Metropolitan Playhouse to Present Free Screened Reading of Alice Gerstenberg's EVER YOUNG

All links available at:
www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

The program will also be simultaneously broadcast on
WBAI Radio 99.5 FM and wbai.org

Alice Gerstenberg (1885 - 1972) was an actress and playwright from Chicago, best known for her ground-breaking, feminist dramas, and her promotions of the Little Theater movement. Best known for Overtones (1913) and The Pot Boiler (1923)--both of which have been presented as online readings by Metropolitan--her comedic plays skewer social norms and gender types, while they include meta-theatrical staging experiments and sly critiques of theater and artistic practice. Ms. Gerstenberg was also a champion of regional theater, non-commercial theater, and new writing for local audiences.

ARTISTS' RELIEF
Metropolitan presents these readings as a way of keeping the theater's pilot lit.
They also serve to help us compensate performing artists, so particularly affected, during this long "pause."
Information about the theater's ARTISTS RELIEF FUND may be found at
www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/covidaid

The VIRTUAL PLAYHOUSE began on March 28, 2020, with Alice Gerstenberg's "He Said and She Said," and continued the following week with Eugene O'Neill's "The Rope," with five times the attendance. Beginning with Gerstenberg's "Hearts," the program is simultaneously broadcast on New York's Pacifica Radio Station WBAI, 99.5 FM. For this period of social distancing, with Metropolitan Playhouse's facility closed, actors read parts to the camera from their homes, using the Zoom platform, which enables all characters in a scene to be onscreen simultaneously. Weekly readings are in progress, with mid-week programing in develpment, all drawn from the rich trove of lost American theater. The playhouse is honored and fortunate to be able to continue its mission of exploring America's diverse theatrical history during these trying times. The presentation of the forgotten one-act plays is an ideal way to pursue the theater's mission and extend its current season, devoted to plays and themes of DISSENT.