The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Theatre & Dance program welcomes playwright Aretha Sills as she brings her newest play, Impertinent Girls: The Teenage Writings of Jane Austen, to the program’s 2025 Reading Series on October 3, 2025 at 7:30 p.m. in the Jean Weidner Theatre at The Weidner.
Sills is a respected writer, director and teacher of improvisational theatre, having worked with universities, colleges and professional companies throughout the country. She has worked with Tony-and Emmy-Award winning actors while also training faculty from Northwestern, DePaul, Columbia College, The Second City and The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.
Sills received her MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts from UC Riverside, where she taught in the creative writing program. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Maybelle, The Utne Reader, CALYX Journal, South Bank Poetry Review.
Sills has been working with UW-Green Bay Theatre and Dance students on her new play, Impertinent Girls: The Teenage Writings of Jane Austen, co-directed by UW-Green Bay Theatre and Dance Associate Professor Rebecca Stone Thornberry, in preparation for a staged reading. The play is a hybrid Story Theater adaptation of Jane Austen’s stories that were written when Austen was between the ages of twelve and seventeen. In this story, audiences will be engaged by both Sills’ improvisational techniques in Story Theatre and her prowess for scripted drama. Theatre and Dance students have been rehearsing with Sills in preparation for the reading as well as the debut reading of the play in Door County on September 26, 2025, as part of the Door Kinetic Arts Festival.
UW-Green Bay Theatre and Dance’s Reading Series is free and open to the public. The series is curated and directed by Stone-Thornberry and will present staged readings of diverse works, providing audiences with an intimate exploration of text and performance. Other plays in the series include The Moorsby Jen Silverman (October 30) and Perfect Arrangement by Topher Payne (December 3) – all performances start at 7:30 p.m.
To reserve tickets, visit the UW-Green Bay Theatre and Dance web site or The Weidner.
For more information or media inquiries please contact Prof. Thomas Campbell (Chair of Theatre and Dance) at campbelt@uwgb.edu.
About The Weidner
The Weidner at UW-Green Bay is known for its elegant design and the acoustic excellence of its 2,000-seat main hall, Cofrin Family Hall. It also houses two smaller performance spaces, the Fort Howard recital hall and the Jean Weidner Theatre, along with a dance studio and Grand Foyer. The Weidner has a distinct benefit in being part of a leading institution of higher learning. The Weidner is a home for UW-Green Bay Music and Theatre and Dance programs, community events and productions, and performances by visiting artists and touring companies. Beyond the large-scale touring productions that grace the stage, The Weidner also focuses on scholastic development, programming and an impactful education series — Stage Doors. For more information visit WeidnerCenter.com and sign-up for The Weidner Wire.
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