From: "Jessica Lanius/ Bess Richardson" <jblanius@earthlink.net>
To: <webmaster@madstage .com>
Subject: Playwrights
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003

I am a new native of Wisconsin and currently opening a new play at the American Theatre of Actors in New York City. Here is our press release and information.

Jessica Lanius

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Press & Box Office Information: 212-946-1033
February 18th, 2003
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Wake Up Artists present the premiere of Shakespeare’s Women: Under the Corset,
a new play written & conceived by Jessica Lanius opening March 13th-March 29th at The American Theatre of Actors, 314 W. 54th St. (between 8th & 9th Avenues). Shows run Wednesday thru Saturday at 8pm and Sunday evenings at 7pm. Tickets are $15.00 and may be reserved by calling 212-946-1033.

In Shakespeare’s Women, eight Elizabethan born women are freed from the confines of their original story to give of themselves as never before seen on stage, from 'Under the Corset'. They converge onto a setting of ultimate possibility, spanning time, language, the afterlife, and borders of reality; One where Rosalind, Helena, and Julia share their love sickness, when Kate and Isabella will seek a favored story, how Ophelia and Juliet could meet and affirm the meaning of love, and why Lady Macbeth must term her insufficiencies. Their stories are relived, expanded, continued, or completely departed from to best encapsulate these brilliantly created characters, and illuminate their ultimate interconnectedness through all time to the present. Removing the corsets in which they were created, these now seemingly quite contemporary women will for the first time celebrate the expressions the women of today may take for granted.

While not a musical, Shakespeare’s Women: Under The Corset is told in a world where music and dance are a unique part of the telling. Borrowing from various performance styles, the full capacity of Shakespeare’s language is recognized. The syllaboration of dance and theatre

The Wake Up Artists are a new company founded primarily by graduates of Rutgers Universities M.F.A acting program. The company of actors and dancers that produce provocative, political and imaginative new performance works that function as a tool of teaching and entertaining through the collaboration of theatre and modern dance. Striving to ask pointed questions through performance, hoping to wake up a community, a society, a nation to be more alive and active in their given world

Shakespeare’s Women: Under the Corset is sponsored in part by The Field, a not-for-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization serving the New York City performing arts community. Contributions made to The Field and earmarked for Shakespeare’s Women are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

For more information about The Field contact: The Field, 161 6th Avenue, New York NY 10013, (212) 691-6969,fax: (212) 255-2053, www.thefield.org. E-mail: info@thefield.org. A copy of The Field’s latest annual report may be obtained, upon request, from The Field or from the Office of the Attorney General, Charities Bureau, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.