New Shoe Shares a Play About Women of the WPA

WomenArts is collaborating with NewShoe and Cherry Lane Theatre to do a special SWAN Day event in New York designed to stimulate more discussion about federal arts funding.

NewShoe, a group of playwrights and theatre directors in New York, has created Mixed Relief, an original one-act play that weaves together voices of women artists of the WPA and contemporary women playwrights. Our joint SWAN Day event will feature a reading of their forty-minute play followed by a panel discussion led by WomenArts Executive Director Martha Richards. It will take place at Cherry Lane Theatre on Monday, March 22 at 7 p.m.

Free Script Downloads

NewShoe has agreed to make the script and sound cues available for free downloads from the WomenArts website for anyone who would like to organize a free reading in their community. If you would like to have a panel discussion after the reading, WomenArts will provide a set of questions to guide the panel moderator.

Although NewShoe will retain all copyrights for Mixed Relief, you can download the script and sound cues for free. No royalties will be required, but you must agree to give the playwrights proper credit in your publicity materials and playbills.

To register for your free download, please click here>>

More about the Play

Mixed Relief is historical fiction. The playwrights of NewShoe did extensive research on three writers who worked for the WPA, Eudora Welty, Dorothy West, and Anzia Yezierska, and then they created speeches where the writers describe their work.

NewShoe members also interviewed three diverse contemporary playwrights, Kara Lee Corthron, Cassandra Medley, and Ruth Maleczech, about their work and their thoughts on government arts funding. The verbatim comments of the contemporary writers and other historical figures are interspersed with the fictional monologues of Welty, Yezierska, and West. The play is written for a total of 8 characters, but some double-casting may be possible.

For more information about the characters in the play, please click here>>

Thanks to NewShoe

WomenArts is grateful to the members of NewShoe for sharing Mixed Relief. We send special thanks to Suzanne Bennett for the concept and dramaturgy, to the playwrights Jill Campbell, Marya Cohn, Dana Leslie Goldstein, Michele Aldin Kushner, and Andrea Lepcio, and to the sound designer Lauren Rosen. Alex Aron, Allyn Chandler, Teresa K. Pond, and Barbara Rubin also helped develop the script.


About WomenArts

WomenArts is a community of artists and allies dedicated to celebrating and supporting art by and about women. For an overview of our programs and services, please see the About Us section of our web site at www.womenarts.org/about-us/.