SLAVES IN ALGIERS

New Perspectives Theatre Company

Written in 1794, SLAVES IN ALGIERS by Susanna Rowson is newly adapted as part of ON HER SHOULDERS, celebrating historical women playwrights.

New Perspectives Theatre Company presents the next reading in our ON HER SHOULDERS program, introducing women playwrights from the past to contemporary audiences.<h3>Slaves in Algiers by Susanna Haswell Rowson</h3>in a new adaptation by Dramaturg Jennifer Rowland; Music Consultant and Composer: Teresa Lotz; Directed by Melody Brooks; Video Creation by Luisa BattistaSaturday, April 10 to Wednesday, April 14, 2021with: Bill Blechingberg*, DeAnna Gonzales*, Michael Gnat*, Stuart Green*, Mikaela Lynn Johnson, Maxwell Levy*, Vincent Marano, C. Amanda Maud*, Bess Miller, Rachel Navarro, Federico Trigo*<h3>ADMISSION IS BY DONATION ($10 suggested)</h3>All registrants will receive a bio of Rowson; donors will receive the Play In Context essay, which situates the script in it's original time and place.Written in the infant years of a new nation and arguing for the equality of women within its borders, Rowson’s first play (and the only one to survive) is a deceptively simplistic story of America’s first “hostage crisis”. Rowson was the author of the 1791 novel Charlotte Temple, the most popular best-seller in American literature until Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852. Unlike the sentimental tragedy that was her novel, Slaves in Algiers is a comic operetta in which Rowson argues for the public and political, rather than private and domestic, role of women. In the play, a group of Americans enslaved by Barbary Pirates triumph over their captors, led by the indomitable Rebecca, who wields the twin ideals of “virtue” and “liberty” as her weapons.The reading includes music from the original composer, Alexander Reinagle, who partnered with Thomas Wignell, founder of the Chestnut Theatre in Philadelphia on over 75 productions, including Slaves in Algiers. Much of his theatre music was lost when the Chestnut burned down in 1820. We have used other surviving compositions to underscore the songs, with an original composition by Teresa Lotz for Song #7 , based on Reinagle's work.Rowson, who demonstrated her own talents by both writing and performing in her popular play, came back on stage to speak its epilogue, taunting the audience with the idea of female superiority:<blockquote>Women were born for universal sway;</blockquote><blockquote>Men to adore, be silent, and obey.</blockquote>She was attacked by the prominent Federalist William Cobbett for the liberal gender roles in the play, who referred to her as "our American Sappho.” She returned fire, calling him a "loathsome reptile" in her introduction to Trials of the Human Heart, a novel published the following year. JENNIFER ROWLAND (Adaptation/Dramaturg) is a native San Franciscan who landed in Los Angeles by way of the East Coast. Her plays have been produced and/or developed at Skylight Theater, Pacific Resident Theatre, Antaeus Theatre Company, The Road Theatre, Rogue Machine as well as at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Jennifer is an alumnus of Harvard College and American Conservatory Theatre’s Young Conservatory in San Francisco. Her play Jamal (Ditmas Park) was named a semi-finalist in the Garry Marshall New Works Festival, 2020. Recent projects include Still Waiting which played around West Hollywood as part of the virtual play series “While You Wait”, as well as the audio play, The Changeling and an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. She is a member of New Perspectives' Women's Work LAB.MELODY BROOKS (Director) is an award-winning producer/director, founder and Artistic Director of NPTC. Brooks leads NPTC's Women’s Work Project, which develops short and full-length plays by 12-16 members per year, and produces ON HER SHOULDERS, serving as a regular Director/Dramaturg for the program. She has developed and directed numerous award-winning and acclaimed original and classic plays for NPTC and other companies. Brooks was honored in 2018 as a Trailblazing Woman of Theatre for Artistry &amp; Vision by RhythmColor Associates, received the "Spirit of Hope Award" in 2015 from Speranza Theatre Company for her career-long support of women theatre artists, and was named a "Person of the Year" by NYTheatre.com as a co-founder of 50/50 in 2020: Parity for Women Theatre Artists. She is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women, and was recently Executive Producer of the 2020 LPTW Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award Program.TERESA LOTZ (Music Consultant/Composer)(she/they) is an award-winning playwright/composer-lyricist whose work includes She Calls Me Firefly (2019 New York Innovative Theater Award Winner Best Original Short Script); Akira &amp; The Merpeople (Polyphone Festival 2020); Red Emma &amp; the Mad Monk (NY Times Critic’s Pick, 6 NYIT Nominations, LadyFest 2018); ThreeTimesFast (Florida Festival of New Musicals 2019, O'Neill Theater Festival Semi-Finalist); Toy Box (Radio Play, IndieWorks’ Bite-sized Broaway), The Awakening (O'Neill Theater Festival Semi-Finalist, MTF Developmental Series at Playwright’s Horizons 2016). Teresa is an alumni of NPTC Women's Work Lab and the New Dramatists Composer-Librettists Studio. She was a 2020 Finalist for the Jonathan Larson Grant. Dramatist’s Guild, ASCAP, Musical Theater Writing, M.F.A. NYU. TeresaLotz.com ON HER SHOULDERS was founded in May 2013 to present rehearsed, staged readings of plays by women from across the spectrum of time, with contemporary dramaturgs contextualizing them for modern audiences. To date, the program has presented 59 plays by 46 writers, from the years ca 955 to 1970. The Play in Context, the dramaturgical and scholarly presentation component for all of the readings, is sponsored in part by the League of Professional Theatre Women.

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SLAVES IN ALGIERS

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