Aizzah Fatima airing her “Dirty Paki Lingerie”

June 3, 2020 by Leave a Comment

 

So, what’s a young Muslim woman born in Saudi Arabia, raised as a US citizen in Mississippi, only to defy all the odds by moving to NYC to become a one-woman sensation in her highly- acclaimed show Dirty Paki Lingerie? Listen in to her airing an authentic assessment of how women, women of color, Muslim women break all the boundaries of what it means to be an American today.

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Aizzah is an actress and writer from New York City by way of Mississippi. After training as a Microbiologist and working as an ads engineer at Google, she traded in her Google perks for the arts, and hasn’t looked back.

 

Dirty Paki Lingerie will stream on Facebook and YouTube through the Family Festival: Galactic Women on June 6, 2020.

Aizzah Fatima has been featured on NPR, The Guardian, Women’s Hour (BBC), The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post. Her comedy one woman play ‘Dirty Paki Lingerie’ has toured in the UK, Italy, Canada, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She co-produced the feature film ‘Horror Time’ with James Franco, and is currently in post production on her feature film American.ish. She wrote and starred in short films Off Duty, Doff Thy Name, and Stuff opposite Annette O’Tolle. TV acting credits include High Maintenance (HBO), The Good Wife (CBD), The Code (CBS), Mr. Robot (USA Network), Patrice O’Neal’s Guide to White People (Comedy Central pilot), and Matae Jaan (HUM TV, Pakistan). She is currently developing a comedy TV pilot titled ‘Muslim Girls DTF: Discuss Their Faith’ based on the webseries of the same name.

Here is a link to a short Dirty Paki Lingerie promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z3gc7fMqY4

IG/Twitter:  @AizzahFatima

#MPAC   #Muslimartists   #DirtyPakiLingerie

 

 

 

Filed Under: Arts Advocacy, Educational Theater, Featured News, Interviews, League of Professional Theatre Women, Playwriting, Podcasts, Resources Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Young Women in the Theatre and Media

October 21, 2016 by Leave a Comment

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In our continuing effort to develop and promote women in the professional theatre The League of Professional Theatre Women invite you to another…

NETWORKING EVENT
Connect, Collaborate, and Consolidate
Join your colleagues, expand your networks, bring a potential new member!

Tuesday, October 25, 2016, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Castillo Theatre 543 West 42nd Street

RSVP: Networking@TheatreWomen.Org

Young Women in the Theatre and Media
Learn from the young professional dynamos who make it happen.
Projects and strategies to create work for, by, and about women of all ages.

Panelists include:
LAURA ARCHER (Executive Director, March Forth Productions),
VALERIE BROOKS (Filmmaker/Director/DP),
CHRISTINE DIXON (Director/Producer/Actress/Singer, Harriet Tubman Herself),
RACHEL GRIFFIN (Composer/Lyricist, We Have Apples),
MITRA JOUHARI (Writer/Comedian, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee),
MEGAN MINUTILLO (Director/Producer/Writer/Arts Educator, Founder, TheWriteTeachers.com),
ELISABETH NESS (Producer/Actor/Creator, Redheads Anonymous),
DANA VERDE (Filmmaker/Producer, The Perfect Match)

Moderators:
KIMBERLY EATON, Broadway Producer/Director, Theatrum Mundi Productions
KATIE ROSIN, Publicist/Marketer, President Kampfire PR

LPTW Members: FREE Non-Members $15
Non-Members with Theatrical Union Affiliation $10

Brought to you by your LPTW Networking Committee:
Frances McGarry, Chair; Katherine Elliot, Salon Series Chair;
Ivy Austin, Mary Candler, Lorna Lable, Romy Nordlinger, June Rachelson-Ospa,
Amie Sponza, Amy Stoller, Elizabeth Strauss; Amanda Cardwell Aiken, Apprentice, Amanda Salazar, Apprentice

 

Filed Under: Arts Advocacy, Featured News, League of Professional Theatre Women Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Remembering those Dog Days of Summer . . . or What I Did Over My Summer Vacation

November 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

They say that when one doorcloses, another opens.  Read about mypersonal predicament of joining the ranks of the unemployed in an articlepublished in the November 2011 issue of Incite/Insight. 

