Theater News

Davis, Redgrave, Sheedy et al. Set for Women Center Stage

Lynn Redgrave
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)
Lynn Redgrave
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)

Bob Balaban, Eisa Davis, Julie Goldman, Piper Laurie, Lenelle Moïse, Lynn Redgrave, and Ally Sheedy are among the scheduled participants in the Culture Project’s 2008 Women Center Stage Festival, to run April 8-27. Events will take place at Culture Project’s SoHo home (55 Mercer Street) and The Puffin Room (435 Broome Street, between Broadway and Crosby) with additional programming at The Great Hall at Cooper Union (7 East 7th St.) and The Living Room (154 Ludlow Street).

The annual multi-disciplinary event features women artists whose work calls attention to human struggles globally. The festival will kicks off April 8 with Expatriate, a new musical by poet, playwright, and performance artist Moïse that explores black womanhood, friendship, sexuality and freedom.

Davis will perform her solo play Warriors Don’t Cry, adapted from the memoir of the same name by Melba Beals, one of the “Little Rock Nine” who marched through segregationist picket lines in 1957. Balaban, Laurie, Redgrave, and Sheedy will participate in a conversation and dramatic reading with Death Row exoneree Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, whose story was told in Culture Project’s The Exonerated. Goldman will present Preemptive Strike, a comedy performace.

Additional theater highlights include Seven, a new play by award-winning playwrights Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol K. Mack, Ruth Margraff, Anna Deavere Smith and Susan Yankowitz (April 13); Chiori Miyagawa’s play, I Have Been to Hiroshima Mon Amour (April 15-16); a Short Plays Fest, featuring emerging women directors presenting short works with a focus on social change (April 19); ViBe Theater Experience, a performing-arts education organization for under-served young women (April 20); a new play by award-wining performance artist Heather Woodbury (April 22); Abigail Nessen’s The Magic Show: The Story of the Barefoot Angels (April 24); and a grassroots theater project featuring NYC immigrant domestic workers (April 26).

The festival will conclude with a special music event: Emancipate: Stories and Songs from New Orleans, which will present new songs by artists Pamela Means, Alix Olson, Vicki Randle, Cris Williamson, Asia Rainey, Gabrilla Ballard and Sunni Patterson.

For more information, visit www.cultureproject.org.

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