This is a rough cut of a video we are working on for the Alcyone Festival 2011.
20% of plays produced in the United States are written by women. We are fiercely committed to changing that!
You can help us! There are two days left in our campaign to raise $10,000. That may seem like a lot, but if everyone commits to giving $10, and shares this with their friends, together we can change the face of theatre in this country!
Help us show that "20% of plays produced are by women" is not enough!
I wanted to let you know that, including money from the party that hasn’t been deposited yet, we have raised approximately $2500! With 5 days left, our goal is absolutely reachable!
Can I ask a favor? Can you please re-post on facebook or twitter, and send an email to those you feel would be interested in our work highlighting female playwrights? If everyone donated just $10, we could really show how amazing these women are!
Thank you for your support!
~Jenn
Jennifer Fawcett talks about the Alcyone Festival from Halcyon Theatre on Vimeo.
Jennifer Fawcett is the winner of the 2008 National Science Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center, and a 2010 Creation Fund Award from the National Performance Network. Her work has been produced in the US and Canada, at the Adirondack Theatre Festival (Glens Falls, NY), Halcyon Theatre's Alcyone Festival (Chicago), SummerWorks Theatre Festival (Toronto), Riverside Theatre (Iowa City), Available Light Theatre (Columbus), Theatre Masters (Aspen/New York), the Hatchery Festival (Washington, DC), Mutton Busting Performance/Art Festival (Calgary, AB), the Blyth Festival (Blyth, ON), the Rhubarb! Festival (Toronto) and the Waterfront Theatre (Vancouver).
Her plays have been developed and presented at the Kennedy Center, the Lark Playwrights’ Week (NYC), Cultural Conversations (Penn State), The New Bridges Fest (Theater Masters, Aspen; Palm Beach Dramaworks), the NNPN National Showcase of New Plays (Orlando), University of Kansas (American College Theatre Festival), Central Square Theatre (Boston), The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (Boston), Curious Theatre Company (Denver), Portland Stage Company (Portland, ME), and Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey.
Jennifer was the National New Play Network Emerging Playwright-in-Residence at Curious Theatre Company for the 2008/09 Season. Originally from Canada, she is a graduate of the Iowa Playwrights’ Workshop and a founding member of Working Group Theatre.
The Invaders by Jennifer Fawcett
A World Premiere as part of The Alcyone Festival 2011
June 9 - July 10 2011
Inspired by The Forest Princess, by Charlotte Mary Stanford Barnes, Jennifer Fawcett explores the idea of Savages and the the displacement of people as populations move.
María de Zayas y Sotomayor (September 12, 1590–1661) wrote during Spain's Golden Age of literature. She is considered by a number of modern critics as one of the pioneers of modern literary feminism, while others consider her simply a well-accomplished baroque author. The female characters in de Zayas' stories were used as vehicles to enlighten readers about the plight of women in Spanish society, or to instruct them in proper ways to live their lives.
Born in Madrid, de Zayas was the daughter of infantry captain Fernando de Zayas y Sotomayor and María Catalina de Barrasa. So very little is known about her life that it is not even certain whether she was single or married during the time she wrote. What is known is that she was fortunate to belong to the aristocracy of Madrid, because despite earning the low salary typical of writers at the time, she lived well. In 1637, de Zayas published her first collection of novellas, Novelas Amorosas y Ejemplares (The Enchantments of Love) in Zaragoza, and ten years later, her second collection, Desengaños Amorosos (The Disenchantments of Love), was published. De Zayas also composed a play, La traicion en la Amistad, (Friendship Betrayed) as well as several poems. The author enjoyed the respect and admiration of some of the best male writers of her day. Among her many admirers were Lope de Vega, who dedicated some of his poetry to her, and Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, who named her the "Sibila de Madrid," (Sibyl of Madrid). Despite the enduring popularity of her works during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nineteenth-century saw her works censured for their perceived vulgarity. As a result, they faded into obscurity, and would remain obscure until the late twentieth century. The exact day of her death remains a mystery. Death certificates bearing the name María de Zayas have been found in both 1661 and 1669, yet neither seems to belong to her.