I hope it will provide alittle inspiration for anyone facing challenges in this [non-existent] jobmarket and that there is light at the end of the tunnel:

As an educator, summers were always a time to leisurely pursueprofessional enrichment, read junk novels, and capture the calm breezes of theseason. Not unlike T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock whose life was “measured in coffeespoons,” my teacher’s existence was structured into 42-minute segments, 5 daysa week, 10 months a year, carefully pacing myself to the next day off tore-boot my energy. This inner balance worked for me for over 30 years.When I left teaching behind to pursue other goals, it was challenging, yetthrilling. How would I monitor the next 30 years of my life?
Using the lyrics from the Spice Girls’“Wannabe” tune as a source of inspiration, I sought to reinvent myself witheach new endeavor with the query: So, tell me what you want, what you reallyreally want? With every new day, I wanted …
To be acollege professor!
To devise a newcurriculum!
To serve as aneducation director for arts organizations!
To presentworkshops at conferences!
To teachteachers!
To work withyoung people and promote their voices throughplaywriting!
As I successfully transitioned from onecreative pursuit to the next, I finally landed a job as an education director;no sooner did I begin to savor the challenges of this career phase when theposition was eliminated due to budget constraints in March of 2011. I shouldhave seen it coming; the handwriting was on the wall: continued budget cuts,declining arts funding, selectively competitive grant awards. Schools, thoughsupportive, were unable to allot monies and relinquish class time for artsprogramming. Despite acknowledging its merits, schoolsperceive such programs as “extras” and they easily become targeted to reduceexpenses with the rationale that donations from philanthropic patrons wouldreplace any losses. Sounds like a feasible compromise until you begin to thinkabout the long-term effects. I’ll come back to that dilemma, later. Stay withme.
So, here I was, at age 60, unemployedwith a Ph.D. and over 30 years teaching experience, with no prospects, or so itfelt at the time—after all, this was during the highest unemployment rate inour nation’s recent history. In this economic downturn, who would hire me atthis stage of my life? I sulked … for an entire week lapsing into a regimen ofeating Mallomars with a quart of milk. After glutting myself with such internal pleasures, I took astep back and asked: So tell me what you want, what you really really want?
Within the soul of every teacher lies adeep commitment to making our world a better place to live in by educating ourfuture citizens—those young minds whose imagination and talent shape the nextgeneration. It has always been my strong belief that the arts define ourhumanity, and that they are an empowering supernatural gift givento us in order to make our world a richer better place to live.

So. Now. What. Are. You. Going. To. Do?

It was time to put my [unemployment]money where my mouth was and take charge. Subverting all fears aside, “Whatmakes you think you can make a difference?” echoed in my psyche. I was remindedhow I used it as a mantra for all my students—why not for me?
After an acting stint in an Off-Broadwayproduction of The Vagina Monologues, I realized the only way to moveforward and effectively utilize my time and talent would be through thecreation of a professional website. Thus began an arduous two-month examinationof the scope and scale of my career arc. As a result of this self-reflection, Iwas able to define my next challenge: to authenticate the arts and alter its perception as an amenity. I started tocollect stories of artists “in the trenches,” so to speak, who were makingthings work and garnering amazing outcomes: 12-year-old Olivia Bouler of Islip,Long Island, who raised more than $175,000 for the Audubon Society; an Artspaceloft to energize Patchogue, Long Island; the Airmid Theatre Company working withNew York Assemblyman Steven Englebright to create a permanent theatre space on the sprawlingformer grounds of the Kings Park Psychiatric Center.
On a national scale, I was horrified andoutraged by a particular story related by Erika Nelson, an artist in Lucas, KS who makes miniature models ofgiant pieces of Americana, puts them in a van, and drives around the country toshow people. She called her mobile museum “The World’s Largest Collection ofthe World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things.” But this year,Kansas, which has one of the country’s smallest state artsbudgets, decided to shrink it even further, to zero, cutting off all ofNelson’s state support. This was just one story among many. While nationaladvocacy groups fight to keep the arts as a core mission of the government, therising sentiment is that it’s an optional staple of sustenance. Instead oftaking polite nibbles to offset this spiraling trend, I decided to bite back!
Since the launch of my website in lateAugust, I’ve initiated The First 100 Stories Campaign, entered blogs onsubjects ranging from literacy, CORE standards, and professional development,and proposed an education program for class field trips to the 9-11 memorial.Additionally, I conducted two interviews for First Online With Fran: atalk show solely dedicated to honoring ordinary people doing extraordinarythings in the arts to make our world a deeper, better place to live. Soundslofty, doesn’t it?

Alas, it’s the stuff that dreams are madeof.
And THAT is what I did over my summervacation.
More to come. Stay tuned.
Frances McGarry, Ph.D. has been teachingtheatre for more than 30 years. The Young Playwrights Festivalin New York City became the subject of her doctoral dissertationin the Program of Educational Theater at New York University. She haspresented Young Playwrights Inc.’s Write A Play! curriculum at local,regional, and national conferences. Her new website, http://www.francesmcgarry.com offers discussions on how practitionersare utilizing the arts to make our world a richer, deeper better place to live.
Filed Under: Arts Advocacy, Publications, Resources, The First 100 Stories Tagged With: , , , , ,