Avra Sidiropoulou: Addressing an Age of Upheaval

May 8, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Karen [Malpede’s] use of the play [Troy Too] happens in a most amazing and in a structurally brilliant way. She puts two goddesses that appear to teach us a lesson about how lives need to be re-configured. She also uses the story of The Trojan Women, a story of one nation turned against another, to tell us that even in these circumstances that we’re living in, these really turbulent times, there is a sense of solidarity that needs to be built among these women and these people, in general, who have been forced to leave their homes, be exiled, who have suffered the violence of the authorities…In a very subtle and beautifully poetic way The Trojan Women and the words of Euripides come together and blend with the rhythms of today’s world and of the city of New York, that has had its own share of violence, misfortune, tragedies, in the 21st century.
 

My work has always been about bringing people together, forging new transcultural and transnational artistic relationships, and combining research with theatre-making in order to explore and extend the limits of creativity.

Avra Sidiropoulou is a theatre director and academic. She is the Artistic Director of Persona Theatre Company. She has published extensively on directing theory and practice, contemporary performance and dramaturgy and is the author of Directions for Directing. Theatre and Method (Routledge 2018) In 2020 she was nominated for the Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award by the League of Professional Theatre Women.

She is also the co-editor of Adapting Greek Tragedy. Contemporary Contexts for Ancient Texts(CUP 2021) and editor of Staging 21 st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics and Global Crisis (Routledge, 2022) In Spring 2023 she will be a Visiting Scholar at the School of the Arts of Columbia University in New York.

Avra holds a PhD degree in Theatre Studies (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), an M.F.A. in Directing (Columbia University), an MPhil in American Literature (Cambridge University) and an M.A. in Text and Performance (King’s College London). Her main areas of scholarly specialization include directing theory, the ethics of adaptation, contemporary dramaturgy and practice as research. She was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, the Martin E. Segal Centre at CUNY, MIT, the Universities of Leeds and Surrey, the Institute of Theatre Studies at Freie University, the Berlin and a Japan Foundation Fellow at the University of Tokyo.

Theater Three Collaborative in New York and Persona Theater Company in Athens, two companies known for their social justice work, will present the world premiere of Karen Malpede‘s Troy Too, a poetic play in dialogue with Euripides’ The Trojan Women and the current crises of Covid, climate change, and racism. Directed by Avra Sidiropoulou, Troy Too’s multiracial cast features one of Greece’s finest classical actresses, Lydia Koniordou, who brings a modern and ancient Hecuba to life in English and ancient Greek.

This limited engagement runs May 11-21, 2023 at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue, Manhattan). Tickets are now on sale at HERE Arts Center 

Crafted in the heat of 2020 from language found on the streets during the protests for racial justice, in hospitals during the Covid lockdown, and from the mouths of endangered fish in the sea, Troy Too is an enraged and poignant play of what we have survived, and a poetic elegy for those who did not. Greek director Sidiropoulou, known for her innovative multimedia staging of modern and classical texts, brings Troy Too shockingly alive in an international production that cuts across languages and cultures. The play, one of the first to tackle the Covid pandemic, is an angry yet beautiful communal lament, one that has been lacking from public life.

Persona is a state of mind, a heart that beats with inspiration, a body that balances harmoniously but also irregularly, a team that experiments, adapts and transcends, simultaneously centrifugal and centripetal. It is a small hub of talent which was established in Athens several years ago as a way to keep us all connected to what is going on in the arts internationally.

Persona Theatre Company Fund Raising Campaign

Avra Sidiropoulou: https://persona.gr/en/people/avra-sidiropoulou/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/avrasid

Persona Theatre Company:  https://persona.gr/en/

Youtube Persona Theatre Company: https://www.youtube.com/@personatheatercompany4935

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Pamela S.K. Glasner: Fighting for Fairness

April 2, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Getting my Masters at Harvard at age sixty-nine, I hope that I’m inspiring other women that there are no limits. There’s absolutely no limits except for those you place on yourself. I never actually wrote a screenplay and now all these Film Festivals think I’m such a great writer.. . There’s always a first time for everything. Why not me?

“If you want to reach people—REALLY reach them—you have to touch their hearts. Art is what does that. And my art is my writing.”

