21 May - 6 June, 2026
Directors: Mandy Shuker, Laura May Brunk
For more than twenty-five years, Live Arts volunteers have packed their bags and crossed the Atlantic to work behind the scenes at the world-renowned Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a global playground for fearless storytelling. They return brimming with audacious scripts, experimental staging tricks, and an appetite for boundary-breaking performance. This season, we're channeling that electric energy right here in Charlottesville. Our final shows of the season will be two of our team’s Fringe Favorites. We are excited to produce fully-staged, intimate, boundary-pushing productions chosen from the most exciting new voices we've encountered in Scotland, and adapted for our audience.
Kate Donithen as WOMAN - Strategic Love Play
Austin Bouchard as MAN - Strategic Love Play
August Applewhite as JACK - Godot is a Woman
Nicole Richardson as JOSIE - Godot is a Woman
Lisa Medders as CORDELIA - Godot is a Woman
STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY
This production has 10 performances in the Founders Theater, May 22, 2026 through June 6, 2026.
GODOT IS A WOMAN
This production has 10 performances in the Founders Theater, May 21, 2026 through June 6, 2026.
Tickets for both shows are $20 for adults, and with our new 434 initiative to provide access to theater, we offer $4.34 tickets for anyone 25 or younger or new to Live Arts. Pay-What-You-Can performances sponsored by Ting. Add a ticket to see the second show for $15 ($12 ticket + $3 service charge)! Tickets will be available through the Box Office at [email protected], by phone at 434-977-4177 x123, or online at livearts.org.
About GODOT IS A WOMAN
About the Show: GODOT IS A WOMAN
Since Waiting for Godot was written, non-men all over the world have been waiting to fill the boots of Vladimir and Estragon. Over 70 years later, the playwright is dead and his estate still says no.
A whip-smart interrogation of gender, authorial copyright, and the cultural significance of Madonna’s 1989 album Like a Prayer, GODOT IS A WOMAN is a modern take on a classic play. Or it would be, if the Beckett Estate would only reconsider its long-held limitations on the portrayal of Samuel Beckett’s classic play (itself renowned for innovating theatre).
As our players eagerly await their audience with the rights holders, they wonder why they must wait, consider their alternatives, and even hold court… To pass the time, if nothing else. Clever, provocative, and tipping toward the absurd, GODOT IS A WOMAN explores who is asked to wait and why, how we seek change, and what it means to be “classic.”
About the play: STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY
From Succession writer Miriam Battye comes a razor sharp, not-quite-romantic comedy about the absurdity of modern dating in the seemingly endless quest to find “the one.” After matching online, a man and a woman meet for a date. Although they start off on the (very) wrong foot, they slowly begin to let down their guard in the hope that this time they’ve found something real. Bold, bitingly funny and achingly poignant, Strategic Love Play explores love, loneliness, and lying to (and about) ourselves in the age of swiping.
“As gripping as a friend’s rapid-fire texts from a disastrous first date.” – The Evening Standard
About Miriam Battye
Miriam Battye is a playwright and screenwriter from Manchester. Her plays include: Virgins (Soho Theatre, 2026); Strategic Love Play (Paines Plough, Soho Theatre and Belgrade Theatre, 2023); Scenes with girls (Royal Court Theatre, 2020); Find A Partner (National Theatre Connections) and Trip The Light Fantastic (Bristol Old Vic/Radio 4). She is the recipient of the Harold Pinter Commission 2020. Her work for television includes Dead Ringers (Amazon) and Succession (HBO).
About Silent Faces
Silent Faces is a critically acclaimed theatre company led by Josie Underwood, Jack Wakely and Cordelia Stevenson. After training together at Goldsmiths College, the company was formed in 2015 with the aim of making physical, political, fool-ish theatre. Combining a unique style of physical theatre, clowning, and new writing, Silent Faces create high-concept, seriously silly devised theatre that tackles big issues. Their latest show ‘Godot is a Woman’ was named as one of The Guardian’s ‘20 theatre, comedy and dance shows you shouldn’t miss’ and shortlisted for the BBC Writer’s Room and Popcorn Writing Award at Edinburgh Fringe, before touring nationally throughout 2022/23/24.
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