Posted with permission from Sleeping Weazel

SLEEPING WEAZEL JOINS TEMPEST PRODUCTIONS FOR A PLAY READING TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT TEENAGE SEX TRAFFICKING IN THE UNITED STATES

Boston, Mass., October 20, 2015 — Multimedia theatre company Sleeping Weazel, with director Robbie McCauley, will present a staged reading of BODY & SOLD, a documentary play by Tempest Productions’ Founder and Artistic Director Deborah Lake Fortson on Monday, November 16, 2015, 7:30 pm at Charlestown Working Theater, 442 Bunker Hill Street, Charlestown, MA 02129. This play is the result of interviews with young Americans from Boston, Hartford, and Minneapolis who ran away from home or were kidnapped and lured into prostitution before escaping with their lives. The BODY & SOLD Project was developed to foster a network of theaters and social agencies with the goal of raising national consciousness about the intertwined issues of child abuse, runaways, and child/teenage prostitution.

This reading, supported by a Sleeping Weazel Lab Residency at the Charlestown Working Theatre, is part of a series of readings being presented this season by the Nora Theatre, Fort Point Theatre Channel, Boston University, Emerson College, and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.

CALENDAR LISTING
Sleeping Weazel and Tempest Productions present:

BODY & SOLD

written by Deborah Lake Fortson
directed by Robbie McCauley
Monday, November 16, 2015
7:30 pm

Tickets: FREE and open to the public, donations welcome
Charlestown Working Theater
442 Bunker Hill Street
Charlestown, MA 02129

About Sleeping Weazel
Charlotte Meehan and Adara Meyers are playwrights and co-directors of Sleeping Weazel, a Boston-based experimental multimedia theatre company with an online cyber art gallery exhibiting film, video, and sound art that expands “the theatrical.” Last year, Sleeping Weazel premiered critically acclaimed productions of Meehan’s 27 Tips for Banishing the Blues (September 2014) and Meyers’ Talk To At Me (June 2014) as part of the company’s Doubles, Demons, and Dreamers festival. In March, the company premiered Badass, a festival of new works by theatre greats Kate Snodgrass, Robbie McCauley, and Magdalena Gomez. Sleeping Weazel’s motto, “making different possible,” refers to the company’s mission to bridge the gap between mainstream and avant-garde, to present works that break the boundaries between art forms, and to work with artists across generations, cultures, and genres. www.sleepingweazel.com

BIOS

About Deborah Lake Fortson, Founder, Tempest Productions; Co-Producer, The BODY & SOLD Project 2015-2016
Deborah Lake Fortson studied theater with Jacques LeCoq in Paris, and playwriting with Derek Walcott and Kate Snodgrass at Boston University. She taught physical theater at Boston University and has created theater pieces with masks and movement for venues in New York and Boston, including First Night, Boston, M.I.T., and Theater for the New City, NYC. Fortson’s full length plays include Baggage and Mermaids, produced at the ICA Boston, the Boston Center for the Arts, and Theater for the New City, New York.  Her one-woman show BABY STEPS was produced at MOBIUS, The Women in Theater Festival in Boston, at Re.Cher.Chez and The Production Company in New York, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Yellow Dress, about a girl who is killed by her boyfriend on the day before the senior prom, has been produced for twenty years by Deana’s Educational Fund, and seen by over 350,000 young people in high school and colleges across the country.

About Amy Merrill, co-producer, The BODY & SOLD Project 2015-2016
Amy Merrill has been working as a producer with The BODY & SOLD Project since 2004. She is also the author of many plays. Amy’s SILVER SPOON (Script by Amy Merrill, Music and Lyrics by Si Kahn) premiered at The Nora Theatre in May/June 2011 and was subsequently produced in April 2012 at Mainstage West in Sebastopol, CA. Upcoming: a reading of Amy’s new play, THE SQUARE, in December 2015 at HERE Arts Center, NYC. Eric Nightengale will direct. Amy is a member of The Dramatists Guild and resides in Cambridge.

About Robbie McCauley, director
Robbie McCauley, OBIE Award playwright of Sally’s Rape, is an internationally recognized performance artist and director. Sugar, her play, directed by Maureen Shea at ArtsEmerson, received the IRNE Award for her performance. Directing credits include an innovative interpretation of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie at Roxbury Repertory Theater and Adrienne Kennedy’s Sleep Deprivation Chamber at Penumbra Theatre Co. in Minnesota. Acting credits include For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf on Broadway, and Fences at the Tyrone Guthrie in Minnesota. She toured with The Arts Company and with New Performance Video as writer and director in cities across the U.S. and abroad, facilitating dialogues on race between local whites, blacks, and other ethnic groups. Widely anthologized, including Omi Osun Joni L. Jones’ new book, Theatrical Jazz; Robbie McCauley is a recently retired Professor Emerita of Emerson College in Boston.

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