The REP & Theatre UCF to Co-Present FOUR LITTLE GIRLS: BIRMINGHAM 1963, 9/15

The Orlando Repertory Theatre (The REP) is proud to announce a partnership with Theatre UCF to co-present Four Little Girls: Birmingham 1963 by Christina Ham, as part of a national staged reading commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham Bombing. This reading is September 15th, 2013 at 6pm in Studio 1 of the UCF Performing Arts Center. It is FREEand open to the public (UCF Parking Policies apply).

Students from the University of Central Florida's School of Performing join the Kennedy Center and venues across the country in presenting a reading of Four Little Girls: Birmingham 1963. Written by playwright Christina Ham, these readings commemorate the precise 50th anniversary of the

1963 bombing that took the lives of four young girls at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama and galvanized the Civil Rights movement.

Every child imagines what they want to be when they grow up. The four little girls who attended the 16th Street Baptist Church were no exception. Four Little Girls: Birmingham 1963 centers on Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Addie Mae Collins, four little girls who are multi-talented and bursting with promise and who share their hopes and dreams against the backdrop of the civil rights movement. While Denise dreams of becoming a doctor, Carole looks forward to the dress she will one day wear at the cotillion, Cynthia imagines her life as a mathematics professor at the local university, and Addie Mae envisions a life as a professional baseball player. The realities of the segregated political climate that will put a stop to these dreams swirl around them and eventually culminate in the fateful events of September 15, 1963. This play examines what it is like to be a child in the most extreme circumstances. The play was commissioned and originally produced by SteppingStone Theatre.

This reading is part of Project1Voice's nation-wide, simultaneous event of staged readings commemorating this seminal event in American history which helped to galvanize the American civil rights movement only weeks after the historic March on Washington where Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream Speech." The readings will feature multi-generational casts of national and local theater, television, and film actors. For a full list of locations across the country, please visit www.project1voice.org.

Sponsored by the Orlando Repertory Theatre and directed by UCF MFA Candidates Tara Kromer and Sara Brunow, the cast consists of students in the University of Central Florida's School of Performing Arts.

Christina Ham's plays have been developed both nationally and internationally with the Center Theater Group, The Goodman Theater, The Guthrie Theater, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Penumbra Theatre, Summer Play Festival/Theatre Row, SteppingStone Theatre, and the Tokyo International Arts Festival, among others. She is a two-time recipient of the McKnight Advancement Grant and a Jerome Fellowship from the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, a Jerome Emerging Artist Residency at Tofte Lake Center, the Marianne Murphy Women & Philanthropy Award in Playwriting, and a MacDowell Colony Residency. Her feature-length screenplay, Booker, was a finalist for Tribeca Film Institute's All Access program.

Key members of the Project1VOICE team are: producer/production manager Gwen Gilliam; award-winning playwright/actor, Charles Reese; MOTOWN: the Musical director, Charles Randolph-Wright and marketing consultant/producer; Marcia Pendelton.