Number 2, 2020 Celebrating the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage 1 Honoring Their Voices StageOne Family Theatre's This issue Production of Lawbreakers! BY REBECCA SUTTON In honor of the centennial of women’s suffrage, the National Endowment for the Arts is celebrating NATIONAL COUNCIL the many ways the arts have empowered and elevated ON THE ARTS women, as well as the many ways that women artists 4 Mary Anne Carter, have shaped and elevated American art. As part Chairman The Goddess of Moving of the agency’s commemoration of this event, we Pictures encouraged applicants for fiscal year 2020 grants to Bruce Carter Aaron Dworkin Barnard College's Athena submit funding requests for projects that celebrated Lee Greenwood women’s suffrage and equality. We are featuring a Film Festival Elevates Women Deepa Gupta in Film number of those projects in this issue of American Paul W. Hodes BY MICHAEL GALLANT Artscape, ranging from a festival that highlights the Maria Rosario Jackson creativity of women filmmakers to a play for young Emil Kang audiences that outlines the history of the suffrage Charlotte Kessler movement. María López De León Rick Lowe 8 As part of our commemorative efforts, we have David “Mas” Masumoto also published a book highlighting the role that Barbara Ernst Prey Creativity and the arts played in the suffrage movement, and Ranee Ramaswamy Persistence ultimately, in the successful passage of the 19th Tom Rothman Art that Fueled the Fight for amendment—an excerpt from that book is included Olga Viso Women's Suffrage in this issue. We are also encouraging federal AN EXCERPT agencies and arts organizations across the country EX-OFFICIO to light up public buildings and landmarks in purple Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and gold on August 26, 2020, as part of the Forward Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) Into Light campaign, which has been spearheaded Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) by the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission. Appointment by Congressional 11 We are working with the commission to support leadership of the remaining Ebbs and Flows a nationwide public mural project celebrating ex-officio members to the An Exhibition of Sculptor Tasha women’s suffrage as well. council is pending. Lewis in Nashville, Tennessee Women in America have certainly celebrated BY EMMA EVERITT many triumphs since our nation’s founding, but AMERICAN ARTSCAPE STAFF we know that there is still work that remains to be Don Ball, Executive Editor Rebecca Sutton, Editor done, both within the arts industry and elsewhere, Kelli Rogowski, Graphic Designer and especially for women of color. We are hopeful Paulette Beete 15 that through our commemorations we are not only Emma Everitt celebrating a milestone in our nation’s history, but Removing the Hurdles also helping women today advance our continued A Virtual Look at the march toward full equality. About the cover: Ebony Jordan, DesignPhiladelphia Festival Ernaisja Curry, Trey Wright, BY PAULETTE BEETE Mary Anne Carter Amber Avant, A.J. Baldwin, Chairman and Megan Massie at the final moment of Lawbreakers!, at StageOne Family Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo courtesy of StageOne Family 18 Theatre Trying to Find Their Way A Reimagining of Scott Joplin's Opera Treemonisha BY DON BALL 1 Honoring Their Voices StageOne Family Theatre’s Production of Lawbreakers! BY REBECCA SUTTON All photos courtesy of StageOne Family Theatre laywright Diana Grisanti has vivid creative team, was part of the agency’s call for memories of seeing plays at StageOne projects that celebrated the centennial of the Family Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, passage of the 19th amendment. as a child, including Number the “There’s a reason I remember going to see Stars, Tuck Everlasting, and The Best plays at StageOne when I was a kid and not, Ebony Jordan, left, as a high school PChristmas Pageant Ever. So she jumped at you know, the day I learned the Pythagorean teacher and Ernaisja the chance to write a new play for StageOne theorem,” said Grisanti, who is still based in Curry as her student about women’s suffrage, which premiered Louisville. “The arts have the power to lift up Kiara, during a scene on February 1, 2020, with support from lessons from our history books and put them from Lawbreakers! (A Fast and Furious the National Endowment for the Arts. The in three dimensions, and inject them into the History of Women’s production, which also featured an all-female brains and memories of the next generation.” Suffrage). 