The Pitch
A Simple Herstory is a groundbreaking, award-winning, deviant, multi-platform audio fiction exploration of the 100+ women who have run for President of the United States. The initial season revolves around Victoria Woodhull, arguably the first woman to run in 1872 — before women had the right to vote. Season 1 is presented by the NYIT Award winning company, The Muse Project, and the Obie winning theater company, The Tank.
The first season features luminaries of the stage, including Lucille Lortel nominee Florencia Lozano, Tony winner Kara Young, Tony nominee Kate Burton, and Tony nominee Daphne Rubin-Vega, among many (many) more. Noted theater critic, David Cote, describes A Simple Herstory's first season as an "exhilarating ride." The series is also Executive Produced by the Peabody Award winning creator, Jenny Turner Hall.
In 2022, the cast and crew for the podcast were crowned The Tank's "Artists of the Year," and the series was featured in Forbes. A Simple Herstory partnered with the Tony winning company, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), for their Quills Fest to produce an installation of the podcast with the Merchant's House Museum in New York City. For the festival, the team also collaborated with Welcome to Night Vale's Cecil Baldwin, and engaged in a panel discussion with The Horror of Dolores Roach's Aaron Mark. Quills won a 2023 Telly Award (Bronze Telly Award - People's Telly - Immersive & Mixed Reality).
In 2023, the podcast was also featured at the Arlington County Fair and the Theatre Week Kickoff Fest at Arena Stage. A workshop of Season 2 was presented at The Tank.
In 2024, the creative team for A Simple Herstory ventured to Scripps College for Scripps Presents, combining an exhibition of excerpts from Season 1 with a panel on the show's themes. Season 2 received a multi-evening workshop presentation at Vassar's prestigious Powerhouse Theater Program during the summer. The show also became an Official Webby Award Honoree (Best Indie Podcast).
The first season features luminaries of the stage, including Lucille Lortel nominee Florencia Lozano, Tony winner Kara Young, Tony nominee Kate Burton, and Tony nominee Daphne Rubin-Vega, among many (many) more. Noted theater critic, David Cote, describes A Simple Herstory's first season as an "exhilarating ride." The series is also Executive Produced by the Peabody Award winning creator, Jenny Turner Hall.
In 2022, the cast and crew for the podcast were crowned The Tank's "Artists of the Year," and the series was featured in Forbes. A Simple Herstory partnered with the Tony winning company, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), for their Quills Fest to produce an installation of the podcast with the Merchant's House Museum in New York City. For the festival, the team also collaborated with Welcome to Night Vale's Cecil Baldwin, and engaged in a panel discussion with The Horror of Dolores Roach's Aaron Mark. Quills won a 2023 Telly Award (Bronze Telly Award - People's Telly - Immersive & Mixed Reality).
In 2023, the podcast was also featured at the Arlington County Fair and the Theatre Week Kickoff Fest at Arena Stage. A workshop of Season 2 was presented at The Tank.
In 2024, the creative team for A Simple Herstory ventured to Scripps College for Scripps Presents, combining an exhibition of excerpts from Season 1 with a panel on the show's themes. Season 2 received a multi-evening workshop presentation at Vassar's prestigious Powerhouse Theater Program during the summer. The show also became an Official Webby Award Honoree (Best Indie Podcast).
The What... A Little More About The Show...
Infused with a curiosity about women, performance, and power, A Simple Herstory was ideated several years ago by actor and producer, Jocelyn Kuritsky. She thought...'Victoria Woodhull, Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton...but, surely, there had to have been more women who'd tried to become President, right?' Right! 100+ more. Kuritsky called her good friend (and playwright and history buff) Jonathan A. Goldberg. They met in a coffee shop and started talking... It is extraordinary to think that so many women have attempted to run for President of the United States. Who were they? Who do we imagine they were? What do we know about them? What don't we know about them? What did they say? How did they say it?
A Simple Herstory has evolved into a coiled and cunning, theatrical and high concept podcast series about the women who have run for President of the United States. Over a hundred women have made a run for it, but their stories are rarely heard. This podcast series features the lives of the women who aggressively, voraciously, and passionately sought to assume the highest office in the land — a proposition fraught with staggering loss (and possibility). Each season will shift tonally from one candidate to the next. Executed with a commitment to experimentation and structural narrative deviations, the series bends our expectations; not just of content, but of form.
