"Herstory"
“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” -- Plato
|
Left Coast Women was founded in 2004 by partners Velina Hasu Houston, Paula Cizmar, Marianne McDonald, and Laura Shamas.
Biographies of Founding Partners
|
Paula Cizmar is an internationally produced playwright whose works include: Candy & Shelley Go to the Desert, Death of a Miner, Love Song for the Woman Whose Child Shot My Son, Bone Dry (AKA The Copy Editor Murders), and Street Stories, winner of two Ovation Awards. Her plays have been produced at The Women’s Project, the American Place Theatre, San Diego Rep, Portland Stage, the Jungle Theater, among others. Honors include two National Endowmen for the Arts grants, a Drama-Logue award in playwriting, a Rockefeller residency at Bellagio, Italy; and commissions from Salt Lake Acting Company, The Echo, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. She was a staff writer on the PBS series “American Family,” starring Edward James Olmos. Currently, Paula is working on a new documentary theatre piece, Seven, written with Carol Mack, Anna Deavere Smith, Gail Kriegel, Ruth Margraff, Catherine Filloux, and Susan Yankowitz; Seven opens the Women’s Festival at Culture Project in New York City on April 14. For more information: http://www.paulacizmar.com
Marianne McDonald, Professor of Theatre and Classics in the Department of Theatre at the University of California, San Diego, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, and a recipient of many national and international awards, including San Diego Women’s Hall of Fame (2008). Her published books include: Euripides in Cinema: The Heart Made Visible (Centrum Press, 1983), Ancient Sun, Modern Light: Greek Drama on the Modern Stage (Columbia University Press, 1992); Sing Sorrow: Classics, History and Heroines in Opera (Greenwood, 2001); and The Living Art of Greek Tragedy (Indiana University Press, 2003); with J. Michael Walton: Amid Our Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedies (Methuen, 2002); and The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre (2007). Her performed translations (many published) include: Sophocles’ Antigone, dir. Athol Fugard in Ireland (1999); Euripides’ Children of Heracles (2003); Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus (2003-4); Euripides’ Hecuba, 2005, Sophocles’ Ajax, 2006, Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis and Bacchae, 2006; and, 2007); Medea (2007); Seneca’s Thyestes (2008) and with J. Michael Walton Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Aristophanes’ Frogs (2007); Helen (2008); versions and other works: The Trojan Women (2000); Medea, Queen of Colchester (2003), The Ally Way (2004); …and then he met a woodcutter (San Diego Critics’ Circle: Best New Play of 2005), Medea: The Beginning, performed with Athol Fugard’s Jason: The End (2006); The Last Class (2007). http://www.mmcdonald.info.
Laura Annawyn Shamas was born and raised in Oklahoma, and has lived in various places across the U.S., including Tulsa, Denver, ad Los Angeles. She is a playwright, author, and mythologist. She graduated from the University of California-Los Angeles (Bachelor of Arts in Theater), the University of Colorado at Boulder (Master of Arts in English/Creative Writing), and Pacifica Graduate Institute (M.A. and Ph.D. in Mythological Studies). Shamas began studying mythology in 1997 and received her Ph.D. in 2003. She has written thirty plays, has had many plays and essays published, as well as a dramatic writing textbook (Playwriting for Theater, Film and Television, 1991). Her archetypal study, “We Three”: The Mythology of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters was published in 2007 by Peter Lang USA. She also has worked in film. Her multicultural background includes Chickasaw, English, French, Irish, Lebanese, and Scottish heritage. She is married to playwright/screenwriter Jon Klein. She has taught in Master of Fine Arts dramatic writing programs at the University of Southern California (USC), Hollins University, and other institutions. Selected honors and affiliations awarded to her include: 2006-2007 Aurand Harris Fellowship from Children’s Theater Foundation of America; 2005 Brett J. Love Award for Teaching Excellence (Pepperdine University); 2003-2004 Affiliated Scholar, Center for Feminist Research, USC; a Drama-Logue Award for Playwriting, a Fringe First Award (Edinburgh) for Outstanding New Drama; a Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation Grant (for writing about Amelia Earhart); and a Marquee Award for Playwriting. www.laurashamas.com.
Velina Hasu Houston is an internationally acclaimed playwright who also works in prose, poetry, and film. She has published two anthologies of Asian American drama and serves as a Commissioner for the US Department of State's Japan-US Friendship Commission and the US-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange. The recipient of fourteen commissions from distinguished institutions such as Manhattan Theatre Club, Asia Society, Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Foundation, Mark Taper Forum, and others, she began her writing career as a teenager with recognition from the Kennedy Center/ACTF for her work. By twenty-four, she was produced Off-Broadway at the Negro Ensemble Company and, within six years, was Off-Broadway again at Manhattan Theatre Club with the world premiere of Tea, a hallmark of her work with productions around the globe. Since 2000, Houston has had ten world premieres in regional theatres and other venues across the country. She has received honors from such sources as the Japan Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation (twice), Sidney F. Brody Foundation, James Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund (thrice), PEN Center USA West, USC Center for Feminist Research New Directions Fellowship, and others. She is a Pinter Review Prize for Drama Silver Medalist and American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg New Play Award finalist. For film, she has written for Columbia Pictures, Sidney Poitier, PBS, and others. A documentary film she co-produced –Frank Suffert and Lillemor Mallau’s Desert Dreamers – premiered on PBS-KQED’s “Truly California,” Peter Fonda, Narrator. Her latest book is from Smith and Kraus Publishers, “Writer’s Block” Busters: 101 Exercises to Clear the Dead Wood and Make Room for Flights of Fancy, 2008. Houston is Professor of Theatre, Director of Dramatic Writing, Associate Dean of Faculty, and Resident Playwright at the School of Theatre, University of Southern California where she founded the graduate playwriting program in 1990. She lectures internationally on theatre, adaptation, and transnational Japanese-US issues and was Visiting Faculty at Doshisha University, Kyoto, in 1999. http://www.velinahasuhouston.com.
|
Thank you for visiting our web-site.
Credits
Title
Photo by Peter H. Jones, Venice Beach, California. Photographs of
Cambria Coast, California, by Paula Cizmar. Lady Murasaki image, Tokyo
National Museum, Detached segment of Murasaki Shikibu Nikki Emaki (illustrated diary of Lady Murasaki). Information regarding Lady Murasaki Shikibu's history from Women in World History Curriculum. http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine9.html. Downloaded March 15, 2008.
Thanks and Acknowledgment
LRS.
|
|
