Nora's Playhouse to Host Public Reading of WHATDOESFREEMEAN?

Nora's Playhouse is pleased to announce the first public reading of whatdoesfreemean?, a new play by award-winning playwright Catherine Filloux. Developed in collaboration with Nora's Playhouse and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, whatdoesfreemean? takes us into the cell and the mind of its central character, Mary, an African-American woman who is serving time for an undisclosed crime. Her days in solitary confinement are spent trying to keep her sanity in the face of loneliness, indifference, human cruelty, and loss. As she grapples with internal voices that threaten to loosen her grip on reality, anger, outrage, strength, and humor carry Mary through her period of incarceration and beyond.

The reading takes place on Thursday, April 21st at 8pm at John Jay's Black Box Theatre (524 West 59th Street, NYC. whatfdoesfreemean? is directed by Amy S. Green and features Connie Winston in the role of Mary, Rebecca Lovett, Bobby Plasencia, Julissa Roman, and Myxolydia Tyler.

Mass incarceration is an acknowledged crisis in the United States. Most public attention has focused on prisoners who are men, but women bear the brunt of the consequences when they or the men in their lives are sent away. More than 205,000 women are incarcerated in America today. Most of them are mothers, and many of them are first-time offenders. But the statistics don't capture the enormity of the impact mass incarceration has on women as inmates, grandmothers, wives, daughters, sisters, girlfriends, social workers, and activists.

Playwright Catherine Filloux and Nora's Associate Artistic Director Amy S. Green have been exploring the topic for more than a year, co-teaching a course on the topic in John Jay's Department of Interdisciplinary Studies.

About Catherine Filloux: Author of more than 20 plays and opera libretti, including Selma '65 (still touring), Kidnap Road (in rehearsal), Lemkin's House; winner of the 2015 Planet Connections Activist Award; currently working on a commission for the Vienna State Opera, the libretto for composer Olga Neuwirth's Orlando

About Amy S. Green: Author of two widely-produced testimonial dramas, Girlz in Blue, about female officers of the NYPD, and What Happened: The September 11th Testimony Project, first-person accounts of ground zero and its aftermath. Amy is the Associate Artistic Director of Nora's Playhouse and an Associate Professor of Theater and Interdisciplinary Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a Consortial Faculty Member in the Master of Arts in Applied Theater at the School of Professional Studies, both at the City University of New York.

About Connie Winston: Stage: Lemkin's House, On Griffin Alley, Hamlet (Alley Theatre), Having Our Say (Hangar Theatre), Combustion (Brooklyn Academy of Music), My Name is Harriett Tubman (Workshop Theatre), TV: Law and Order

About Nora's Playhouse: Named for the heroine of Ibsen's A Doll House, Nora's Playhouse is a theatre company devoted to providing an environment for women's stories to be told by women theatre artists. Our women-centered mission derives from a recognition that women are still woefully under-represented as directors, playwrights, artistic directors and managers for professional theatre, as well as the primary subject matter for scripts. Nora's Playhouse is interested in telling a wide range of women's stories and has a particular commitment to shedding light on women's human rights issues. www.norasplayhouse.org