Women’s History Month in Tampa is not easing in quietly. It arrives like a woman who has stopped apologizing for taking up space. Bold, theatrical, rooted in truth, it unfolds across three stages that together create a cultural uprising. The Powerstories Voices of Women Theatre Festival (already underway March 5 to 8), the world premiere of Hot and Bothered (March 7), and the immersive tribute Women of Resistance (March 25 to 26) are not simply events. They are a declaration that women’s stories are not seasonal, but essential. This is not a polite nod to the past. This is a living, breathing, laughing, sweating truth-telling force.
Powerstories Voices of Women Theatre Festival
By the time this article reaches readers, Powerstories Theatre is already underway with its sixth annual Voices of Women Theatre Festival at Hillsborough College Theatre in Ybor City, a four-day celebration of women playwrights locally and across the country who refuse to shrink their stories to fit anyone’s comfort level. Powerstories has always been a sanctuary for truth telling: messy truth, triumphant truth, inconvenient truth. This year’s lineup continues that mission.
Saturday’s short plays and story night is already sold out, a clear sign of the hunger for women centered storytelling. Audiences are not just attending. They are choosing to witness, to listen, and to be moved.
The full-length staged readings include How to Rob the Art Institute of Chicago by Sam Hernandez, The Tragic Ecstasy of Girlhood by Kira Rockwell, and All My Mothers by Shelli Pentimall Bookler. The sold-out short play selections feature Love, Lost (Rings), and What We Wore by Jessica Burchfield, Black Barbie by Ashley Burgess Laster, What About Ruth? by Charlene Dorsey, and Zeus Gets Cancelled by Alaina Rahaim, along with Seek and Speak Your Powerstory performances.
Powerstories has long opened minds and hearts through true stories of women and girls. The festival is its annual love letter to that mission. When women gather to tell the truth, the room changes. So do the people in it.
Hot and Bothered
As the festival applause builds, the thermostat rises. On March 7, the world premiere of Hot and Bothered lights up The Studio at Carrollwood Cultural Center with humor, honesty, and the kind of boldness that comes from women who have lived enough life to stop caring what anyone thinks.
Written and directed by Deborah Bostock Kelley, this staged reading speaks openly about hot flashes, shifting identities, marriages in mid reboot, and the absurdity of aging in a culture that pretends women evaporate after 50. It does not tiptoe around menopause. It walks straight through it in heels, tossing hot flashes like confetti. It delivers truth, humor, and the kind of sisterhood that forms when women finally say out loud what they have been navigating alone.
The cast from Tampa Metropolitan Improv is bringing the heat to life, featuring Erica Garaffa, Jesse Hutson, Lianne McDonnell-Kruger, Alana Sasdell, and Yvelisse Cedrez Wallace.
A post show conversation with Dr. Sumer Samhoury of Pelvic Vitality Physical Therapy adds real world wisdom about bodies, hormones, sex, and the liberation that comes from naming what women have been taught to hide. The “Bless Your Heart, No F’s Left Menopause Open Mic,” inspired by Melanie Sanders’ “We Do Not Care Club,” offers comedy, confession, and collective exhale. One lucky patron will win a curated box of menopause relief items from the Salt Room, Wesley Chapel and Sustain M.E.
Men are warmly welcomed and encouraged to attend. If women have quietly faced the challenges of menopause for so long, it is fitting that men join the audience to laugh, listen, and leave with a deeper understanding than when they arrived.
Hot and Bothered kicks the door open, fans itself, and says, we are talking about this now. It invites the audience to laugh, sweat, and recognize themselves. It is funny, liberating, and rooted in truth women have earned.
Women of Resistance
The month closes March 25 and 26 at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center with Women of Resistance, an immersive tribute to seven extraordinary women whose courage shaped history. Through dance, art, and music, the production resurrects the stories of Hedy Lamarr, Nancy Wake, Josephine Baker, Andrée Peel, Noor Inayat Khan, Lee Miller, and Virginia Hall.
Women of Resistance is a fierce reminder that women have always been the backbone of change. These women are not mythic figures. They are real, flawed, brilliant, and determined. They resisted erasure. They resisted silence and the idea that history belongs to someone else. They stepped into danger and refused to be minimized. Their stories show what defiance looks like in real time and in real bodies.
The project began when artist and co producer Vicki Chelf visited a small Resistance museum in France and felt called to honor the women whose stories she discovered there. What started as a portrait series evolved into a full stage production after she shared the concept with composer Warren Slim Williams. Since 2021, the team has formed a nonprofit, collaborated with eight choreographers, and developed the work from gallery performances into a fully realized theatrical experience.
This show is a mirror and a megaphone. It recognizes that every woman who stands up, speaks up, or refuses to be silenced becomes part of a lineage. Women of Resistance is not a history lesson. It is a call to remember, to honor, and to continue.
Why These Three Events Matter Together
Across these three stages, a clear throughline emerges. Powerstories insists women’s stories deserve to be heard. Hot and Bothered affirms women’s bodies and lived experiences deserve to be honored. Women of Resistance reminds audiences that women’s courage deserves to be remembered and continued.
Together, they transform Women’s History Month from a commemorative gesture into a living movement. Supporting women is not symbolic. It is active. It is choosing to show up, buy the ticket, sit in the seat, and listen to women’s stories.
This March, Tampa has a rare opportunity not only to celebrate women, but to stand with them, laugh with them, learn from them, and carry their voices forward. In a world that still tries to silence women, showing up is its own loud act of dissent.
Powerstories Voices of Women Theatre Festival (March 5 to 8):
https://powerstories.com/vow-2026
Hot and Bothered (March 7)
Women of Resistance (March 25 to 26):
https://womenofresistance.org
In addition to writing for North Tampa Buzz, Deborah Bostock-Kelley is a local Broadway World theatre reviewer, a reporter for several magazines, and a theatre columnist. She is honored to be the marketing director for Powerstories Theatre since 2000. She has run her award-winning creative services agency, The WriteOne Creative Services, since 2005, specializing in print and television PR, graphic design, web design, and copywriting. The author of a children's early reader and a teen YA fiction anthology, she is also a multi-award-winning playwright known for her powerful, socially conscious one-act and full-length plays, which have been seen across Tampa Bay stages. In her free time, she produces Life Amplified, a musical showcase with all proceeds benefiting local grassroots nonprofits. Her next play, a menopause comedy and event, debuts at the Studio at Carrollwood Cultural Center on March 7. Deborah is a proud ally, wife, mom, past educator, Florida native, and University of Tampa graduate. www.thewriteonecs.com