PARADIGM SHIFT: NYC’S FEMINIST COMMUNITY Proudly Presents
DANGEROUS TERRITORY
A one-woman play about Mary White Ovington, Co-Founder NAACP
dramatic reading by playwright Clare Coss
with a discussion moderated by
Jamia Wilson, Vice President of Programs at the Women’s Media Center
Ovington rebelled against the expectations of her family and became the first white woman in 20th century America to dedicate her life to racial justice.
“DANGEROUS TERRITORY puts history, hope and a wrongfully unknown early heroine of the civil rights movement on the stage. This is drama at its best-entertaining and educating.”
Julian Bond, Board Chairman, NAACP
Thursday, May 19th
7:00 PM
Just outside the Feminist District
The Tank- 354 West 45th Street (bet 8th and 9th Ave)
Subway: A,C,E to 42nd Street/Times Square
$12 students/ pre-paid, $15 at door
Buy Tickets/ Limited Seating
DANGEROUS TERRITORY dramatizes Ovington’s journey beyond the narrow confines of her comfortable New York home. We meet a cast of dynamic characters whose virtues and contradictions propel her along the way: from the careless white boys at the Greenpoint Settlement to the adversarial African-American leaders, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Ovington and Dr. DuBois forged a vigorous and spirited friendship. Their alliance led to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
PARTNERS:
Photography by Amy Mitten
PARTNERS WELCOME:
Subject Line: 5/19 Partner
Email: Jweis@paradigmshiftnyc.com
CLARE COSS
CLARE COSS is a playwright, psychotherapist and activist convinced that we have it in our power to create a just and safe world. “As a playwright my tools are character and dialogue, conflict and story. Humor, possibility, and a quest for generosity sustain my vision. My imagination leads to women characters who go where the silence is. They are drawn to confront inaction and/or tyranny; face the challenge to speak and act.”
Clare presents dramatic readings of her one-woman plays, Lillian Wald: At Home on Henry Street and Dangerous Territory. They each feature dynamic women who resist indifference to the cruel realities of poverty, racism, war. Their daring decisions to act for a decent world inspire, inform, and entertain.
In Coss’ Emmett, Down in My Heart, two women characters, a white teacher, Roanne Taylor, and Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley are hurled together by the 1955 kidnap, torture, murder of 14-year old Emmett in the Mississippi Delta. Coss’ publications include Lillian D.Wald: Progressive Activist (Feminist Press) which features the play and a selection of Wald’s correspondence and speeches. Her anthology of lesbian love poems, The Arc of Love (Scribner), was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist.
JAMIA WILSON
Jamia Wilson is a feminist activist, organizer, expat-brat, networker, cartwheeler, truthseeker, and storyteller. She is currently Vice President of Programs at the Women’s Media Center where she works on amplifying women’s voices and changing the conversation in the media. She trains women and girls so they are media-ready and media-savvy, exposes sexism in the media, and directs the WMC’s social media strategy. Twitter: @jamiaw
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