De Zayas' most successful works are her Novelas Amorosas y ejemplares (Amorous and Exemplary Novels), published in 1637, and Desengaños Amorosos (Disenchantments of Love), published in 1647. They are known as the Spanish Decameron because they followed a structure used by the Italian writer Giovanni Bocaccio, which consisted of many framed novelle within one. These novellas, which were written in a complex style, were a very popular genre in all of Europe. De Zayas was strongly influenced by Miguel de Cervantes’ “Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels) which were also written in the style of the Italian novella. Use of the genre allowed de Zayas the flexibility to share many stories and while developing several strong characters, and provided a great showcase for her range.
The two works feature the central character, Lisis, who has invited a group of her friends to her home to help her recover from an illness. In an attempt to lift her spirits, each of her friends narrates a story about a particular experience. Two stories are narrated per night for a total of five nights. While the first book describes violence and deception, the second one intensifies these themes. The second book is full of description which displays, without censure, the abuse of women. The female characters in both books are well developed, and their experience allows them to eloquently denounce their inferior role in society:
Why vain legislators of the world, do you tie our hands so that we cannot take vengeance? Because of your mistaken ideas about us, you render us powerless and deny us access to pen and sword. Isn’t our soul the same as a man’s soul?.... [Later the husband listens her laments and approaches Laura] moving closer to her and incesed in an infernal rage, (Diego) began to beat her with his hands, so much so that the white pearls of her teeth, bathed in the blood shed by his angry hand, quickly took on the form of red coral (tran. H. Patsy Boyer, The Enchantments of Love)
As recently as the early 1980s, scant attention was devoted to female writers of the Golden Age of Spain. Within a decade, this changed dramatically, as scholars began to turn their attention to close studies of the women writers of this era. Interest in "Gynocriticism," the study of women writers, grew considerably during the 1990s, and much of the interest focusing on de Zayas’ work, which depicted women as strong and intelligent individuals. Many of de Zayas' characters have been wronged by men, and they have embarked on a journey to regain their honour.
Emilia Pardo Bazán helped to bring Zayas' work once again to the forefront. Bazan described Zayas' stories of the aristocracy of Madrid.
In The Cultural Labyrinth of Maria de Zayas, Marina Brownlee argues that de Zayas’ novellas were greatly influenced by Baroque culture, and were represented by a series of paradoxes. Brownlee explains how de Zayas' women were themselves a paradox: the women were strong of character, but not strong enough to escape their particular negative situations. According to Brownlee, de Zayas' belief was that the source of violence was the family, which was in turn an extension of a bigger institution, the Inquisition. She also points out that de Zayas' women were atypical females who chose to fight for revenge and defy their roles toward gender, race, sexuality, and class.
Echoing Brownlee's commentaries, Lisa Vollendorf’s Reclaiming the Body: Maria de Zayas’ Early Modern Feminism argues that de Zayas used her prose to challenge the social view toward women. Vollendorf claims that de Zayas' use of vivid images were intended for this purpose. She also explores de Zayas’ strong belief in the convent as a haven for women’s independence. According to Vollendorf, de Zayas had little expectation for change to occur by itself, and she became a voice urging women to seek independence and men to educate themselves about violence.
De Zayas distinguished herself by writing about violence against women within the context of a “gender system” in Spain which was too universally accepted to change. She wrote within the confines of the Spanish Inquisition, during a time when women were closely monitored and kept from participating in any significant decision-making in the society. The paternalistic society of 17th century Spain dictated the confinement of the majority of the women to the home, the convent, or brothels, and it was fortunate for de Zayas that she was born into privilege and was able to avoid living this type of existence.
