Centre Stage Live #3 : Interview with Julia Pascal
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
Release Date: 01/25/2021
Centre Stage Podcast #16 - Hortense Gerardo
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
Hortense Gerardo talks about her plays I SEE YOU, COUNTERPOINT, TOASTING MAN, , GLACIAL INCANTATIONS of THE HERAKLES PROJECT and THE HOUR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF, as well as the PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AWARD from ICWP, the DRAMATIC WRITING AWARD from Mass Cultural Council, the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION, and the CHANGEMAKER ANTI-RACIST PEDAGOGY LEARNING COMMUNITY FELLOWSHIP at the University of California, San Diego. Hortense is a playwright and anthropologist. She is the Director of the Anthropology, Performance, and Technology (APT) Program at the University of California, San Diego and...
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Centre Stage Podcast #15 - Joanna Pickering
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
We hear a small excerpt of Joanna Pickering’s new powerful one woman play “Don’t Harm The Animals” A short version of this chilling new work will now be showcased in the upcoming production of Joanna's latest play Bad Victims collection of stories about women handling violent encounters in unpredictable ways. Bad Victims runs April 26th, 27th and 28th in its next development production at The Courtyard Theatre in London, UK before announcing its official world premier. We discuss these plays, their themes with Joanna, and the impact they are having on their sold out...
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Centre Stage Podcast #14 with Deena Ronayne
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
We hear excerpts from Deena’s first play “Triple Bypass” and discuss her upcoming second play “The Canonized Club.” Deena talks to Jenni Munday from Charles Sturt University in Australia. We discussed what inspires her writing it and how she got into playwriting. Deena lives in South Dakota, USA and is the Founder/Creative Director of Hardly Working Promotions, LLC Past works Triple Bypass: Three Ten Minute Plays About Living for Death & Dying for Life Upcoming works The Canonized Club: The Curious Lives & Deaths of the Saints Website Facebook...
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Centre Stage Podcast #13 with Lou Beckett
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
Lou Beckett discusses her play, Bletchley Girls, accompanied by an excerpt from the audio play. Lou Beckett wrote for the stage until Covid lockdowns inspired the director of her play, Bletchley Girls, to turn it into a radio play and podcast. Since then, the allure of having a legacy for one’s work, as well as the continuing presence of Covid, has meant her subsequent plays have been created for radio/podcast. Pictured: Tthe Bletchley Girls creative team Lou’s other works include Rotten Luck, The Parrot, the Poet, and the Philanderer, and Forbidden Music. Upcoming works: We Can’t...
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Centre Stage Podcast #12 with Kari Ann Owen
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
Jenni Munday interviews Kari Ann Owen and Kari reads from two of her works. Kari Ann Owen is a Missoula, MT playwright. She discusses her comedy routine about Dr. Fauci’s loving lost-lost brother in the Mafia, and her play, Fighting It!, about courageous men and women during the New York Covid Pandemic lockdown. Her plays are published and produced in the USA. Examples of past works: “Bernie Madoff in Hell”, San Francisco Fringe Festival “Modern Life”, a series of one act plays about a disabled computer scientist and his service dog, dot.com, and their conquest of prejudice, produced...
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Centre Stage Podcast #11 With Sharon Wallace
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
Sharon Wallace is the President of ICWP, The International Centre for Women Playwrights. She talks to Jenni Munday from Charles Sturt University in Australia. She reads from her play 1967: A Life of its Own. " I was inspired to write the play from a short story based on a personal reflection from my childhood memory of the 1967 Riot in Detroit, Michigan. I decided to build characters within the riot setting and develop a story within the conflict of the riot. My first experience with playwriting began as an adolescent adapting a story to a play. Many years later, studying acting at...
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Centre Stage Podcast #10 - With Joanna Pickering
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
From NY to LA to Paris - A Passion Pandemic Project becomes a dream production
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Centre Stage Podcast #9 - With Annie Lanzillotto
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
Jenni Munday speaks to Annie Lanzillotto about her work and life as a poet, performance artist, actor, director, playwright, and songwriter.
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Centre Stage Podcast #8 - With LaurA! Force Scruggs
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
My name is LaurA! Force Scruggs and I am a published, produced and commissioned playwright. I am a Playwright in Residency at Three Cat Productions in Chicago, where I am writing a play about Jane Addams (and the impact of childhood upon her career and her work with children at Chicago's Hull House), which will tentatively be produced in 2022/23 (postponed due to COVID-19). My play, "Punk Grandpa" (all about being yourself and the value of the grandparent/grandchild relationship) was formerly published by Chicago Dramaworks (before it shut down) and is now...
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Centre Stage Podcast #7 with Christine Emmert
ICWP Women Playwrights Podcast
Christine reads from and then talks about three of her plays: Dying in Pittsburgh, Fragments of A Witches' Journal, and Old Hippie. Christine Emmert is an actress, playwright and director as well as enthusiastic fan of theatre. Living in the woodlands of eastern Pennsylvania with her husband Richard, she has been in the theatre world for over sixty years. Her work has been performed and read through out the English speaking world. She will be filming her one woman play, FROM OUT THE FIERY FURNACE, next month for the National Parks. This piece has been presented as a story of one...
info_outlineJulia Pascal is a playwright and theatre director.
In this interview, she reads from her dramatic full-length stage play AS HAPPY AS GOD IN FRANCE
The characters:
Hannah Arendt at 33
Charlotte Salomon at 25
Eva Daube at 16
Agathe Blumenfeld at 50
Trude Gottlieb at 22
Other roles are taken by the ensemble.
About As Happy As God in France.
The title references the joyful Yiddish invented by Jews in appreciation of their new status as equal citizens in post-Revolutionary France. Its use here is ironic as the play explores French antisemitism In May 1940, German Jewish exiles, seeking refuge in France were ordered to report as 'Undesirables'. Of those 8,000 women were deported to the largest of the many camps near the Spanish border. This drama focuses on the largest of these, Gurs, whose history is hardly known.
This text investigates the false dream of safety in France through the lens of three German Jewish women: thirty-four-year-old, political writer, Hannah Arendt; sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Eva Daube and twenty-four-year-old painter, Charlotte Salomon. They were incarcerated during in the chaotic days between armistice and occupation. The action of this play focuses on a decision of whether to stay, and hope for liberation, or escape in to a dangerous landscape.
As Happy As God in France explores major events of the twentieth century as experienced by these women. Themes include the French betrayal of Revolutionary values, the abandonment of the Jews, sex, love, art, politics, resistance, survival, suicide and escape. It is the first play about Arendt, Salomon and Daube in Gurs.
The facts
Hannah Arendt was in Gurs in 1940 for eight weeks. Charlotte Salomon is believed to have been incarcerated there before she was murdered in Auschwitz. Eva Daube was in Gurs. Agathe Blumenfeld and Trude Gottlieb are created from research in this hidden history.
The play was completed in 2020 and has had no productions.