New Works Playwriting Symposium – March 4

Reading and discussion in connection with New Voices: Contemporary Play Reading Series, in Isabella Cannon Room, Center for the Arts, 6 p.m.

Reading and discussion of the play “The Inferior Sex” by Jacqueline E. Lawton in connection with New Voices: Contemporary Play Reading Series. In the summer of 1972 as the war in Vietnam intensifies, the battle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment ramps up across the nation, and Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm remains undeterred in her campaign for president. In midtown Manhattan, a small woman’s magazine is on the verge of collapsing and threatens to dash the hopes of a group of women tired of being treated as second class. “The Inferior Sex” is the behind-the-scenes look at a woman’s magazine that gets political and breaks new ground in an ever-changing world.

Jacqueline E. Lawton was named one of the top 30 national leading black playwrights by Arena Stage’s American Voices New Play Institute. She received her master’s of fine arts in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She participated in the Kennedy Center’s Playwrights’ Intensive (2002) and World Interplay (2003).  Her plays include: “Anna K”; “Blood-bound and Tongue-tied;” “Deep Belly Beautiful;” “The Devil’s Sweet Water;” “The Hampton Years;” “Intelligence;” “Love Brothers Serenade;” “Mad Breed;” “Noms de Guerre;” and “Our Man Beverly Snow.”