De Zayas' Desengaños amorosos became a literary milestone by presenting women as intelligent people who could present and defend arguments in the style of an "academia." The women are independent and show they don't need a male to discourse on intelligent topics, and they are more than capable of following the same practical ground rules and protocols as the men do. The general theme of the arguments is the mistreatment of women at the hands of men. This desire for female camaraderie and independence was contrary to most of the portrayals of women of the era, and was a unique way of portraying women in a world where the men of the society were looked to for guidance and leadership.
During the 20th century, the feminist literary canon in Spain was limited to one or two female writers. But de Zayas and other writers of the seventeenth century, including her fellow Spaniard Ana Caro and England's Aphra Behn, have been rediscovered by academics seeking to uncover or re-discover other first-rate works by unconventional voices.
Given the vision and excellence of her work, the public's desire to know more about the mysterious life of de Zayas is understandable. But it is this very lack of knowledge about her personal life which may prove advantageous to her legacy, because it places the reader’s attention solely on her work.
Originally Submitted by Tony on Thu, 05/13/2010
Hrotsvitha, also known as Hroswitha, Hrotsvit, Hrosvit, and Roswitha (c. 935 to c. 1002) was a 10th century nun, dramatist and poet. She is the first known playwright after the darkages. Her works can be downloaded here. Below is the introduction to the first English translation of her works. The introduction was written by Cardinal Gasquet,and published in 1923.
Whatever may be thought of the precise merits of these six short dramas, now translated into English for the first time,* it will be conceded that a collection of plays bearing the date of the 10th century, authenticated as the work of a woman, and a nun, is a remarkable phenomenon, interesting to students of monasticism and of the drama alike.
At one time, it is interesting to note, it was suggested that the author of these dramas was an Englishwoman. In fact, the English scholar, Laurence Humfrey, who first introduced them to notice in this country, endeavoured to prove that Roswitha was no other than St. Hilda of Northumbria. His theory cannot, of course, be maintained ; but the very anxiety shown to identify this talented poetess and dramatist as a native of this country is evidence of the high estimation in which her compositions were held in the 16th century, the time when Laurence Humfrey, an exile from England for his religion, learnt to know them in Germany. It is now an established fact that the plays are the work of a Benedictine nun of Gandersheim, in Saxony, and their merits certainly justify her biographer's exclamation : " Rara avis in Saxonia visa est."
It used to be assumed that between the 6th and the 1 2th century all dramatic representations ceased, but each of these centuries when patiendy searched has yielded some dramatic texts. The feudal period, reckoned the most barbarous, and Germania, set down then, as later in history, as the least civilized of countries, have produced the most considerable and least imperfect of these texts in the plays of Hrotsuitha, or Roswitha, a nun of the Order of St. Benedict, who spent her religious life in the Convent of Gandersheim.
There is a marked difference between her plays and such dramas as The Mystery of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, which is little more than an amplification of the sequence of the liturgy. We find here an author familiar not only with the Scriptures, the works of the Fathers of the Church, of the agiographers, and of the Christian philosophers, but with Plautus, Terence, Horace, Virgil, and Ovid — an author who, on her own confession, took the theatre of Terence as her model.
The Abbey of Gandersheim, where these plays were written, was founded about the year 850 by Ludolph, Duke of Saxony, at the request of his wife Oda, a Frankish princess. Although these were what men call " the dark ages," the darkness was comparative. The Saxon court at this time was enlightened, and the Abbeys of Saxony, notably that of Corbei, were centres of learning and civilization. Gandersheim was one of the " free abbeys," that is to say its Abbess held it direct from the King. Her rights of overlordship extended for many miles; she had her own law courts, and sent her men-at-arms into the field. In fact, she enjoyed the usual privileges and undertook the usual responsibilities of a feudal baron, and as such had the right to a seat in the Imperial Diet. Coins are extant, struck by the Abbesses of Gandersheim, whose portraits they bear.
