Gabrielle L. Kurlander as Susan B. Anthony and Madelyn Chapman as Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Fred Newman's Backstage: A Love-Hate Story of the Women's Movement

For the first time in American history, the two most celebrated candidates in a presidential primary contest are a woman and an African American. But it's not the first time that America has been faced with a choice between race and gender. In 1870, America ratified the 15th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the right to vote for former slaves (males only) and, in doing so, rejected the early women's movement's many-year effort to legalize voting rights for all women.

Backstage: A Love-Hate Story of the Women's Movement is a historical fantasy that explores friendship and betrayal within America's women's suffrage movement and its conflicted relationship to the abolitionist movement. The production opened Friday, April 27 at the Castillo Theatre, 543 West 42nd Street (between 10th and 11th Aves.) and runs through June 10. Performances are: Fri. and Sat. at 7:30pm and Sun. at 2pm. Tickets: $35/30. Senior, group, and student discounts. TDF accepted. To purchase tickets, please click here or call 212-941-1234.

Written by Fred Newman, who is also directing (Mary Fridley is the assistant director), Backstage brings to the stage the 19th century feminist pioneers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, along with abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass.

For many years, Stanton and Anthony had been outspoken abolitionists and worked closely with their friend, Douglass. However, after the end of the civil war, as the fight for passage of the 15th Amendment intensified, the women's and abolitionist movements found themselves on opposing sides. The play examines how these three one-time allies made (or may have made) choices and deals that both ended their alliance and changed the course of American history.

As a playwright and director, Newman brings to Backstage a singular skill for revealing history and historical figures by changing the perspective from which one sees and experiences them. In Backstage, Newman breaks free of the limits of realism by weaving together historical fact and dramatic fiction to reveal possible aspects of Stanton, Anthony, and Douglass, and their interrelationship(s).

Celebrating its 24th year in New York City, the Castillo Theatre presents the political and philosophical plays of its former artistic director, Fred Newman; it is the leading American producer of the German playwright Heiner Müller; and it has produced dozens of political playwrights from Peter Weiss to Ed Bullins to Bertolt Brecht. The 91-seat Castillo Theatre is located on West 42nd Street at the All Stars Project, a $12.5 million performing arts and education center, which sponsors cutting-edge theatre and performance-based after-school education programs.