Beginning Oct. 12,L.A. Theatre Works will bring its signature style of radio-theater to 27 venues across the U.S. as part of the company's 16th annual national tour. Alexis Jacknow (LATW recordings of Tribes, Together Tonight and the Audie Award-winning Hound of the Baskervilles) directs Seven, a riveting documentary play by seven female writers, based on personal interviews with seven remarkable women who faced life-threatening obstacles before bringing heroic changes to their home countries of Pakistan, Nigeria, Ireland, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Russia and Cambodia.
Playwrights Carol K. Mack (who conceived the play),
Anna Deavere Smith,
Paula Cizmar,Catherine Filloux,
Gail Kriegel,
Ruth Margraff and
Susan Yankowitz collaborated to create a tapestry of stories that weave together the words of these women, dramatizing their struggles and triumphs over resistance, death threats, entrenched norms and pervasive violence. Since its premiere in 2008, the piece has been translated into 27 languages and had readings worldwide in over 30 countries, sharing with an international audience these inspiring tales of bravery and perseverance. The L.A. Theatre Works tour marks the first professional production of Seven.
Seven makes the powerful and timeless statement that even in the darkest times, one person, one voice and a single act of courage, can change the lives of thousands.
For the L.A. Theatre Works tour, Laila Ayad (Scandal) takes on the role of Farida Azizi, an activist fighting the marginalization of women under Taliban rule in her native Afghanistan.
Maritxell Carrero (
Peter Sellars' opera, The Indian Queen for
English National Opera, Teatro Real in Madrid, Moscow's Bolshoi Theater) portrays Anabella De León, who raised herself and her family from poverty in Guatemala to earn a law degree. She has received multiple death threats as a result of her fight against corruption and for the rights of the poor and indigenous peoples.
Lovlee Carroll (The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy) plays Mukhtar Mai, gang raped by four men in retribution for an alleged honor crime and forced to walk home almost naked. Mukhtar and her harrowing story grabbed headlines across the world. Instead of taking the traditional women's route of committing suicide, she brought her rapists to justice, built schools to improve the condition of women, and became an advocate for education in her country.
Ellis Greer (L.A. Theatre Works recordings of Die Mommie Die, Jefferson's Garden, The Goodbye Girl) is Inez McCormack, an internationally renowned and hugely influential human rights and trade union activist who played a critical role in the 1998 Good Friday Peace Accords.
Sarah Hollis (Fox's 24, most recently Viola in Twelfth Night, Witch #1 in Macbeth, and Elizabeth Condell/Emilia Bassano Lanier in The Book of Will at the Utah Shakespeare Festival) realizes Hafsat Abiola-Costello, founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy, providing skills-training and leadership opportunities for young women across Nigeria.
Shannon Holt (previous L.A. Theatre Works tours of Steel Magnolias and Judgment at Nuremberg) plays Marina Pisklakova-Parker, who, in 1993, started the first helpline for battered women in Russia, working alone to respond to calls and assist battered women. Now known as "ANNA", the Center for the Prevention of Violence is a resource center for the whole of Russia and former Soviet states that coordinates a network of over 120 organizations.
Tess Lina (How to Get Away with Murder, Danika with
Marisa Tomei) channels Mu Sochua, the former Minister of Women's Affairs in Cambodia (one of only two women in the cabinet) who was co-nominated in 2005 for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work against sex trafficking of women in Cambodia and neighboring Thailand.
L.A. Theatre Works' national touring program brings audiences at venues across the country the experience of a "live-in-performance" radio drama. Since 2005, L.A. Theatre Works has visited over 300 civic, performing arts and university venues with productions ranging from
Katori Hall's The Mountaintop to L.A. Theatre Works' original docu-dramas The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial and Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers. In 2011, L.A. Theatre Works toured China with Top Secret, playing to sold out houses of Chinese professionals and students; in 2013 the production was invited back to perform at Beijng's prestigious National Centre for the Performing Arts as well as the Tianjin Grand Theater and major venues in Hangzhou, Suzhou, Chongqing and Fuling.
For over three decades, L.A. Theatre Works has been the leading radio theater company in the United States, committed to using innovative technologies to preserve and promote significant works of dramatic literature and bringing live theater into the homes of millions. The company's public radio series, featuring stage plays performed by America's top actors augmented by interviews with the artists and others, can be heard on public radio stations across the U.S daily in China and worldwide on the Radio Beijing Network; weekly onKCRW Berlin 104,1 FM, Berlin's English language public radio station; can be downloaded as a podcast via iTunes and NPR One; and can be streamed on demand at
www.latw.org.
Seven was created with the support of the Vital Voices Global Partnership, the preeminent non-governmental organization (NGO) that identifies, trains and empowers extraordinary women around the world by unleashing their leadership potential to transform lives and accelerate peace and prosperity in their communities. These women have returned home to train and mentor more than 500,000 additional women and girls in their communities. They are the Vital Voices of our time.
www.vitalvoices.org.