Pamela S. K. Glasner is a critically acclaimed published author of fiction and non-fiction, a filmmaker, a playwright, a social advocate. She is also a proud member of the Writer’s Guild of America, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, the Connecticut Historical Society and Grace Episcopal Church. Additionally, she is a Registered Reader at both the Royal Society of London and the British Library.

As the daughter of two senior citizens who were exploited and abused by a stranger who insinuated himself into their lives for the sole purpose of embezzling their life savings, Glasner produced Last Will and Embezzlement, her ground-breaking and award-winning documentary. Starring Hollywood’s icon, the late Mickey Rooney, the film explores the financial exploitation of the elderly. In Glasner’s frustrating and ultimately futile struggle to obtain justice for her parents, she learned how prevalent these crimes are and how safe from prosecution and conviction the perpetrators are. For that reason, Glasner lectures nationally on the topic, teaching people how to protect themselves and those they love and/or care for from the countless vultures who are always waiting in the wings.

Hollywood icon, the late Mickey Rooney, was an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He was awarded one Oscar (“In recognition of his 50 years of versatility in a variety of memorable film performances”) and was nominated for four others. He won several other awards including a Golden Globe and an Emmy. Working as a performer since he was a small child, Mickey had one of the longest careers of any actor, spanning almost 90 years. Before he passed away in April of 2014, he was the last surviving male star from1930s Hollywood.

On March 2, 2011 Mickey testified before the United States Congress when they were considering legislation meant to curb elder abuse. He told the members of the special Senate committee that he was financially exploited by a family member, though he refused to publicly name his abuser. Not long after, Mickey’s finances were permanently entrusted into the hands of a Conservator in order to protect what remained, and to attempt to recover the missing money, which was a considerable amount. Sadly, in the end, after a protracted legal battle, his perpetrators returned a tiny fraction of what they had stolen.

Glasner’s non-fiction book, Silver and Gold, the companion piece to Last Will, was written in honor of her deceased parents and released on what would have been her father’s 93rd birthday.
She is also the bookwriter and co-composer/co-lyricist of Empty Rooms, a musical play which was endorsed by Joey Nederlander (of the world-famous Broadway producers). In his Detroit home he told her, “Your work is as good as anything I’ve ever heard on the strip.”

Her other advocacy work centers around Finding Emmaus, her historically and factually accurate novel which explores the treatment and mistreatment of the mentally ill over the course of about 350 years, and how society marginalizes and victimizes those deemed to be ‘different’ (aka ‘less than’).

Glasner earned her Bachelor’s Degree as a Dean’s List student from Eastern Connecticut State University and received her Masters in Creative Writing and Literature from Harvard University. She attributes her love of architecture and antique restoration—two aspects of her life which are woven into the fabric of Finding Emmaus—to her grandfather who, after emigrating to the US from Austria in the 1920’s, became an iron worker and joined the ranks of those who left their legacy in the form of New York City’s incomparable skyline. But her real hero, though gone more than forty years, is still her grandmother, whose strength, courage and unfailing faith taught her that “nothing and no one can keep you from your heart’s desire without your permission and your cooperation.”


Presently, Ms. Glasner resides in rural Connecticut where she continues working on several new projects and advocating for those who don’t always have a voice of their own.

Ms. Glasner’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pamela.glasner

Ms. Glasner’s Huffington Post Page: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/pamela-glasner

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4127649/

“Full Moon Dog Festival” official website: http://www.fullmoondog.com/

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Cindy Cooper: Seeking Asylum through The Arts

February 9, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Theatre is the one area, aside from religion, where people are presented with stories; they can hear them, they can see vicariously what can happen. They have a conversation with what’s happening with their own experience, and they actually can change . . .making a new commitment to advocacy and that is so beautiful.

Human rights and civil rights will be realized only when we fully hear the voices, ideas and creative concepts of womxn over 40, whose perspectives have long been marginalized and stifled. ~ Cindy Cooper

Cynthia L. Cooper (Cindy to most people) is an award-winning playwright, journalist, author and activist. She became a playwright to use the power of the stage to address topics and issues that were flattened and ignored by popular media. Her plays are united by a passion for socially relevant topics, stylized staging and a dramatic-comedic mix.