During the 10th and 11th centuries these Abbesses were drawn chiefly from the royal house of Saxony, which had been raised to the dignity of the Imperial throne of Germania. Leuckfeld, in his voluminous history of Gandersheim, quotes a contemporary chronicler who praises the royal nuns for keeping all luxury and state out of the life of the community, and for observing the Rule of St. Benedict strictly. " They were forbidden," says the chronicler, " to eat away from the common table at the appointed times, except in case of sickness. They slept together, and came together to celebrate the canonical hours. And they set to work together whenever work had to be done." The Abbess who ruled the community in Roswitha's time was Gerberg, or Gerberga, a niece of the Emperor Otho I. Gerberg was a good classical scholar, and Roswitha tells us, in one of the introductory prefaces with which, fortunately for posterity, her works are freely sprinkled, how much she owed to the tuition of this Abbess, " younger in years than I, but far older in learning."
It is from such sentences as this that we are able to gain a little information about Roswitha's life. Her mention of certain historical events and personages proves that she was born after the year 912 and before the year 940 (the known date of Gerberg's birth). She seems to have entered the religious life at Gandersheim when she was about twenty-three years old. She tells us nothing about her antecedents, but as Gandersheim was an exclusive house we may assume that she was of gentle birth. What education or experience of the world she had had before she became a nun is a matter of guesswork.
Roswitha wrote in Latin, the only language used in the 10th century in the West for literary composition. Conrad Celtes, the well-known humanist, discovered the manuscript, the writing of which cannot be earlier than the 9th, or later than the 10th century, in the library of the Benedictine monastery of St. Emmeran, Ratisbon, in the last days of the 15th century. In the year 1501 it was printed. This first edition has an interesting frontispiece representing the nun poet and dramatist presenting her works to the Emperor Otho II, in the presence of her Abbess Gerberg, who wears the crown of a " Fiirstabtin." This and the other plates illustrat- ing incidents in the plays have been attributed to both Diirer and Cranach, but they are not signed. Another edition, that of Schurzfleisch, in nearly all respects a reprint of the first, was issued in 1707, augmented with biographical and philological notes. The text given in the Latin Patrology (Migne, Tomus 137) is taken from the Schurzfleisch edition. More valuable to the student is Magnin's edition. The French commentator collated the Celtes and Schurzfleisch texts with the original manuscript, which in 1803 had been moved from St. Emmeran to the Munich library, and found one or two readings preferable to those of Celtes. Magnin also restored some stage directions omitted by Celtes, one of which, in the eighth scene of Callimachus, affords, as the English translator notes, valuable evi- dence that the play was acted, or at least intended for representation.
The original manuscript is divided into three parts. The first contains eight poems or metrical legends of the Saints in which reliable authorities are carefully followed, much skill being shown, however, in the arrangement of the material and in the handling of the " leonine hexameter." The second part consists of the six plays here given in English ; the third, of a long unfinished poem called " Panegyric of the Othos." Celtes changed the order, which is to be regretted, as it is obviously chronological. Roswitha's preface to Part III shows more confidence than the preface to the plays, and very much more than the diffident preface to the poems. One of these poems, " Passio Sancti Pelagii," once enjoyed a very high reputation, and is often quoted by Spanish and Portuguese agiographers. The Bollandists print it entire in the Acta Sanctorum. It has another interest in that Roswitha tells us that she obtained her facts from a witness of the saint's martyrdom.