2 With her new to empower women was in many ways marked work, Grisanti hoped by the same inequalities and tensions as society to not only make at large. the history of the “Part of what we see as our responsibility as a suffrage movement theater is not just to tell the stories people want to memorable and hear, but to tell people the stories that they need alive, but to show to hear,” said Andrew Harris, producing artistic its relevance to director at StageOne. Harris said that student young people today. matinees make up 95 percent of the theater’s Lawbreakers! (A audience, which presents the theater with a Fast and Furious unique opportunity to complement what children History of Women’s learn in the classroom. By the end of its run, Suffrage) focuses on Lawbreakers! was seen by 10,000 middle and two teenage step- high school students from Louisville’s minority- sisters in modern- majority school system, 2,800 of whom saw the day Louisville, Maya production free of charge. “It’s important that and Kiara, whose we put information out there that helps us learn, differences have understand, and navigate the world around us,” made for a fraught he said. relationship. While Lawbreakers! accomplishes this by showing a Maya is studious and direct link between the history we read about and interested in history, the lives we lead today. The experiences of Maya Kiara is apathetic and Kiara, who are Black, not only show that the about school and battle for gender and racial equality remains far the political process from over, but that seeing oneself reflected in in general. The two history—as Maya and Kiara do during their Bill girls travel back in and Ted-style journey—can be an empowering, time to the 1851 motivating discovery. Akron Women’s “I haven’t seen a lot of stories that feature Rights Convention in Black girls and specifically talk about the different Ohio, before zipping things that happen to them in their world,” Ernaisja Curry and to other milestone events (and continents) said Lawbreakers! director Sydney Chatman. Ebony Jordan during a scene in Lawbreakers! important to the suffrage movement. Chatman has taught theater in Chicago’s charter where young Kiara, a When first approached about writing the school system for 17 years and noted, “I know high school student, play, Grisanti said she immediately knew that [young people] well enough to know that when listens as her she wanted to dig beyond well-known white we tell their stories, we honor their voice and Grandma Ida breaks the fourth wall, and suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth we make them feel as if they are a part of the asks an audience Cady Stanton, who are perhaps the two women conversation.” of young people most likely to be learned about in school. “I Regardless of their background, many young who among them is don’t envy people who write history textbooks,” audience members also likely saw themselves eligible and registered to vote. she said. “You have to simplify, you have to boil reflected in Kiara’s feelings of disenfranchisement things down, and you absolutely have to leave and apathy. Historically, young people in the stuff out. For any paragraph in a history book, United States vote at lower rates than any other probably 100 plays could be written about age group. According to the U.S. Census, less than all of the nuances that glimmer out from that 50 percent of people ages 18-29 voted in the last paragraph.” presidential election, and only 36 percent voted in Lawbreakers! enlarges those glimmers by the 2018 midterm elections—which itself was an focusing on the role played by suffragists of historic increase from previous midterm elections. color such as Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells, One of the goals of Lawbreakers! is to cut as well as on the intersections between the through these feelings of disenfranchisement. labor and suffrage movements. The sometimes By showing how hard so many women fought to overlapping, sometimes conflicting voices secure the 19th amendment, Grisanti hoped to of various groups reveal a more complicated instill young women with a sense of their own historical narrative than is often taught in history, and to show young men that “women’s school, and shows how a movement that aimed problems are human problems.” Rather than 3 take voting for granted, Lawbreakers! aims to her to cast her ballot in November by helping her show that exercising this hard-earned right is an “think about my heroes who came before me, who act of political power of historic magnitude. fought for our ability to vote,” she said. “Taking Judging from audience feedback, many on my civic duty does affect who comes after me. took this message to heart. As part of every [This play] reawakened my responsibility and performance, the audience is asked mid-scene gave me this sense of wanting to vote again.” whether anyone needs a voter registration card, For Harris, it’s this type of reaction that and one young person is then promptly handed classifies a production as a success, more so a card by an actress onstage.