Her plays (15 full length, 35 short) include Silence Not, A Love Story and At the Train Station in Munich about a woman who resisted the rise of the Nazis; Heaven Scent about a gay couple that encounters prejudice when they seek to adopt; Stones of Tiananmen, about Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Lui Xiaobo, his artist-wife and the fight for freedom of speech, and Running on Glass and How She Played the Game about overlooked women in sports, and All Databases Are Incomplete about the ordinariness and invisibility of intimate partner violence

Stories of asylum seekers and asylum helpers — of the search for safety and the offer of sanctuary — are revealed in unfolding monologues in I Was A Stranger Too, sharing the hopes that can emerge from a single act of caring and concern.

A woman, propelled by the memory of her mother’s rescue from the Holocaust, is drawn to help asylum seekers in the U.S.  As she attempts to navigate the asylum system, she encounters a rich mosaic of people who are fleeing persecution, and others determined to welcome them.Drawn from dozens of interviews with people in Minnesota and elsewhere, the play takes audience members beyond stereotypes to the power and capacity of the human spirit. I Was A Stranger Too tells the story of hope that can arise amid chaos, difficulty and trauma.

With a deep belief in the transformational power of theater to open hearts and minds, over 20 years ago, she founded ReproFreedomArts.org (formerly Words of Choice), which produces creative works about reproductive health, freedom, rights and justice, and has taken performances live to 20 states, livestreamed to tens-of-thousands of viewers, and does walking tours on reproductive freedom in New York City.

A two-time Jerome Fellow, Cindy’s plays have been seen in New York at Primary Stages, The Women’s Project, Wings, Lincoln Center Clark Studio, Town Hall, Anne Frank Center USA, EST New Works, Center for Jewish History, WOW Café, Culture Project, Art and Work Ensemble, and more, as well as in Chicago, Minneapolis, DC, Philadelphia, Boston, Reno, LA, Richmond, Cape Cod, San Francisco, Florida, Oregon, Alabama, Maryland, Texas, Montreal, Budapest, Jerusalem, Helsinki and London.

She is on the executive committee of Honor Roll (women playwrights over 40).

Cindy’s plays are in 17 publications, and she has won awards from Pen & Brush, Samuel French Play Festival, Malibu International Playwriting Festival, Nantucket Theatre Festival, City of Providence, Quixote Foundation and others.

Cindy is one of four artistic instigators for Statuefest: Put A Woman On A Pedestal, which uses theater to advocate for more monuments honoring women; participates yearly in ‘Women, Theatre and the Holocaust,’ and spends time as an activist, in and out of theater, advocating for parity, equality and justice.

Websites:

www.cyncooperwriter.net

https://reprofreedomarts.org/

https://strangertoo.weebly.com/

Social Media

https://www.facebook.com/cyncooperwriter/

@cyncooperwrtr  FB and Insta

@ChoiceTheater Twitter

@reprofreedomarts Insta

@strangertooplay Insta

John Pavlovitz

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Pat Addiss: Humble Guru

January 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment

I don’t know all the answers. I mean I’m not some Great Guru. I just know what I know. I just know what has transpired in my life. You have to take chances . . . I will expire before I retire.

Reinventing Yourself: An Inspirational Talk Targeted for Women +50: When act one of life finishes, how do you raise the curtain on act two? Discover careers and ideas you never dreamed of.

Pat Addiss, Theater Producer, didn’t start out wanting to be a theatrical producer.  She was busy running the promotion company she founded, but after 30 years, she handed the reins over to her daughter.  Then in 2005, after ‘learning the tools of the trade,’ Pat went on to produce more than 18 Broadway and Off-Broadway productions including: “Spring Awakening,” “Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike” and “Desperate Measures.”  And…she’s never looked back!

We do not have equal rights, Ladies. It’s up to us to stick together and fight for our rights and help each other and help young people coming up. I think that’s so important. ~ Tony Award-Winning Broadway Producer Pat Addiss was interviewed by TV Journalist and Theatre Critic Roma Torre at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts October 2022.

Pat Flicker Addiss is a native New Yorker. She was a child model and actress. Went to Finch College where she majored and graduated in honors in Costume Design and Merchandising. She married the love of her life and hoped to have 6 children, 5 of her own and one adopted. However, it was not the dream of her husband who really did not like children or the confines of married life, so 10 years and 3 children later they separated. He became a dead beat ex and she was forced to make a living for herself and children. After great despair and low self image, she started her own Company Pat Addiss Enterprises which designed and manufactured all items and widgets with Corporate names and logos. An impressive mix of diverse clients ie ChaseBank, Manufacturers Hanover, Reader’s Digest, Nestle, Renault , Kravis Center, Wall Street Journal, Ms Magazine, NBC, Ashford and Simpson. Johnnie Walker. Bacardi.

