit.

View Shualee’s profile in The Parity Database.

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March ‘21 Reading Cast and Creative Team

Learn more about the cast and crew here

Jordan Ho (xe/she) – Plum Gardner
Kevin Kantor (they/them) – Jennie June
Stevie Love (they/them) – Laureline Reeves
JJ Maley (they/them) – Ambrose Carlton
Scott Martineck (he/him/his) – Officer Clark / Gentleman
Jonathon Ryan (he/him) – Bertram Templeton
Abraham Shaw (he/him) – Officer Leahy / Gentleman
Ianne Fields Stewart (she/they) – Phyllis Angevine
Bailey Macejak (she/her) – Stage Directions

Director: Ludovica Villar-Hauser (she/her)
Playwright: Shualee Cook (she/her)
Dramaturg: Jennifer Kranz (she/her)
Assistant Director: Judith Binus (she/her)
Set/Background and Props Designer: Andreea Mincic (she/her)
Costume Designer: Theo Campbell (they/them)
Production Manager: Priscilla Villanueva (she/her, they/them)

In accordance with New York State Law, the New York State Office of the Attorney General requires that the website and telephone number for the Attorney General’s Charities Bureau be included on all solicitations. They are as follows: https://www.charitiesnys.com/ Phone: (212) 416-8401. A copy of Parity Productions' (EIN 13-4043424) latest annual report may be obtained, upon request, from the organization or from the New York State Attorney General’s Charities Bureau, 28 Liberty Street, 15th Floor, New York, New York 10005.