Florida Studio Theatre (FST) proudly announces that it has been approved for a $15,000 Art Works grant to support The Suffragist Project: Celebrating 100 Years of the Woman’s Right to Vote. In honor of this historic milestone, The Suffragist Project has brought together over 60 community partners, each creating their own artistic, cultural, and educational programming. As part of FST’s contribution to The Project, the theatre has launched Historically Speaking, an educational touring program; commissioned four playwrights to develop new plays inspired by the movement for women’s suffrage; and created an original devised play. The grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will support these artistic initiatives, as well as FST’s Dangerous Ladies Festival, a weekend-long culminating celebration in August 2020 of the new theatrical work created over the course of The Project. Part of FST’s award-winning arts-in-education initiative, WRITE A PLAY, Historically Speaking inspires students to write their own plays exploring themes like suffrage and civil rights. First, students see a performance highlighting some of suffragists’ most stirring and impactful speeches. Then, lawyers from the Sarasota County Bar Association lead dialogues with students on voting rights. After that, students attend a playwriting workshop, providing them with the necessary tools to write their own scripts. The program concludes with students submitting their own original plays to FST’s annual youth playwriting competition. By the end of February 2020, FST’s Historically Speaking program will have reached over 1,000 young people in middle schools and high schools in Sarasota and Manatee counties. FST has also commissioned Jacqueline Goldfinger, Mark St. Germain, Rachel Lynett, and Sandy Rustin to write original plays that share women’s voices and address the state of voting rights in America’s past, present, and future. Public readings of these commissioned plays will be presented during The Dangerous Ladies Festival in August 2020, the month marking the 100th Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Each play will be considered for programming as part of FST’s 2020-21 Winter Season.

For more information on Florida Studio Theatre and The Suffragist Project