The first season is about the first woman to make a bid for the presidency — Victoria Woodhull. (Though "first" is certainly debatable). She ran in 1872, before women had the right to vote. She was a suffragist, a labor advocate, a newspaper publisher, a stock broker, an actress, a con artist, and a spiritualist medium. The series is not just about bringing to light the fact that women have run for a long time (or that over 100 women have made a run for the presidency) — it's about the fact that complex, flawed, ambitious women have never stopped running. A Simple Herstory is an investigation of how we receive women's voices, the association of politics and theatrics, and ultimately how one can accrue influence. It's about the deeply human need for power, an assessment of how we define power, and how a seemingly lonely compulsion can become the unrelenting pursuit of the collective. The project is a warts and all look at the women, their ambitions, their drives, their ascents, their plummets, and their self reinventions. Contextualizing and deconstructing our history, and looking back at the women who have run will provide audiences with amusing, jagged, and labyrinthine examinations of these candidates and their search for authority over the highest office. The Muse Project — dedicated to centering the literal and metaphorical voices of women actors, and The Tank — dedicated to championing new ideas and forms of expression, partner for a slice of "herstory."
A Simple Herstory has evolved into a coiled and cunning, theatrical and high concept podcast series about the women who have run for President of the United States. Over a hundred women have made a run for it, but their stories are rarely heard. This podcast series features the lives of the women who aggressively, voraciously, and passionately sought to assume the highest office in the land — a proposition fraught with staggering loss (and possibility). Each season will shift tonally from one candidate to the next. Executed with a commitment to experimentation and structural narrative deviations, the series bends our expectations; not just of content, but of form.
The first season is about the first woman to make a bid for the presidency — Victoria Woodhull. (Though "first" is certainly debatable). She ran in 1872, before women had the right to vote. She was a suffragist, a labor advocate, a newspaper publisher, a stock broker, an actress, a con artist, and a spiritualist medium. The series is not just about bringing to light the fact that women have run for a long time (or that over 100 women have made a run for the presidency) — it's about the fact that complex, flawed, ambitious women have never stopped running. A Simple Herstory is an investigation of how we receive women's voices, the association of politics and theatrics, and ultimately how one can accrue influence. It's about the deeply human need for power, an assessment of how we define power, and how a seemingly lonely compulsion can become the unrelenting pursuit of the collective. The project is a warts and all look at the women, their ambitions, their drives, their ascents, their plummets, and their self reinventions. Contextualizing and deconstructing our history, and looking back at the women who have run will provide audiences with amusing, jagged, and labyrinthine examinations of these candidates and their search for authority over the highest office. The Muse Project — dedicated to centering the literal and metaphorical voices of women actors, and The Tank — dedicated to championing new ideas and forms of expression, partner for a slice of "herstory."
Special thanks to Jennifer Allen, Vanessa Aspillaga, Taylor Barfield, Sara Barker, Andrés Bartos, Ben Beckley, Teddy Bergman, Pepper Binkley, Havilah Brewster, Rora Brodwin, Oliver Butler, Jaime Carrillo, Luis Castro, Jess Chayes, Naveen Bahar Choudhury, Jody Christopherson, Alek Deva, Jay Dintaman, Maria Dizzia, Amanda Duarte, Dianna Edgil, Matt Fidler, Kellie Fitzgerald, Joe Flippin, Meg Flippin, Beth Gittleman, Robert A.K. Gonyo, Abe Greenwald, Rebecca Gushin, Jessica Hansen, Jan Leslie Harding, Jake Hart, Chisa Hutchinson, Bob Jaffe, Kendra Jain, Landen Jones, Zac Kline, Portia Krieger, Jenny Lawton, Robert Emmet Lunney, Melissa Lusk, Kate MacCluggage, Rami Margron, Kate Marks, Rebecca Louise Miller, Winter Miller, Brian Miskell, Carol Monda, Zainab Musa, Lila Neugebauer, Carol Ostrow, Emily Louise Perkins, Jessica Pohly, Kevin Ramsay, Katrin Redfern, Tlaloc Rivas, Stephanie Emma Roberts, Heidi Rodewald, Nina Roy, Parris Sarter, Duncan Sheik, David Shih, Christopher Silveri, Wayne Shulmister, Leigh Silverman, Ciji Singletary, David Skeist, Rachel Sussman, Jennifer Joan Thompson, Paco Tolson, Joe Wang, Sandra Wilcox, Lanie Zipoy, Jennifer H. Zoble for their early support of this project.
