Media Release
Danny Feldman, Producing Artistic Director of Pasadena Playhouse, the State Theater of California and recipient of the 2023 Regional Theatre Tony Award, is proud to announce Obie Award-winning director LAURIE WOOLERY will direct the first post-Broadway production of the lauded Real Women Have Curves: The Musical, playing April 14 – May 16, 2027 as the 3rd Mainstage offering of Pasadena Playhouse’s 2026-2027 season.
Based on the play by LA playwright JOSEFINA LÓPEZ – staged at Pasadena Playhouse in 2015 – this unforgettable musical features a Tony-nominated score by Grammy® Award-winning songwriter JOY HUERTA(Jesse & Joy) and BENJAMIN VELEZ (Kiss My Aztec), and a book by LISA LOOMER (Girl, Interrupted) with NELL BENJAMIN (Mean Girls).
In 1987 Boyle Heights, Ana Garcia is torn between her own ambitions, her family’s expectations, and the vibrant community of women whose love has shaped her. Full of heart, humor, and irresistible music, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical is a joyful celebration of life’s unexpected curves and the resilient corazon of Latina women.
Woolery remarks on the significance of directing Real Women Have Curves: The Musical in her hometown of Los Angeles—“Los Angeles raised me. Every corner holds memories of communities who lovingly taught me to listen deeply. They imprinted upon me how to tell stories with empathy and truth. I remember decades ago gathering with a small group of other young Latine women in the garage of Josefina Lopez’s home in East LA all united with a desire to tell stories from our lived experience. To now have the opportunity to tell this iconic story in my hometown of Los Angeles at this moment in time is both a dream and my greatest honor.”
Laurie Woolery is an OBIE Award-winning director, playwright, cultural organizer and citizen artist who works at the intersection of theater and civic engagement. She has worked in theaters nationally and internationally such as The Public Theater, National Theatre (London), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory, Weiwuying National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Taiwan), Trinity Repertory, Goodman Theatre, Cornerstone Theater Company, and South Coast Repertory.
Selected projects include the rolling world premiere of Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta, Somewhere by Matthew Lopez at Denver Center, Come From Away at Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Laurie has a long history of working on new plays with notable playwrights like Tanya Saracho (The Tenth Muse/OSF), Charise Castro Smith (El Huracan/Yale Rep), Marisela Trevino Orta (The River Bride/OSF), Aditi Brennan Kapil (Imogen Says Nothing/Yale Rep), Maria Irene Fornes (Promenade/NY City Center Encores), Julia Cho (The Language Archive/OSF), etc. Her musical adaptations of Shakespeare plays As You Like It co-created with Shaina Taub and The Tempest with Benjamin Velez received world premieres at The Public’s Delacorte Theater.
In 2020, Laurie produced the documentary Under The Greenwood Tree and curated the public art installation The Seed Project on the façade of The Public Theater that featured hundreds of New Yorkers. Laurie’s long history developing new work ranges from incarcerated women, veterans, domestic workers, immigrants, intergenerational communities to residents of a Kansas town devastated by a tornado. She creates site-specific work ranging from a working sawmill in Eureka to the banks of the Los Angeles River.
For over a decade, Laurie served as Director of Public Works at The Public Theater, a program that seeks to engage the people of New York by making them creators and not just spectators. Laurie is the former Associate Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater Company and Conservatory Director at South Coast Repertory. Laurie is the founding member of The Sol Project, 2020 United States Artist recipient, 2021 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellow, Yale’s 2021 Beineke Fellow and named Person of the Year at the 2022 National Theatre Conference.
