Lawton will premiere new script with Elon students to demonstrate the playwriting process.
American playwright Jacqueline E. Lawton will visit Elon on March 4 to give a playwriting masterclass, as well as share a brand new script titled “The Inferior Sex” as part of the 2017-18 New Works Playwriting Symposium.
About “The Inferior Sex:”
It’s the summer of 1972. As the war in Vietnam intensifies, the battle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment ramps up across the nation, and Congresswoman 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 and dreams 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.
Lawton was named one of the top 30 national leading black playwrights by Arena Stage’s American Voices New Play Institute. She received her MFA 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.” She is assistant professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where she teaches playwriting, dramaturgy and theatre for social change.
The reading of “The Inferior Sex” will take place in the Isabella Cannon Room, Center for the Arts, on Sunday, March 4, at 6 p.m. It is free and open to the public.
The 2017-18 New Works Playwriting Symposium is sponsored by the Fund for Excellence, Department of English, and Department of Performing Arts.