Although Roswitha claims Terence as her master in the art of play-writing, it cannot be said that she imitates him closely. When Paphnutius was acted in London in 1914 the dramatic critic of The Times was justified from one point of view in asserting that Roswitha's style is " not in the least Terentian." For one thing she is quite in- different to the " unities," and transports us from place to place with bewildering abruptness. Her relation to Terence, as she herself insists, is one of moral contrasts rather than of literary parallels. The " situation " in Terence's comedies almost invariably turns on the frailty of women ; in Roswitha's plays as invariably on their heroic adherence to chastity. Although considerable variety is shown in the treatment of each story, the motive is always the same — to glorify uncompromising fidelity to the vow of virginity. This nun dramatist deals coura- geously, but, it must be added, delicately, when it is remembered that she lived in an age when even the best educated were neither fastidious nor restrained in manners or conversation, with the temptations which her characters overcome. The preface to her plays shows that it was not without some qualms of conscience that she wrote of things " which should not even be named among us." But the purity of her intentions, which was obviously recognized by her religious superiors, should induce the most prudish reader to refrain from charges of im- propriety. With all their shortcomings, Roswitha's works have a claim to an eminent place in medieval literature, and do honour to her sex, to the age in which she lived, and to the vocation which she followed.
Halcyon Theatre is throwing an Incredible party!
Saturday, May 21
8:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.
Schuba’s Tavern, 3159 North Southport Ave, Chicago.
There is going to be Salsa lessons and Bollywood dance lessons, performances, music, dancing, food and drink.
What's the Line-Up?
8:00 p.m. Doors Open
9:00 p.m. Salsa Lesson
10:00 p.m. “Bollywood in My Soul” performance
10:15 p.m. Bollywood Lesson
11:15 p.m. Salsa Lesson
12:00 a.m. Raffle Drawing
1:00 a.m. You Don’t Have to go Home, but you Can’t Stay Here!
Your Salsa Teacher for the Night is Suz Kreps. Suz is the captain of Northwestern University's Ballroom, Latin and Swing Team !
Your Bollywood Teachers for the Night are Alka Nayyar of Chitrahar and Minita Gandhi of Halcyon Theatre!
TO GET A TICKET IN ADVANCE: The advance ticket price is a $25 (or more!) donation to the Alcyone Festival Campaign. Visit the Campaign site, and donate $25 (or more!). IT IS A PERK OF THE DONATION. You can also pay $30 at the door. BOTH INCLUDE 2 free drink tickets.
Help Us Fight Gender Bias by Staging Five New Works by Women
Halcyon Theatre's Alcyone Festival 2011
Five of the country's top female writers
Remix five classical plays by women
No Holds Barred!
Halcyon Theatre’s Alcyone Festival will be opening in June! We have started a funding campaign to help us bring you the best festival we possibly can. Currently the single biggest obstacle is space. Rehearsal spaces and performance space for fully mounting a five show festival are about $10,000. That’s our goal. Other funding will take care of paying people, sets, costumes, lights etc. However helping to create a safe space for these extraordinary women to soar is the biggest way you can help!
ANNA CORA MOWATT (1819-70) The lady who wrote the most celebrated social satire since Royall Tyler's The Contrast was an accomplished actress whose career as a touring star is largely overshadowed by her famous play Fashion.
Born Ann Cora Ogden in Bordeaux France, she was interested in the stage from childhood. She had played the judge in a French version of Othello when she was only five years old; she staged an English version of Voltaire's Alzire at her home in Flatbush when she was only fourteen. A year later, at fifteen, she married a New York lawyer James Mowatt. At sixteen she published a verse "romance" called Pelayo or the Cavern of Covadonga. Having weak lungs and fearing tuberculosis, she took the then recommended sea voyage and along the way saw the great French star Rachel act in Paris. This inspired young Mrs. Mowatt to write a six act play Gulzara, or the Persian Star. She not only staged this at her home in Flatbush when she returned, it was published in 1840 in the New World.
Mr. Mowatt lost his fortune and Cora was obliged to give public readings for money. She was a "natural" talent and soon had rescued the family fortunes. But her ill health made it more practical to continue writing and publishing, which she did, contributing pieces to leading magazines of the day, sometimes submitting several articles under different names to the same publication. Her first novel The Fortune Hunter was very successful. Her second was published after her stage debut in 1845.
