In her 1929 feminist essay, Virginia Woolf wished women writers "A Room of One's Own." SITI Company director Anne Bogart and actress Ellen Lauren explore the issue of women's creativity through the great Modernist's work in Room, making its New York premiere May 23 with Off-Broadway's Classic Stage Company.

Room looks at what it means to be an artistic woman in modern times and what rooms are necessary for living, creating and imagining. Text from "Sketch of the Past," "Professions for the Woman," "Between the Acts" and "A Room of One's Own," as well as a number of Woolf's personal letters are used, compiled by Irish dramaturg Jocelyn Clarke. Room previously premiered at Ohio's Wexner Center then traveled to Pittsburgh and San Francisco.

Associate artistic director of SITI, Lauren has performed in their productions of bobraushcenbergamerica, War of the Worlds, Cabin Pressure and Culture of Desire. Bogart, co-founder of SITI with Company with Tadashi Suzuki, is famed for her avant-garde pieces, which have won her two Obies, a Bessie and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

For tickets and information on Room at CSC, 136 East 13th St., call (212) 677-4210, ext. 10. Classic Stage Company is on the web at http://www.classicstage.com.

— By Christine Ehren