Those Women Productions Announces Reading of THE MELTING POT Scheduled for April, HOUSE OF DESIRES Full Production

Those Women Productions has announced two upcoming projects: a staged reading of The Melting Pot by Carol Lashof on April 9 with original music by Erika Oba, and the full production this summer of the rarely performed "cloak and dagger" comedy House of Desires (Los empeños de una casa) by the 17th century Mexican poet, playwright, and theologian, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, translated by Catherine Boyle. More information is available at www.thosewomenproductions.com.

"We're excited to return to the theater in pursuit of our mission: staging and uplifting unheard stories," said Elizabeth Vega, the Founding Artistic Director of Those Women Productions. "The stories we're sharing this year have been hiding in plain sight - they are not previously untold, but they have thus far gone unheeded."

Will the United States offer a welcome to refugees from all nations? It's a vexed question now and it was a vexed question in 1908, when Israel Zangwill's melodrama The Melting Pot premiered in Washington, DC. At the time, the United States was embroiled in a bitter dispute over immigration. Nativists warned that a flood of new immigrants - Russian, Italian, and most dangerous of all, Jewish - posed an existential threat to American identity, while liberals fought to further the ideal (unrealized then, and now) of America as a haven for all races and cultures. Zangwill leapt into this fray with The Melting Pot, celebrating the metaphor of its title; and both the wildly popular play and the metaphor were seized upon as powerful weapons by those fighting to keep borders open to immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Lashof's current, full length play distills the immigrant love story at the heart of the original drama and interweaves it with the story of Zangwill's play itself, and its role in America's early twentieth-century culture wars.

The Melting Pot will be directed by Susannah Martin; the cast includes Elaine Magree, Caleb Cabrera, Bianca Catalan, Sedrick Cabrera, Michelle Talgarow*, Anne Hallinan, Kal Naga (Khaled Abol Naga)*, and Max Forman-Mullin* (*appearing courtesy of Actor's Equity). An original score by Berkeley composer Erika Oba will be performed on cello, clarinet, piano, and violin by Andrea Landin, Carolyn Walter, Debbie Carton, and Christina Walton, respectively. Cristina (Cha) Ramos provides dramaturgy. This play premiered with Everyday Inferno Theatre Company in New York City in 2018 - this reading of the revised script will be performed under an AEA Staged Reading Code: this reading will not be advertised and admission will not be charged. Visit https://thosewomenproductions.com/ for more information, or email ThoseWomenProductions@gmail.com to inquire about availability (which may be limited due to Covid). All audience members are required to wear masks and present proof of full vaccination, including boosters.

A director, teacher, and theatre maker, and a Tunisian-American, Sephardic Jewish feminist-activist-artist, Susannah Martin has taught and directed for multiple organizations throughout the Bay Area including Berkeley Playhouse, California Shakespeare Theater, Aurora Theatre Company, TheatreWorks, Sonoma County Repertory Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Porchlight Theatre Company, the New Conservatory Theatre, and a variety of high schools throughout San Francisco and the East Bay. She is currently the Theatre Director and Arts Program Coordinator at San Francisco University High School as well as Guest Faculty at Saint Mary's College. More information is available at https://susannahmartin.net/.

Erika Oba is a composer, pianist/flutist, and educator based in the SF Bay Area. She has worked as a dance accompanist for Mills College and Berkeley Ballet Theater, and is currently a resident music director with Berkeley Playhouse's Youth Conservatory Program. In addition to her own private teaching studio, she is a private jazz piano instructor for UC Berkeley's Music Department. She has written works for big band, small jazz ensembles, chamber groups, dance and theater; and in 2021 was one of the performers in the premiere performance of Meredith Monk's Indra's Net. More information is available at https://erikaoba.com/.

House of Desires (Los empeños de una casa) was written by the 17th century Mexican poet, playwright, and theologian, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz - widely regarded as one of the first great Latin American writers, yet unfamiliar to most audiences and readers in the United States. The translation being used by Those Women Productions is by Catherine Boyle, written for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2004. By turns sly, subversive, witty, and goofy, this little-known and brilliant romantic farce will delight audiences. "Suppose The Three Stooges were feminists," says Artistic Director Vega, "and they got together with William Shakespeare to write a version of Midsummer Night's Dream, and you'll have the right idea." House of Desires will be directed by Vega and will feature a cast of nine Bay Area actors. This production, rescheduled from its original slot in summer of 2020, will be fully staged and performed July 29 - August 14, 2022.

Elizabeth Vega is the Founding Artistic Director of Those Women Productions. She holds a BA in Liberal Arts from St. John's College and an MFA in Staging Shakespeare from Exeter University where she studied at the Globe Theater in London. Directing credits include Troilus and Cressida at the Dell Theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon and the world premiere of Lashof's Just Deserts. She is on the faculty at Holden High School and the Berkeley Rep School of Theater.

Carol Lashof's work has been broadcast on BET ("Gap," dir. Ryan Coogler) and NPR ("The Story," dir. Martin Esslin) and staged on five continents from The Magic Theatre of San Francisco to Peking University in Beijing. Lashof is Professor Emerita at Saint Mary's College of California, the Executive Director of Those Women Productions, and a member of the Dramatists Guild. More information is available at https://carolslashof.com/.

Those Women Productions is a Berkeley-based theater company dedicated to giving the stage to hidden truths of gender and power. Previous productions have been praised by critics: Jordan Freed of Theatrius called Witch Hunt "an important and timely production," and Lily Janiak of the San Francisco Chronicle, in a Datebook feature on Witch Hunt said the show"gives Tituba hopes and fears, virtues and flaws. It gives her goals, and it makes her strategic in pursuit of them. In short, it makes Tituba a person." Of the company's collaborative, virtual production of Hindsight 2020, Nathalie Grogan of The Daily Californian said: "Hindsight 2020 is a testament to the incredible strength and endurance of people: to hold out hope, to adapt, to find new communities and to find new mediums of creative expression. A true and honest ode to 2020, Hindsight 2020 looks back upon a year of struggle and encapsulates it with undeniable skill and refreshing creativity." Owen Brunell of Theatrius.com called Shifting Spaces "so much more than an excellent feminist perspective on self image and determination ... Characters transcend the stage, touchingly, as they search for and discover new identities." And of Margaret Of Anjou, The Daily Californian praised, "Shakespeare would have been proud to see his work take on new life."

More information is available at www.ThoseWomenProductions.com.