SWAN Day Celebration with Free Staged Reading Set for Cherry Lane Theatre, 3/22

On Monday, March 22nd at 7 pm WomenArts will present Towards A New WPA: Supporting Women Artists Now, a play reading and panel discussion, at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, NYC. This free event is offered by the League of Professional Theatre Women in collaboration with NewShoe Theatre Group, the Cherry Lane Theatre, and Women Arts, and is one of approximately 170 celebrations of Support Women Artists Now Day / SWAN Day taking place during March.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal jobs program that employed over 40,000 artists at its peak. The WPA nurtured a generation of American cultural icons, including women such as Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston. To bring this history to life, NewShoe Theatre Group performs a staged reading of Mixed Relief, a one-act play that juxtaposes voices of women writers from the WPA with contemporary women theatre artists. Directed by Teresa Pond and with sound design by Lauren Rosen, the reading will feature actors Black-Eyed Susan, Lynn Cohen, Lizan Mitchell, Donetta Grays, Melanie Nicholls-King, and Peter Reznikoff, among others.

Following the reading, a panel of leading feminist arts activists will discuss new strategies to increase arts funding and promote cultural equality. The panelists will include Martha Richards, Executive Director of WomenArts and member of the League of Professional Theatre Women; Elizabeth A. Sackler, founder of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum; Arlene Goldbard, author, speaker, and leading advocate for a new WPA; and Carol Jenkins, media analyst, founding president of The Women's Media Center and Emmy-winning former television journalist. The League of Professional Theatre Women will host a reception following the panel.

For reservations, please visit: www.WomenArts.org/wpa_ny

WomenArts (www.WomenArts.org) is a world-wide community of artists and allies that works for visibility, empowerment, and opportunity for women artists. Support Women Artists Now Day/SWAN Day (www.SwanDay.org) is an annual celebration of the diversity, beauty and power of women's creativity. The League of Professional Theatre Women (www.TheatreWomen.org) is a non-profit organization committed to promoting visibility and increasing opportunities for women in the professional theatre.