Seven Women, Seven Weeks Goals Achieved!

You're Invited!! To a cool self-marketing event THIS Tuesday April 4th. 7-9pm, SLC Conference Center, 352 7th Ave. at 30th St. (near Mustang Sally's)

FCW and SEVEN WOMEN graduate Marjorie Kouns will be on hand to talk about the INCREDIBLE online auction she is co-producing to benefit several local non-profits. She'll also share how she is leveraging this non-profit event in order to land an excellent full-time Special Events Planning job.

You'll also meet a FCW Society Members Sara Steigerwald, motion graphics artist and Heidi Schmidt - t-shirt designer and other women who are working hard to make their goals real!!

Laura Allen, Co-founder of 15SecondPitch invites you to meet some very cool women (and men!) and feel free to market yourself and share your 15SecondPitch with everyone you meet! You'll also meet the recent graduate of the coure Seven Women, Seven Weeks to Self-Marketing Success and learn how they are marketing themselves more effectively. Please RSVP your full contact info and your line of work to: laura@15SecondPitch.com.

--Laura Allen

[thawannouncement] Kathleen Chalfant, Denis O’Hare &Kia Corthron Headline THAW’s 3rd Anniversary at PS 122 on 3/19

Fucking cool women! I am in a fucking cool pro-peace and human rights event tomorrow - FREE - at 7PM in the East Village at P.S.122. Bring a friend - I will be performing a song I wrote for this occasion. Also - check out their website...which I'm adding to our LINKS page over to your left.

[thawannouncement] Kathleen Chalfant, Denis O’Hare & Kia Corthron Headline THAW’s 3rd Anniversary at PS 122 on 3/19

www.thawaction.org


also, for related political art news, read about RACHEL - an amazing account of the "My Name is Rachel Corrie" tale

www.rachelswords.org


THEN COME THIS SUNDAY!!!

March 19, 2006: Reflection, Outrage and Art
 
For the third anniversary of the Iraq War, Theaters Against War returns to the site of its first Town Hall, PS 122, and invites our long list of member theaters to offer up a piece of work from the last three years that speaks to the sense of outrage at a war that never should have been and the US’ continuing assault on civil liberties in the US and around the globe.
 
THAW Member Theaters and individual theater artists gather to share short excerpts of pro-peace performance from the last three years.  Confirmed participants include: Kathleen Chalfant and Liz Magnes, Tony Award-winner Denis O’Hare, playwrights Kia Corthron, Karen Malpede, David Meth with Farah Bala, Howard Pflanzer, and the work of Caridad Svich, Anthony Arnove (co-editor with Howard Zinn of The Voices of the People’s History of the United States),  singer/songwriters Alec Duffy, Jamie Smith, Amy Clarke, composer Milos Raickovich with Dalia Bisiouny, performers DADAny with Lissa Moira, Emmy Bean, Michael Schwartz, Jay Smith, David Cote, Okwui Okpokwasili, the Missile Dick Chicks and Paul Pierog and youth theater from the Creative Arts Team (CAT).  Rounding out the program are an extended portion of Fountain Theater and Eliot Weinberger’s What I Heard About Iraq* and an excerpt from the Pumpkin Pie Show’s new production, junta high**, now playing at Performance Space 122.
 
With the threat of Iraq descending into a full-scale civil war and the growing and clandestine reach of the Executive branch into citizens’ lives, THAW’s core issues of resisting this Administration’s policies at home and abroad are more urgent than ever.
 
Date: Sunday, March 19, 2006
Time: 7 pm
Where: PS 122 at 150 First Avenue, between 9th and 10th Streets
Subways: L to 1st Avenue/ F to 2nd Avenue/ 6 to Astor Place
This event is free and open to the public.
Space made possible by Performance Space 122 and Playwright Clay McLeod Chapman
 
*WHAT I HEARD ABOUT IRAQ (A Cry for 5 Voices), adapted for the stage by Simon Levy, from the article, "What I Heard About Iraq" by Eliot Weinberger; originally produced at The Fountain Theatre, Los Angeles (www.fountaintheatre.com), September 11, 2005.
 
**junta high by The Pumpkin Pie Show at Performance Space 122
March 16 – 26; Opens Thursday, March 16
Wed-Sat at 8:30 p.m.; Sat and Sun at 4:30 p.m.
In junta high, Clay McLeod Chapman crafts a Sweet Valley-styled high school for terrorists where cheerleaders double as suicide bombers and guidance counselors are taken hostage by the A/V club. Holy causes worth dying for galvanize school spirits, blood is shed on the football field every Friday night, and the Hungry March Band fervently plays on.
Tickets $20, $15 students/seniors, $10 P.S. 122 Members 
FEE FREE: Available on-line at www.ps122.org, by phone 212-352-3101 or at box office.
150 First Avenue at Ninth Street
 
THAW is an international network of theater artists responding to the United States' ongoing "War on Terror," aggressive and unilateral foreign policies, and escalating attacks on civil liberties in the US and throughout the world.   www.THAWaction.org

Come support!

