History Matters/Back To The Future Announces 2016 Judith Barlow Prize Winner

History Matters/Back To The Future, committed to promoting the study and production of women's plays of the past, has announced the winner of the second annual Judith Barlow Prize. Lindsay Adams, a student at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., has been chosen for her one-act play, HER OWN DEVICES, which was inspired by Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Harvey.

Ms. Adams will receive $2,500, a trip to New York City, and a staged reading of her play on Friday, April 29 at 7 p.m. at the WP Theater at McGinn/Cazale, 2162 Broadway at 76th Street in New York City. To reserve complimentary tickets, visit 2016barlowprize.eventbrite.com.

History Matters/Back to the Future is thrilled to be at such a noted venue thanks to the generosity and support of the Women's Project Theatre. The reading is free and open to the public.

The reading will be directed by Jade King Carroll who is currently directing Emily Mann's play Having Our Say at Long Wharf and Hartford Stage. Recently she associate directed James Earl Jones in The Gin Game on Broadway. In her career she has successfully staged numerous professional productions of plays by historic women playwrights.

Kathleen Chalfant, award-winning actor and women's advocate who has worked with History Matters/Back To The Future since 2012, will serve as the evening's host.

"History Matters/Back To The Future is a project to unearth lost treasures," Ms. Chalfant explains. "The treasure that is lost are plays written by women for the theater. We are now going through a moment in which a number of glorious women are writing again for the theater and being produced and History Matters lets the world see that this is not an anomaly but part of a glorious tradition."

HER OWN DEVICES shares the story of Madeleine, a young girl with a rare autoimmune disorder that forces her to spend her life in a lab, as doctors run endless tests. She copes with the help of her imaginary friend Robot, and ultimately must decide whether or not to leave the only home she's known.

Ms. Adams' professor at Catholic University, Patrick Tuite, will receive $500. The runner up for this year's Judith Barlow Award, Aaron Scully of The University of Missouri, receives $1,000. The student playwrights and their professors are participants in the One Play at a Time initiative, which promotes the study and production of women's plays of the past at colleges, universities and theaters throughout the country and encourages responses to those plays from contemporary playwrights.

Professors participating in the One Play at a Time initiative are asked to dedicate one class period per semester to a historic play by a woman playwright. The women playwrights recommended for study range from such well-known writers as Lillian Hellman, Claire Booth, Lorraine Hansberry, Sophie Treadwell, and Gertrude Stein to less visible playwrights like Alice Childress, Rachel Crothers, and Shirley Graham.

One Play At a Time, an historic women playwrights initiative, was launched in Fall 2013, and has attracted more than 150 participating professors from the University of Virginia, Ithaca College, Harvard University, Northwestern University, New York University, and the University of Southern California, among others. Participating educators are given sample lesson plans and additional support materials. Educators have the added incentive of the Judith Barlow Prize to encourage them to explore and teach these women writers.

This year's Barlow Prize Final Selection Committee includes Betty Corwin, Founding Director of The Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (part of the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts); Jesse Marchese, Associate Director of The Mint Theater; and award-winning playwright Chisa Hutchinson.

Teachers interested in joining the One Play at a Time initiative can learn more at www.historymattersbacktothefuture.com/#one-play-at-a-time-section.

The winner of the Barlow Prize must be a current or recent student of a participating professor to be eligible to apply or have studied these plays independently (for graduate students only). Submissions for the 2017 Barlow Prize must be submitted by December 31, 2016. The application form for the Judith Barlow Prize is available at www.historymattersbacktothefuture.com/#judith-barlow-prize-section. 2017 winners will be announced in April 2017.

Professor Emeritus of English and Women's Studies at the University of Albany, SUNY,Judith Barlow received her B.A. from Cornell University and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She was the editor of Plays By American Women 1900-1930 and Plays By American Women 1930-1960, and the author of Final Acts: The Creation of Three Late O'Neill Plays and Women Writers of the Provincetown Players, as well as numerous essays on American Drama.

For more information, visit www.historymattersbacktothefuture.com or contacthistorymattersbacktothefuture@gmail.com.

Lindsay Adams is an M.F.A. Candidate in Playwriting at The Catholic University of America. Her stage writing was most recently featured at The One Minute Play Festival and the American College Theatre Festival. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, graduating Magna Cum Laude and with departmental honors. She has worked as a theatre contributor for KCMetropolis, read scripts for 12 Peers Theatre, Essential Theatre, and Kitchen Dog Theatre, and is currently a teaching artist with the Coterie Theatre.

Jade King Carroll's directing credits include: Having Our Say (Hartford Stage & Long Wharf Theatre)The Piano Lesson (McCarter Theatre); Sunset Baby (City Theater); Autumn's Harvest (Lincoln Center Institute);Trouble in Mind (Two River Theater & Playmaker's Rep); Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Whipping Man (Portland Stage); A Raisin In The Sun (Juilliard & Perseverance); The Tempest (Chatauqua Theater Company); Black Girl, You've Been Gentrified (Joe's Pub); Seven Guitars, The Persians, Splittin' the Raft (People's Light and Theatre & Point Park University); King Hedley (Portland Playhouse); Mr Chickee's Funny Money (Atlantic Theater); Janice Underwater (Premiere Stages); The Etymology of Bird (CitiParks Summer Stages); The Piano Lesson (Cape Fear Regional Theater); alondra was here (The Wild Project); Cherry Smoke (Theatre Row); Sexon Sunday (Urban Stages); The History of Light, Samuel J&K, The Summer House (Passage Theatre); Spit (Intar); A Member of the Wedding (Tennessee William's Theater Festival in Provincetown); Associate Director for The Gin Game (Broadway-2015) and Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (Broadway-2012). Jade was a TCG New Generations Future Leader Award recipient, through which she was the Artistic Associate at Second Stage Theatre. In 2010 Jade was presented with the Paul Green Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Professional from the National Theatre Conference and The Estate of August Wilson. Past Fellowships & Awards: New York Theatre Workshop, Van Lier, Second Stage Theatre, Women's Project, McCarter Theatre and Gates Millennium Scholar. Jade served as the dramaturg for the seminal recording of the entire August Wilson Twentieth Century Cycle for National Public Radio.

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