She left a fascinating account in her Autobiography of the debut of Fashion at the Park Theatre, March 24, 1845. It ran a remarkable three weeks and was only withdrawn because the theatre had previous bookings for other stars. It opened at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theatre while the New York production was still on the boards. Heartened by the success of her play, and driven by financial necessities, she made her own debut at the Park Theatre, June 13, 1845 in The Lady of Lyons. She followed this with an arduous tour that took her as far as New Orleans. She did not play Gertrude in her own play Fashion until a later engagement in Philadelphia. The role was never one of her favorites, though she played it from time to time. One of her personal favorites, Rosalind, is pictured on the right.
The first role she wrote for herself was Blanche in Armand, the Child of the People. She wrote Armand for E.L. Davenport who had originated Adam Trueman in the London production of Fashion at the Royal Olympic Theatre in 1850. A comedy-melodrama, Armand remained in her repertory for some time. After premiering at the Park in New York September 27, 1847, it moved to the Royal Olympic where it ran twenty-one consecutive nights. The company remained in London in Fashion which ran two weeks; then on to Dublin and more success.
She returned to America when Mr. Mowatt died in 1851 and continued to act until June 3, 1854 when ill health finally forced her retirement. She was married to William F.Ritchie of the Richmond Enquirer June 7, 1854. Later that year, she published her Autobiography.
She continued to write short stories and from 1861 until her death she lived abroad
Charlotte Mary Sanford Barnes (1818–63), American actress and dramatist, the daughter of John Barnes (1761–1841), who went with his wife Mary from Drury Lane to the Park Theatre, New York, where they remained for many years. Charlotte first appeared on the stage at the age of 4 in ‘Monk’ Lewis's The Castle Spectre, and in 1834 made her adult début in the same play. She was admired as Rowe's Jane Shore, as well as in such roles as Desdemona and Lady Teazle in Sheridan's The School for Scandal. In 1842 she appeared in London, playing Hamlet among other parts, in which she was well received, though she was never accounted as good an actress in male parts as her mother, who was an excellent Romeo to her daughter's Juliet. Four years later Charlotte married an actor-manager, Edmond S. Connor, and became his leading lady, being associated with him in the management of the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia. Her first play, Octavia Bragaldi, written at the age of 18, was produced at the National Theatre, New York, with herself in the leading part. Of her other plays the only one to survive was The Forest Princess (1844), based on the story of Pocahontas.
“I count it, this afternoon, the greatest honor that will ever come to me that I am permitted to stand in this historic hall and say one word for the liberties of my race. I thought to myself how dare I, a weak woman, humble in comparison with these other people. Yesterday I sat in the old Joy street church and you can imagine my emotions as I remembered my great grandfather begged in England the money that helped the Negro cause, that my grandfather on my father's side, signed the papers with Garrison at Philadelphia. I remembered that at Bunker Hill my ancestors on my maternal side poured out their blood. I am a daughter of the Revolution, you do not acknowledge black daughters of the Revolution but we are going to take that right.”
Pauline Hopkins, from The Address at the Citizens' William Lloyd Garrison Centenary Celebration, (December 11, 1905)
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930), who was born in Portland, Maine, in 1859, is best known for four novels and numerous short stories which she published between 1900 and 1903. Her best-known work, the novel Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South, was published in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1900 by the Colored Co-operative Publishing Company. Hopkins followed this first novel with three serialized novels - Hagar's Daughter: A Story of Southern Caste Prejudice, Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest, and Of One Blood; Or, The Hidden Self. All three serials along with several short stories by Hopkins appeared in the Colored American Magazine, a literary journal which became the Colored Co-operative Publishing Company’s primary project. During this time period, Hopkins worked as an editor at the magazine. Through her editorial work, fiction, and a substantial body of nonfiction that addressed black history, racial discrimination, economic justice, and women’s role in society among other topics, she emerged as one of the era’s preeminent public intellectuals.
