All Things Equal – The Life and Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Friday, April 3 at 7:30 PM EDT
Written by Tony Award Winning playwright RUPERT HOLMES
Starring Michelle Azar as Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Directed by Laley Lippard
Supreme Court Justice “RBG” welcomes a friend of the family to her cozy chambers to convey, over the course of ninety fascinating and often funny minutes, a sense of her life and its many trials: losing her mother the day before she graduated as valedictorian of her Brooklyn high school … being one of only nine young women studying law at Harvard while also raising a daughter and helping her husband battle cancer … fighting for women’s rights in the nineteen-seventies before condescending all-male courts … and taking courageous stands for human rights as a voice of reason amid a splintering and increasingly politicized Supreme Court. An evening with a great and compassionate icon of straight-thinking American justice emerges … an RBG who is not only “notorious” but victorious as she takes a stand for ordinary people facing the many challenges of a changing world. Bring your scrunchies, your hankies, your humor and your heart to this entertaining and uplifting event!
MICHELLE AZAR
Michelle is humbled and thrilled to be going into her 3rd year as RBG in this powerful piece. Her performance background began in Chicago where she sang with the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s children’s choir.
She received her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and started working immediately as Janis Joplin in Beehive. Once moving to Los Angeles, she received Ovation awards for her roles in both dramatic and comedic roles and was the 2016 Stage Raw award winner for Best Actress in Eric Coble’s My Barking Dog directed by Michael Michetti.
Most favorite stage credits: Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish! (Soraya Theatre) Bella in Lost in Yonkers, and Berte in Boeing, Boeing ( La Mirada Theatre) and Masha in Mayakovsky and Stalin (Cherry Lane Theatre).
Select television and film credits include: NCIS LA, HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER, CRIMINAL MINDS, THE MAGICIANS, AQUARIUS, COMMUNITY, and the upcoming short, CryBaby Michelle is no stranger to the one-woman show, as her own original piece, FROM BAGHDAD TO BROOKLYN, continues to tour around the country after its sold out premiere at the United Solo Festival in NYC.
She is grateful to her family, to this entire artistic team for their faith in her, and to her manager, Alison Caiola, for having a hunch.
LALEY LIPPARD 
Laley Lippard is a director, dramaturg, educator and producer dedicated to social justice through the arts. Lippard has developed new work and directed across the country at theaters such as Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Alliance Theater, Round House Theatre, Cleveland Play House, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, American Theater Company, Magic Theatre, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Theater J, Kitchen Dog, Eaton Workshop, Dobama Theater, foolsFURY Theater, Z Space, Solas Nua, and Virginia Stage Company among others.
Recently, she collaborated and trained throughout Japan, India and Greece on a premiere adaptation of Oedipus by Ellen McLaughlin which performed at ancient sites across Greece. Her site specific work has been noted in The New York Times (The Smuggler with Solas Nua) and her work was adapted to film which premiered in NYC’s 1st Irish Festival (In the Middle of the Fields – US premiere).
Lippard was the co-founder and co-executive producer of The Chicago Home Theater Festival, a five-year city-wide artistic network and annual event that organized artists and neighbors to celebrate local culture, share a communal meal, experience diverse art forms in alternative spaces, and build intentional community across lines of difference.
Other producing work includes Z/Magic Mondays at Magic Theatre as Artistic Associate, with The Welders as Interim Creative Producer, and as the Cleveland Play House inaugural Artistic Directing Fellow. She has artistically collaborated with HowlRound and the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage, Guthrie Theater, Intersection for the Arts, American Conservatory Theater, Court Theatre, Syracuse Stage, and TheatreWorks. Lippard has taught, workshopped, and/or directed at Stanford University, Northwestern University, Kenyon College, Hampshire College, Carnegie Mellon University, and Case Western Reserve MFA Acting program. Lippard is a member of the National Directors Fellowship, the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, an Associate Member of the SDC, and holds an MFA in Directing from Northwestern University.
