Theater and Opera Companies in North Carolina Collaborate to Present THE 19TH AMENDMENT PROJECT

Burning Coal Theatre Company in partnership with The League of Women Voters of Wake County and thirteen other theatre and/or opera companies from across central North Carolina has announced that it will present The 19th Amendment Project, a collection of short plays written by some of the most accomplished women and/or non-binary playwrights working today, writing about the passage of the 19th Amendment 100 years ago and its impact on our society. According to ourdocuments.gov, the 19th Amendment of the United States Constitution was "passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920." It goes on to say "the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote." The Amendment "prohibits the state and federal government from denying citizens of the United States the right to vote on the basis of sex". Each of the short plays will be released virtually, one at a time, between August 17 - August 30, 2020. Tickets to view each 10 minute play will be $2 or $25 for the entire 14 play cycle. The plays will all be available until September 30, 2020. Tickets may be obtained by calling 919.834.4001 or visiting us at https://burningcoal.org/the-nineteenth-amendment-project/.

The playwrights expected to participate include Clare Bayley, Hannah Benitez, Susana Cook, Kelly Doyle, Magdalena Gomez, Tamara Kissane, Carrie Knowles, Deb Margolin, Ruth Margraff, Kate R. Morris, Jennifer Natalya Fink, MJ Perrin, Elaine Romero, Prageeta Sharma and Ariel Zetina.

THE PLAYS AND CO-PRODUCERS ARE:

INALIENABLE RIGHTS

By Deb Margolin

premiering Monday, August 17, 2020

presented by Raleigh Little Theatre and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Deb Margolin is a playwright, actor, and founding member of Split Britches Theater Company. She is the author of numerous plays, including Imagining Madoff, Turquoise, Critical Mass, and Bringing the Fisherman Home, as well as 11 solo performance plays which she has toured throughout the US. OBIE award for Sustained Excellence of Performance, the Kesselring Prize for Playwriting, a Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright award, and the Richard H. Broadhead Prize for teaching excellence at Yale.

THE TENDER-HEARTED

By Clare Bayley

premiering Tuesday, August 18, 2020

presented by Burning Coal Theatre Company

Clare Bayley is a UK based writer whose plays include After The Peace (longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize 2019); Family Trees (Bolton Octagon and Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough) The Enchantment (National Theatre London), Blue Sky (Hampstead Theatre, London and Burning Coal, Raleigh NC), Pixel Dust (Assembly, Edinburgh), On The March (Oxford Playhouse) and The Container (Edinburgh, London, Toronto, Melbourne, Rome - and Burning Coal, Raleigh NC).

APARTMENT 19: A Ten Minute Allegorical Play for Two Afro-Latinas

by Magdalena Gomez

premiering Wednesday, August 19, 2020

presented by Agape Theatre and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Magdalena Gomez is an award-winning performance poet, playwright, performer, teaching artist, and highly sought after keynote speaker and workshop facilitator. Her original series writing, Writing from the Belly, which she facilitated for women for over a decade at the University of Massachusetts, Amhearst was the training ground for the now yearly performance of Body Politics at the university. She has received play development awards from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures; the Massachusetts Cultural Council; Arts International (in collaboration with the Augusta Savage Gallery) and an NEA Master Artist Award from Pregones Theater, among others.

LOST MUSIC FROM THE HEART OF EVERYTHING (a suffrage aria for Amelia Himes Walker)

by Ruth Margraff, music by Kamala Sankaram

premiering Thursday, August 20, 2020

presented by NC Opera and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Ruth Margraff wrote 6 critically acclaimed martial arts operas with the late composer Fred Ho for the Apollo, Guggenheim Museum, LaMama, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her recent writing includes: Mirror Butterfly her jazz opera for climate refugees with Afro Yaqui Music Collective at New Hazlett Theater (Pittsburgh), Kennedy Center Millenium Stage (DC), National Ensemble Theater plenary (Tucson), 1st Mesopotamian Water Forum (Kurdistan, Iraq), and released on Innova Records at Red Rooster/Ginny's and the National Jazz Museum (Harlem); Temptation of the Fresh Voluptuous for the Nisville Jazz Teatrski Festival (Serbia), Red Tape/Art Institute Ballroom (Chicago), Coe Marquis Series Sinclair Stage (Iowa); and haiku for Bella Gaia with NASA holographic imagery. Ruth has received awards from Rockefeller, McKnight, NEA, and Fulbright foundations, etc. She is a tenured Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. https://bakerartist.org/node/23709

LADIES ARE WAITING (L.A.W.)

by Carrie Knowles

premiering Friday, August 21, 2020

presented by North Carolina Theatre and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Carrie Knowles has published four novels, (Lillian's Garden, Ashoan's Rug, A Garden Wall in Provence, and The Inevitable Past), a collection of short fiction (Black Tie Optional) a memoir (The Last Childhood), and a writing workbook (A Self-Guided Workbook and Gentle Tour on Learning How to Write). She writes a regular personal perspectives column for Psychology Today: Shifting Forward. She was the 2014 North Carolina Piedmont Laureate in Short Fiction.

A SENTIMENT

by Elaine Romero

premiering Saturday, August 22, 2020

presented by Justice Theatre Project and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Elaine Romero is an award-winning playwright who has had her plays presented at The Alley Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Kennedy Center, across the U.S. and abroad. Recent commissions: Ford's Theatre (Modern Slave), Arizona Theatre Company (Title IX), Goodman Theatre (Playwright's Unit, A Work of Art), NNPN/Kitchen Dog Theatre (Ponzi, Edgerton New American Play Award). This past season new productions included Like Heaven (Arizona Repertory Theatre), Undocumented (Cal State Dominguez Hills), Revoluciones (Latino Theatre Company with Foro Shakespeare/Mexico), and Bloody River (Union College).

