"Bella Bella" Play

Four-time Tony Award® winner Harvey Fierstein (Casa Valentina) returns to MTC taking on New York City’s very own political firebrand, Bella Abzug, in his new raucous, heart-rending and absurdly humorous solo show. Set in 1976, on the eve of her bid to become New York State’s first female Senator, Bella Bella finds this larger-than-life, truth-slinging, groundbreaking, hat-wearing icon squirreled away in the bathroom of a midtown hotel awaiting that night’s election results while a coterie of family and celebs await her entrance. Directing is Kimberly Senior (The Niceties).

BIOS

HARVEY FIERSTEIN

Harvey Fierstein won two Tony Awards® for Torch Song Trilogy (Best Play, Best Actor) which was recently revived on Broadway this past fall, starring Michael Urie as ‘Arnold Beckoff’ as our "write me an essay" experts state. He has also written the Tony-winning hit Kinky Boots (Best Musical), as well as La Cage aux Folles (Tony and Drama Desk Awards), Newsies (Tony nominated), Casa Valentina (Tony nominated), A Catered Affair (12 Drama Desk nominations), Safe Sex (Ace Award), Legs Diamond, Spookhouse, Flatbush Tosca, Common Ground and more. He recently wrote teleplays for NBC’s live TV broadcasts of “Hairspray” and “The Wiz.” He also revised the book for Funny Girl, which ran to critical acclaim in London.

Our "write my essays" experts say that his political editorials have been published in the New York Times, TV Guide and the Huffington Post, and broadcast on PBS’s “In the Life.” His children’s book, The Sissy Duckling (Humanitas Award), is now in its fifth printing. As an actor, Fierstein is known worldwide for his performances in films including Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day, and Bullets Over Broadway, on stage in Hairspray (TonyAward), Fiddler on the Roof, La Cage aux Folles, and on television shows such as “Smash,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “The Good Wife,” “Cheers” (Emmy nomination), “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” and “Nurse Jackie.”

BELLA SAVITSKY ABZUG

Bella Savitsky Abzug (July 24, 1920 – March 31, 1998) was a lawyer, US Congresswoman, and activist with a personality as big as her hats. She was born in the Bronx to Russian-Jewish immigrants who empowered her from a young age to fight the system. She gave her first public speech at 11 years old at a subway station to raise money for the Zionist Youth Organization. Our "write my research paper" specialists say that Abzug’s passion to be a lawyer lead her to study labor law at Columbia University on a full ride scholarship. She married Martin Abzug in 1944, and ran her own practice while raising her two daughters, Liz and Eve.

Her tenacious and exuberant fervor made Bella a controversial icon attracting many supporters and enemies. Bella was a radical before it was fashionable, and was a founding feminist alongside Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem, and Shirley Chishom. After serving for three terms in Congress, Bella ran for Senate in 1976, becoming the first woman to do so in the state of New York. During the last decade of her life, Bella established and ran several nonprofit advocacy groups working for achieving full rights for women internationally. Bella Abzug was a powerful voice for the ignored and oppressed, with an indefatigable spirit whose agenda was too pure for her moment in time.

Our team

KIMBERLY SENIOR - Director

Kimberly Senior is a freelance director and the director of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning play Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar as our "write research paper for me" specialists state. Most recently Kimberly made her HBO debut with Chris Gethard: Career Suicide, which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. Kimberly was awarded the 2016 TCG Alan Schneider Award. She is also the recipient of the 2016 Special Non-Equity Jeff Award for her work as a trail blazer, champion and role model for emerging artists and the 2018 Primary Stages Einhorn Award. New York Credits: Disgraced (Broadway); Chris Gethard: Career Suicide (Judd Apatow); The Niceties (Manhattan Theatre Club); Sakina’s Restaurant (Audible); The Who and The What; Disgraced (LCT3); Discord (Primary Stages); Engagements (Second Stage Uptown). Regional Credits: Christmas at Pemberley (Milwaukee Rep); The Niceties (Huntington and McCarter); Sheltered (Alliance Theatre); Support Group for Men; Disgraced; Rapture, Blister, Burn (Goodman Theatre); Buried Child; The Scene; Marjorie Prime; Diary of Anne Frank; Hedda Gabler; The Letters (Writers Theatre); Other Than Honorable (Geva); Sex with Strangers (The Geffen Playhouse); Disgraced (Mark Taper Forum, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre); The Who and The What (La Jolla Playhouse); Little Gem (City Theatre); Want; The North Plan (Steppenwolf); among others. She is the proud mother of Noah (12) and Delaney (10).She is a member of SDC.

LAURA SMITH - Production Stage Manager

Second Stage: Dying City. Playwrights Horizons: Noura. The Public: The Low Road. Signature Theatre: The Antipodes. Atlantic Theater: The Great Leap, Tell Hector I Miss Him. PlayCo: Intractable Woman. Juilliard: Appropriate. Baltimore Center Stage: Detroit ’67, As You Like It, 4000 Miles, Amadeus, Wild With Happy, dance of the holy ghosts, Clybourne Park, An Enemy of the People, The Whipping Man, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Shakespeare Theater Company: Salome. Woolly Mammoth: Gruesome Playground Injuries, The Unmentionables.

LINDSAY EBERLY - Stage Manager

Off-Broadway/NY: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; Paradise Blue (Signature); Tell Hector I Miss Him (Atlantic); Intractable Woman (PlayCo); Carnegie Hall’s West Side Story. Regional: three seasons at Baltimore Center Stage including A Civil War Christmas and Amadeus. Nine seasons at CATF including Antonio’s Song and The Niceties. Regional: Recent Alien Abductions (ATL), Queens for a Year (Hartford Stage).

JOHN LEE BEATTY - Scenic Design

John Lee Beatty has designed many shows for MTC starting in 1973, including Doubt; Proof; Outside Mullingar; Venus in Fur; Rabbit Hole; Good People; The Whipping Man; and Lips Together, Teeth Apart. Among more than 115 Broadway productions are JUNK, Sweat, Other Desert Cities, Chicago, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Burn This, Talley’s Folly, The Color Purple, The Sisters Rosensweig, and notable revivals of A Delicate Balance, The Heiress, The Royal Family and Dinner at Eight, and many seasons at Lincoln Center Theater, Circle Rep, City Center Encores and Shakespeare in the Park that led to multiple Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Obie awards and the Theater Hall of Fame.

RITA RYACK - Costume Design

MTC: Casa Valentina (Tony nom.), Time Stands Still, The Country House, The Loman Family Picnic, What’s Wrong With This Picture, It’s Only a Play, Hunting Cockroaches and many more. Broadway: Hillary and Clinton, My One and Only (Tony nom.), The Human Comedy. Off-Broadway: A Lie of the Mind