New York Theatre Barn to Host AN ALL-FEMALE TRIBUTE TO EDNA FERBER

New York Theatre Barn will host An All-Female Tribute to Edna Ferber in a free live stream on Monday, June 15th, 2020 at 7PM EDT. The celebration will introduce the first new musical works based on Edna Ferber short stories. The company will be giving 50% of its donations each week to a different charity that supports black lives and civil rights. The charity on June 15th will be The Black Women's Playwright Group which serves African American Playwrights writing for the professional theatre.

Directed by Laura Brandel, the 40-minute presentation will feature a conversation with Ferber's grand-niece, biographer and estate executor Julie Gilbert, and excerpts from two one-act musical adaptations of two Ferber short stories written by Debra Barsha (Radiant Baby, A Taste of Things to Come) and Sheilah Rae (The Belle of Tombstone, Funny You Don't Look Like a Grandmother). The writers will present a song from each musical short performed remotely by Jennifer Blood (Girl from the North Country) and Diana Huey (The Little Mermaid).

The presentation will celebrate Edna Ferber, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer and playwright whose works include Show Boat (which became the prolific and celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron, Giant and Ice Palace. Ferber's dedication to the immigrant experience is so richly conveyed in Barsha and Rae's adaptations of Every Other Thursday - about the life of a Finnish domestic in New York City, and Our Very Best People - which explores the development of the American West, Ferber's fascination with The Harvey Girls, and the importance of the railroad in the West's emergence.

Julie Gilbert is the author of Ferber: The Biography of Edna Ferber and Her Circle, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Gilbert received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for Opposite Attraction: The Lives of Erich Maria Remarque and Paulette Goddard.

The 40-minute presentation will be available on New York Theatre Barn's YouTube Channel and is hosted and produced by Jen Sandler and Joe Barros. For more information, visit New York Theatre Barn's website: www.nytheatrebarn.org.