THE 19TH

by Hannah Benitez

premiering Sunday, August 23, 2020

presented by Sweet Tea Shakespeare and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Hannah Benitez, NYC, represented by Elaine Devlin Literary. Upcoming: Gringolandia- Zoetic Stage and Untitled- Miami New Drama. Recent: Dike - The New Work Theatre Workshop, Director Tatiana Pandiani 2050 Fellowship Project & developmental production with Urbanite Theatre. Adaptive Radiation-Denizen Theater, Ashe In Johannesburg- Burning Coal Theatre. End of the Exodus selected for the High Desert Play Development Workshop with Southwest Theatre Company in Las Cruces NM, workshop and consideration for the 2021/22 season. @hannahbenitezzz

BEHOLD: COLORED AND WOMEN, INCONCEIVABLE

by MJ Perrin

premiering Monday, August 24, 2020

presented by Theatre in the Park and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Perrin's plays have been produced throughout the United States. She's a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awardee for Playwriting and a former member of the New Perspective Theatre Company's Women's Work Short Play Lab in New York City where her short play, Stepping Through Blood, was produced. Perrin received her MFA in Theatre Arts from Towson University, where she is an Adjunct Professor III. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

ON THE ROOF, IN THE TOMBS

by Prageeta Sharma and Kate R. Morris

premiering Tuesday, August 25, 2020
presented by Bulldog Theatre Ensemble and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Prageeta Sharma is the author of the poetry collections Grief Sequence (Wave Books, 2019), Undergloom (Fence Books, 2013), Infamous Landscapes (Fence Books, 2007), The Opening Question (Fence Books, 2004), which won the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Prize, and Bliss to Fill (Subpress, 2000). She is the founder of the conference Thinking Its Presence: Race, Creative Writing, Literary Studies and Art. A recipient of the 2010 Howard Foundation Award, she has taught at the University of Montana and now teaches at Pomona College.

Kate R. Morris is a playwright currently at large between Montana and Mexico. Her plays and performances have been hosted at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago's RhinoFest, the Mid-America Theatre Conference, the Old Marquer Theater in New Orleans and with BetweenTheLines Theatre in Missoula, MT. Her writing can be read in Funny Looking Dog Quarterly, Present Tense Pamphlets (Northwestern University Press) and at Infinity's Kitchen, among others.

VOTER REGISTRATION DRIVE

by Susana Cook

premiering Wednesday, August 26, 2020

presented by NC Central University and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Susana Cook is an Argentinean-born New York-based experimental performance artist who has been writing and producing original work for over 20 years. An iconic figure of the East Village art scene from the mid 1990's to the present, she has presented over 17 original plays at Dixon Place, P.S. 122, W.O.W Cafe Theater, Ubu Rep and The Kitchen, among others. Her ensemble plays and monologues irreverently, boldly and cleverly tackle racism, homophobia, classism, and animal rights.

THUNDERCLAP

by Tamara Kissane

premiering Thursday August 27, 2020

presented by William Peace University and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Tamara Kissane is a Durham based playwright and podcast host of The Artists' Soapbox. Her stage-plays have been produced by both hands theatre company, Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern and Women's Theatre Festival. Her stage-plays, The New Colossus and Master Builder were commissioned and performed by Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern in 2016 & 2018. She is the host of Artist Soapbox, a weekly podcast featuring original audio fiction and interviews with Triangle/NC artists about their creative process. She has worked with University Theatre at NC State, Manbites Dog Theater, The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, Duke Theatre Studies, Transactors Improv, Summer Sisters, Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, Archipelago and both hands theatre company. She is the current Piedmont Laureate.

BITTER FLOWER

by Jennifer Natalya Fink

premiering Friday, August 28, 2020

presented by the Gilbert Theatre and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Jennifer Natalya Fink is the author of five acclaimed novels, including the Doctorow Prize-winning Bhopal Dance. She is the author/devisor of 30+ performance works. Her long-running collaboration with Julie Laffin in "Toxic Tango" and "Underbelly" has been produced internationally. Fink is a professor of English and affiliated faculty in Theatre and Performance Studies Georgetown University, where she is Director of the Program in Disability Studies. Her disability memoir, All Our Families: Finding Our Disabillity Lineages, is forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2021. Fink recieved her PhD in Performance Studies from NYU and her MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institue in Chicago. She is represented by Amanda Annis at Trident Media Group. More at https://www.jennifernatalyafink.com/.

GERRYMANDERIA, or The Miss Earth Vacancy in the Miss Universe Pageant System

by Ariel Zetina

premiering Saturday, August 29, 2020

presented by Burning Coal Theatre Company

Ariel Zetina is a Chicago based artist, focusing in music, deejaying, and writing. Plays include Pink Milk, Mechanisms of Fidelity, and British Honduras Fantasy [honorable mention on Kilroy List 2016 and Steppenwolf's Mix list 2018]. She released her fourth EP "MUA's at the End of the World" on the label Femme Culture in 2020, is a resident DJ at the legendary Chicago club Smartbar, and is thrilled to be working at Burning Coal.

TBA

by Kelly Doyle

premiering Sunday, August 30, 2020

presented by the Women's Theatre Festival and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Kelly Doyle is a Raleigh based playwright. She holds an MFA in play writing from Brown University. Her play Blue was presented at Burning Coal Theatre in 2011.

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