​With her profits, she was able to educate all of her children in private schools and cater to her passion of travelling the world to over 54 countries. When most people retire, Pat gave her company to her daughter Wendy (who still runs it) so she could start producing Broadway plays. The first was Little Women starring Sutton Foster. She is still at it with her latest new play Jane Anger starring Michael Urie. Is involved in the development of a new musical Carpathia, starting from scratch. In October she is being honored with LPTW Oral History that will be filmed for the archives of Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. With a colleague, Magda Katz, she has initiated a formula to connect women through YaYa lunches, dinners and now the addition of upscale tea. She loves to speak to women over 50 “How to Reinvent Yourself.”

Jane Anger by Talene Monahon starring Michael Urie In “Jane Anger,” a new comedy by Talene Monahon, everyone is fed up with the endless waves of sickness and quarantine. The year is 1606, and we are in England, which is enduring another outbreak of the plague. But for one man, a late-career William Shakespeare, there are graver concerns: writer’s block.

The League of Professional Theatre Women (LPTW) is a membership organization championing women in theatre and advocating for increased equity and access for all theatre women. Our programs and initiatives create community, cultivate leadership, and increase opportunities and recognition for women working in theatre. The organization provides support, networking, and collaboration mechanisms for members, and offers professional development and educational opportunities for all theatre women and the general public. LPTW celebrates the historic contributions and contemporary achievements of women in theatre, both nationally and around the globe, and advocates for parity in employment, compensation, and recognition for women theatre practitioners through industry- wide initiatives and public policy proposals.

Any women working in the theatre industry are eligible to join LPTW. For more information on upcoming events and to join LPTW, visit http://www.theatrewomen.org

Addiss, a long-time member of LPTW, has produced more than 20 plays on and off Broadway. Many of these have won or were nominated for a Tony, notably: A Christmas Story; Promises, Promises; Passing Strange;  Little Women; Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life; Bridge and Tunnel; Spring Awakening; 39 Steps; Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike; and Eclipsed. View her complete Broadway credits here.

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  • BOARDS:

NJ REP, Vala, Women in the Arts & Media Coalition

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  • BROADWAY SHOWS

Little Women​

Chita Rivera: A Dancer’s Life

Bridge & Tunnel

Spring Awakening

Passing Strange

39 Steps

Vanya, Sonia, Masha & Spike

Promises, Promises

Gigi

Love Letters

Eclipsed

War Horse

A Christmas Story

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And my favorite Off-Broadway show:

Desperate Measures, currently playing around the country.

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We believe that our country needs more moms representing our neighborhoods, our communities, and our families because we know that they are dedicated to investing in equitable solutions for future generations to come.

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Emma Goldman-Sherman: Living In Your Power

December 5, 2022 by Leave a Comment

We can heal. I think it’s really important to be in control of what we’re taking in so that we don’t feel that we have to worry…that we can feel like we can live in our power, we can do things, as artists, that will hopefully push the needle and change the culture and make people think more deeply about what THEY can do if they’re not artists.

Playwright, Dramaturg, and Teacher Emma Goldman-Sherman (she/they) is an autistic, gender-dysphoric, queer, Jewish, feminist playwright living in New York City. Emma Goldman-Sherman is a playwright who likes to challenge audiences in terms of what we think a play can be.

Award-winning playwright Emma Goldman-Sherman creates timeless yet relevant, feminist work that engages on multiple levels to heal what our culture denies. Emma believes in the power of theatre to offer healing and agency to audiences, and their plays tend to be about daunting subjects like war, trauma (including rape, abuse and domestic violence), identity and the conflict in the Middle East. These subjects have touched Emma’s life in various ways, so their work is quite personal even if it isn’t always autobiographical. 

Emma’s first memory of live theatre was Peter Pan at Philadelphia’s Playhouse in the Park in the round. At age five, this was life-changing – to be able to help save Tinker Bell with collective applause. She is compelled by the power of theatre to confer healing and agency on audiences.

Emma builds from her own experience as a trauma survivor with chronic illness, a parent and citizen of the world. She has documented human rights abuses and writes as if female experience matters. Rarely naturalistic her work is inspired by visual artists and philosophers. She uses myth (making new/deconstructing known), metaphor, and language/ composition. She expects a strong collaborative approach. Though she’s broken the 4th wall, these days she’s extending the 4th wall to include the audience in new ways.

