Plays announced for International Women's Day reading March 8th!

Five short plays by women writers will be featured to mark International Women’s Day, March 8, at Gallery 202 in Westerville . Organized by the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute of The Ohio State University, all the playwrights are represented in the Institute’s archives. Dr. Alan Woods, the Institute’s Director, Dr. Katherine Burkman, Emerita Professor of English at Ohio State, and Dr. Beth Kattelman, the Institute's Associate Curator, will co-direct the readings.

All four plays look at women and their relationships. Toronto playwright Shirley Barrie’s Audience explores the appeal of experimental theatre through a married couple’s relationship, while
photo copyright Dallas Morning News

Vicki Cheatwood from Garland , Texas , examines the end of a long-term relationship in her The Last Time Cooper Took Midge Fishing.

Salt Lake City writer Elaine Jarvik’s couple, in Dead Right, re-examine their marriage as the wife contemplates how she might be presented in her obituary. And Gerry Sanseviero,

a playwright from New York City , presents sisters coping with age while trying to get served before a Broadway matinee in Matinee Lunch.

Geraldine and Jacob, by Columbus' own Katherine Burkman,

is a tale of love in a
gambling hall on a cruise--passion, illicit love, and devotion between a slot machine and a gambler.

The free staged reading starts at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 8th, at Gallery 202, 38 N. State Street in Westerville . Marking International Women’s Day, the Columbus area reading is one of many staged readings taking place internationally and recognized by the International Center for Women Playwrights. International Women’s Day dates back to 1909, and has been celebrated on March 8th since 1919. It has been recognized by the United Nations as a key support for the UN Charter’s 1945 call for gender equality as a fundamental right.

For more information on the readings, contact the Lawrence and Lee Institute at 1/614/292-6614 or at http://library.osu.edu/sites/tri/. For additional information on Gallery 202 and its programs, see www.gallery202online.com or call 1/614-890-8202

To learn about the International Centre for Women Playwrights, visit http://www.netspace.org/~icwp/index.html

More information on Shirley Barrie at http://www3.sympatico.ca/sbarrie.kchubb/plays/index.htm
Check out http://home.earthlink.net/~vcc2112/data/index.htm for more on Vicki Cheatwood
Gerry Sanseviero's webpage is http://gerrysanseviero.com/

And it's a delight to announce that Sherry Kramer's When Something Wonderful Ends, read at Ohio State last June (see the first entry in this blog below) will be one of the major productions at the 2007 Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, perhaps the premiere festival for new plays in the United States! Congratulations to Sherry on this major recognition of her work!