Florida Studio Theatre Receives Grant From The National Endowment For The Arts

Florida Studio Theatre (FST) announces that it has been approved for a $15,000 Art Works grant to support The Suffragist Project: Celebrating 100 Years of the Woman's Right to Vote. In honor of this historic milestone, The Suffragist Project has brought together over 60 community partners, each creating their own artistic, cultural, and educational programming. As part of FST's contribution to The Project, the theatre has launched Historically Speaking, an educational touring program; commissioned four playwrights to develop new plays inspired by the movement for women's suffrage; and created an original devised play. The grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will support these artistic initiatives, as well as FST's Dangerous Ladies Festival, a weekend-long culminating celebration in August 2020 of the new theatrical work created over the course of The Project.

"The theater is and always has been a beacon in turbulent times," explained Project Director Kate Alexander. "As we navigate our cultural moment, it is imperative to me, to this community, and to our country's larger narrative that we simultaneously celebrate these women and debunk the myths surrounding them through the magical power of theater. With this support from the NEA, Florida Studio Theatre will incite discussion, provoke thought, and bring joy to this pivotal moment of 100 years of women's suffrage."

By the end of February 2020, FST's Historically Speaking program will have reached over 1,000 young people in middle schools and high schools in Sarasota and Manatee counties. Part of FST's award-winning arts-in-education initiative, WRITE A PLAY, Historically Speaking inspires students to write their own plays exploring themes like suffrage and civil rights. First, students see a performance highlighting some of suffragists' most stirring and impactful speeches. Then, lawyers from the Sarasota County Bar Association lead dialogues with students on voting rights. After that, students attend a playwriting workshop, providing them with the necessary tools to write their own scripts. The program concludes with students submitting their own original plays to FST's annual youth playwriting competition.

FST has also commissioned Jacqueline Goldfinger, Mark St. Germain, Rachel Lynett, and Sandy Rustin to write original plays that share women's voices and address the state of voting rights in America's past, present, and future. Public readings of these commissioned plays will be presented during The Dangerous Ladies Festival in August 2020, the month marking the 100th Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Each play will be considered for programming as part of FST's 2020-21 Winter Season.

"The Project is vital-not only to share and record history, but to look forward, and ask questions about the new frontiers of what 'Liberty and Justice for All' means in our quickly evolving world," said Jacqueline Goldfinger, one of the four commissioned playwrights. "I cannot wait to see how these smart, savvy, successful people respond to this prompt through their art."

The presentation of a brand-new devised piece titled Dangerous Ladies: The Voices of the Suffragists will also take place in August 2020. To create this play, FST collaborated with some of its own most-popular artists to gather speeches from throughout history on women's suffrage, female empowerment, and social change. Project Director Kate Alexander and Assistant Director Meg Gilbert used this source material to piece together Dangerous Ladies: The Voices of the Suffragists. This new play features work developed by Ariel Blue, Kim Crow, Susan Greenhill, Carolyn Michel, Rachel Moulton, J Paul Nicholas, Zoe Speas, Katherine Michelle Tanner, and Alicia Taylor Tomasko.

With FST at the helm, The Suffragist Project is a city-wide artistic celebration honoring the 100th anniversary of women receiving the right to vote. The $15,000 Art Works grant from The National Endowment for the Arts will support FST's artistic contributions to The Project taking place now through August 2020. For more information about The Suffragist Project, visit https://www.floridastudiotheatre.org/suffragist-project.