FUKT was recently live-streamed and performed 0/27 – 11/13/22 at The Tank in NYC! More info The Tank in NYC! Their work has been final listed at BAPF, Unicorn (x3), Risk is This at Cutting Ball (x3), Campfire, Bechdel, and Henley Rose. Counting in Sha’ab is available as a podcast on PlayingonAir.org and Abraham’s Daughters is available as a podcast at TheParsnipShip.com. They are working on a collaboration with Experimental Bitch Presents called Tanya’s Lit Clit which was workshopped at The Tank October 2021 and the Park Avenue Armory in 2022.

Grief Dialogues’ vision is to erase the stigma surrounding dying, death, and grief. Using theatre, visual art, film, music, podcasts, poetry, and narrative, Grief Dialogues opens new conversations between grievers, those with terminal or chronic illness, and their health care providers and caregivers. We believe out of art comes understanding, compassion, and empathy for all involved in grief. Grief Dialogues was created by Elizabeth Coplan, Emma is a contributor.

You and your donation help more people look at their grief through a creative lens. We encourage you to designate your donation to the Grief Dialogues program or project that speaks to you directly.  

It’s because of you that we create the podcasts, write and produce plays and films, and most importantly, share your stories, poetry, art, and music. Hopefully this work provides you the confirmation you are not alone in your grief and the satisfaction that you are expanding this supportive community.

Brave Space began when I began to write my personal truths openly for an audience. I stepped into a Brave Space I had to create for myself. Now Brave Space exists to support and encourage the female+ voice. By this I mean to include trans females and AFAB (assigned female at birth) trans males, non-binary and non-gender conforming individuals. In 2022, it is still incredibly necessary for women+ to have a space of our own. Brave Space is that and so much more. Brave Space is a purposefully anti-racist space where each individual is honored for their own voice.

Writer/Coach www.BraveSpace.online

Emma is produced on 4 continents, their work has been seen at Golden Thread, WP Theatre, New Georges, UNESCO’s City of Literature Festival in Dunedin (NZ), EST/LA, Dixon Place, The Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival, The New Ohio, Manhattan Theatre Source, All Out Arts at CSV, Circle Rep Lab, Guild Hall, New Circle Theatre Co, The Bernie Wohl Center, The Chain, The Wild Project, Capital Fringe, Alumnae Theatre Toronto, Short + Sweet Gold Coast and Sydney (AU), Seoul, Sasebo, Renegade N.O.W. Festival, The Loft at Marble Collegiate Church, Astoria First Presbyterian’s Brown Tree Theatre, Union Theological Seminary, The Museum of Jewish Heritage, Yiddishe Folksbiene Theatre, Greenbriar Valley Theatre, Canal Cafe Theatre (London), Camilla’s, The Culture Project, and others.

Emma is published by Brooklyn Publishers, Smith Scripts (UK), Next Stage Press, Smith & Kraus and Applause.

They earned an MFA from University of Iowa where they received the Norman Felton Fellowship and won the Richard Maibaum Award for plays addressing social justice for Antigone’s Sister and received a Jane Chambers Award for Perfect Women. Residencies at Millay Colony for the Arts, Ragdale and twice at WordBridge where they returned a third year as a dramaturg. Emma has taught and been a dramaturg at the Great Plains Theatre Conference (2015, 2016). Emma was the Resident Dramaturg at 29th Street Playwrights Collective where they ran the Write Now Workshop from 2015 – 2021.

Emma created and runs the global Zoom offering http://www.BraveSpace.online for all kinds of creatives. Member: Honor Roll!, LPTW, LMDA and the Dramatists Guild.

Her work is available at NPX: https://newplayexchange.org/users/1088/emma-goldman-sherman

ABRAHAM’S DAUGHTERSis now a podcast on TheParsnipShip.com – listen here: https://www.theparsnipship.com/#listen-now
COUNTING IN SHA’AB about a community in Iraq is now a podcast on PlayingOnAir.org – listen here: https://playingonair.org/new-releases/counting-in-shaab

https://www.facebook.com/emma.goldmansherman

Twitter @EmmaGSherman

Instagram @emmaintheatre

Brave Space, where I support other creatives weekly https://www.bravespace.online

The website for FUKT, my most recent play https://www.fukttheplay.com/

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