While the bulk of Hopkins’s reputation rests on her output during a four-year period when she was in her forties, she wrote a musical play Slaves’ Escape; or, The Underground Railroad (later revised as Peculiar Sam; or, The Underground Railroad) that was produced in 1879 when she was twenty years old. Into the 1880s, Hopkins performed as a vocalist with her family ensemble, the Hopkins Colored Troubadours. In the 1890s, she undertook work as an orator, even while she supported herself primarily as a stenographer. And she remained active in the women’s club movement and other civic organizations. In 1898, she represented the Woman’s Era Club at the Annual Convention of New England Federation of Woman’s Clubs. And in 1901, Hopkins became a founding member of the Boston Literary and Historical Association.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Hopkins’s association with the founders of the Colored Co-operative Publishing Company provided her with the opportunity to reach a wider audience. She most prominently achieved this through the Colored American Magazine, which became the widest circulating African American literary publication prior to the rise of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Crisis magazine. From the start, the Colored American Magazine was politically engaged, and as conflicts arose among black intellectuals (often symbolized by, but by no means reducible to, Booker T. Washington’s compromise versus W.E.B. Du Bois’s agitation), the Colored American Magazine was secretly purchased by Washington’s agent Fred Moore. The magazine’s operations were moved away from the radicalism of Boston to New York. Although Hopkins did relocate to New York briefly, Moore’s purchase ended her influence and soon thereafter her career at the magazine. A testament to Hopkins’s popularity was her immediate hiring by the Voice of the Negro, a national monthly which was similar in scope to the Colored American Magazine though it was much more sharply critical of Washington and his associates. Hopkins wrote nonfiction articles for the Atlanta-based Voice of the Negro from 1904 to 1905.
Through 1905, Hopkins remained not only active, but visible. She published a pamphlet entitled "A Primer of Facts Pertaining to the Early Greatness of the African Race and the Possibility of Restoration by Its Descendents" under her own Cambridge, Massachusetts, imprint. And she addressed the William Lloyd Garrison Centenary in Boston, marking her prominence in the city’s activist-intellectual community. There are fewer known traces of her career during the remaining 25 years of her life. In 1911, she addressed the Charles Sumner Centenary in Boston which is evidence of her ongoing public profile. And, in 1916, she and Walter Wallace, the founding publisher of the Colored American Magazine, began a new venture, the New Era Magazine. The magazine’s only two issues featured a two-part short story by Hopkins as well as two biographical sketches under her byline that closely resemble her nonfiction from the Colored American Magazine. Her invitation to the Sumner event, the subsequent inclusion of her remarks in a pamphlet commemorating the event, and her ongoing association with Wallace suggest that Hopkins remained active in the decades following the end of her career at the Colored American Magazine. While fewer details are known about this period in her career, these gaps in her biography should not be presumed to indicate her inactivity. Rather, these gaps point to the need for additional research.
In August 1930, Pauline Hopkins died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from burns sustained during a fire at her home.
Rasaka Theatre is honored to support Halcyon on Saturday, May 21, with:
“Bombay in my Soul”
Directed by Kamal Hans. Written and choreographed by Kareem Khubchandani
Sheila wants to be a Bollywood star, so she leaves her love and the village in search of stardom. During her journey she meets the “madam”, the “casting couch”, and must challenge the current leading lady in a dance/off. With many twists and turns, Rasaka’s tribute to Bollywood keeps you entranced with Bollywood Songs/Dance and action.
Featuring: Minita Gandhi, Kamal Hans, Kareem Khubchandani, Ranvijay Raazdan, Alka Nayyar and Vyjayanthi Vadrevu
GET YOUR TICKET TO THE PARTY WITH A DONATION OF $25 OR MORE TOWARDS OUR ALCYONE CAMPAIGN! http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Alcyone-Festival-2011-Remixed
