SUFFRAGISTS FROM THE STAGE Comes to New Perspectives Theatre Company

In celebration of SWAN Day, NPTC will present a Concert Reading to Benefit our On Her Shoulders Program on Friday, March 27th at 7:00pm. The performance is at New Perspectives Studio, 458 West 37 Street @ 10th Avenue. Tickets are $20 at Eventbrite.

Suffragists from the Stage is a 90-minute concert reading originally created in 2017 which has been performed in multiple locations in New York and New Jersey. It includes a full slideshow of images that take us from the first organized movement through 1920 and the signing of the 19th Amendment, highlighting the contributions of theatre women in the struggle for the vote. This updated version grapples with the ongoing struggle for women's rights and the current assault on the very presence of women in the public sphere. Created and directed by Melody Brooks, the cast includes Sophia Aranda, Penelope Deen, Laura E. Johnston and Marie Eléna O'Brien. 

ON HER SHOULDERS was founded in 2013 to present rehearsed, staged readings of plays by women from across the spectrum of time and place, with contemporary dramaturgs contextualizing scripts for modern audiences. Since its creation, the OHS reading series has presented 69 plays by 54 writers from circa 955 to 1970 as well as special events on Theatre Women in the Suffrage and Radical Theatre Movements. OHS also hosts a unique international database, 1,000 Years of Women Writing Plays, which is free to all: Link to Database 

For more information about ON HER SHOULDERS, contact Program Manager Liadin Stewart or visit https://tinyurl.com/OHSatNPTC

Melody Brooks, founder and Artistic Director of NPTC, is an award-winning producer, director and dramaturg who has been working in the professional theatre and various educational institutions for 40 years. She has developed and directed a number of notable and award-winning original scripts and innovative classical productions with NPTC. She served as dramaturg and co-director for NPTC's OOBR award-winning production of The Taming Of The Shrew, and dramaturg for She Calls Me Firefly by Teresa Lotz, winner of the NY Innovative Theatre Awards Outstanding Short Play (2018). Brooks was also Dramaturg for the WW LAB-developed How to Melt ICE by Amalia Oliva Rojas, which received 4 LATA Awards, including Best Play and 3 HOLA Award nominations, including Best Production. Brooks received the Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, for a theatre woman "active in any aspect of theatre whose work for, in, about, or through the medium of theatre has helped to illuminate the possibilities for social, cultural, or political change." She previously received a "Trailblazing Women and Arts Institutions Award" from Rhythm Color Associates and a "Spirit of Hope Award" from Speranza Theatre for her career-long support of women theatre artists.