Amy Clarke
Singer, Songwriter, Keyboardist
www.amyclarke.com

Patti LuPone

AND, I just saw "Sweeney Todd" on Broadway last night, starring the Broadway powerhouse, Ms. Patti LuPone! She was the best part of the production for sure: her voice is incredible and original and she looks super hot in her knee-high fishnets and wedge shoes! Not to mention she is an incredible actress who's stage presence is unmatched, but she still maintains beautiful chemistry with her cast members. I was just on her website for the first time and she has a really entertaining and charming blog in which she personally makes entries! Click on "Ramblings From The Road" at the bottom. It's a great little slice into the life of a Broadway legend!

Wilma Mankiller

I am currently reading the autobiography of Wilma Mankiller, former principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Her philosophies on life, which are the philosophies shared of course by her tribe and by other Native American tribes, are amazing and inspiring. The absolute atrocities that the aboriginal peoples of this land have endured for the past few centuries would do any of us in for good, but Wilma Mankiller still encourages the Cherokees to "dance" and retain their ancient way of living. I'm only about 50 pages into the book, but she is an incredibly inspiring woman who's strength knows no bounds:

Wilma Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, lives on the land which was allotted to her paternal grandfather, John Mankiller, just after Oklahoma became a state in 1907. Surrounded by the Cherokee Hills and the Cookson Hills, she lives in a historically rich area where a person's worth is not determined by the size of their bank account or portfolio. Her family name "Mankiller" as far as they can determine, is an old military title that was given to the person in charge of protecting the village. As the leader of the Cherokee people she represented the second largest tribe in the United States, the largest being the Dine (Navajo) Tribe. Mankiller was the first female in modern history to lead a major Native American tribe. With an enrolled population of over 140,000, and an annual budget of more than $75 million, and more than 1,200 employees spread over 7,000 square miles, her task may have been equalled to that of a chief executive officer of a major corporation...

New Word! Only $19.95

Is the word "feminism" getting you down? Are you finding that people won't take your point of view seriously when you say you're a Feminist? Are you alone in your steadfast fight for total women's equality????

We love the word "feminism" and want people to realize it is a positive word, but I just discovered this one today - it's kinda obvious if you know your Latin - and I love it so much because it literally means "for the love of women":

PHILOGYNY!!

So, from now on, I am also a Philogynist!

Spread the LOVE!

One Year Anniversary!

Sunday, March 5 - FCW Society celebrated our 1 Year Anniversary! This is fucking cool! We started in a small one bedroom in the East Village and we have grown to an amazing house in Queens! We are spreading our wings and growing. We have members in London, St Paul, Milan, Seattle, Los Angeles, Montreal ... even Gloria Steinam has her official membership card!

Our goal to create a place where feminists can get together to promote the strong women in their lives to help create CHANGE in the world is happening. Funny thing about promoting other women - it inspires you to promote yourself too! That's what we are all about - celebrating the fact that WE (WOMEN) are so fucking cool! Over the past year, I have seen some pretty fucking cool women take charge of their lives and creating an amazing ripple effect of positive changes around them. This is what its all about.

As we begin our 2nd year - we know we will continue to work on our own lives but we also want to help others who are also helping women. We are proud to be sending in a group contribution to the Women for Women International. WWI helps women in 8 war torn countries to help women regain their health and strength and provide for their families. Its not our war - its time for us to stop being the victims! If you would like to donate or find out more information go to- www.womenforwomen.org. Membership cards are also being sent.

As one of the founding hostess committee members of the FCW Society, I am pleased and honored to know so many fucking cool women.

ROCK ON SISTERS!
Joanne

inspiration - She Who Makes Her Meaning Known

Court's so cool for sharing my deal on affordable health (can anyone say free yoga?) that I just wanted to share something equally cool, although slightly less active - some powerful words by Audre Lorde that always gives me inspiration - hope they do the same for you:

"For each of us, as women, there is a dark place within where, hidden and growing, our true spirit rises...These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through that darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep."

Before she died, Lorde in an African naming ceremony took the name Gamba Adisa, meaning Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known. How f***ing cool is that?

Peace, FCWarriors...

Amy

Mother Revolution

Although it's been a month already, I just now found out that Betty Friedan passed away on Feb. 4, 2006. RIP to one of the greatest feminist revolutionaries of our time.

Don't we just love a great deal?!!

Attention NYC FCW! This is going to sound like a spam email, but listen anyway. FCW Amy Clarke told me about this today and I totally impulsively bought one because it just seemed like too good a deal to pass up. The American Health and Fitness Alliance offers these Pass Books that are around $80 chock full of free passes to gym, dance, and/or yoga classes. Amy showed me hers and it's totally legit and just seems like a great deal. The book pays for itself after about 4 or 5 classes. The passes expire at the end of the year. Anyway, check it out and hopefully I'll see you in class!

- Court.