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poet.
performer. activist. teacher.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Katherine Chavez or Kenneth Prestininzi, Conference Producers
PSi@brown.edu, (401) 863-1510
Pat Payne, NeoSpinster, pibiza@hotmail.com, (323) 292-3375
NEOSPINSTERS PERFORM AT PERFORMANCE STUDIES INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
11TH Annual Performance Conference Hosts Cutting-Edge Women’s Poetry Collective
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE BEFORE MARCH 25, 2005 :
( Los Angeles , CA , March 18, 2005 ) Performance Studies International (PSi) presents the NeoSpinsters Collective on Friday, April 1 st at 8:00pm , at its 11 th Annual Conference hosted by Brown University in Providence , Rhode Island . The performance will take place on campus, at the Ashamu Studio in Lyman Hall. Tickets are $5 for conference attendees, and $15 for the general public, obtainable through ArtTixRI.com.
The NeoSpinster Collective (Dora E. McQuaid, Pat Payne, reina alejandra prado, and guest poet Evie Shockley) brings together four very accomplished poets/performers including the two-time winner of the prestigious Taos Poetry Circus Heavyweight Championship; the winner of the Fifth Annual Pennsylvania Governor’s Victim Service Pathfinder Award; a former member of L.A. Coyotas, an intergenerational, multi-genre, Chicana art collective; and a Cave Canem fellow. Our poets have played at numerous colleges and theaters and such venues as UCLA Hammer Museum, Getty Museum, Henry Miller Library, La Peña Cultural Center, Gene Autry Museum, Self-Help Graphics, Beyond Baroque, The World Stage, University of Stirling, Scotland, Bowery Poetry Club, and the Nuyorican Poets Café, and have collaborated/performed with or opened for such cultural icons as performance maven Rachel Rosenthal, former California poet laureate Quincy Troupe, actor/author Sarah Jones, new music mavens the California Ear Group, and rock musician Vernon Reid.
The NeoSpinsters will present Second Wind, a multimedia ensemble piece that engages gender and sexual stereotypes while evoking new beginnings, endurance, and mature women’s embracement of eroticism. Juxtaposing the poetic expressions of diverse ethnic and cultural communities, these four American writers collectively address themes that range from sexuality and spirituality, the politics of bodily desire, consequences of sexual violence, and intersections of race and sexuality. Second Wind is highly interactive; audience participation is encouraged through the use of props, chants, and improvised movement. “We’re definitely don’t fit the stereotype of the sad old lonely woman knitting by the fireplace. We’re more likely to set fires than tend them,” says NeoSpinster co-founder, Pat Payne. “We celebrate mature independent women; the rebels, the artists, the sassy warriors in all women.”
PSi is a professional association founded in 1997 to promote communication and exchange among scholars and practitioners working in the vibrant and still-evolving fields of performance and live arts. PSi has recently mounted conference events in locations as diverse as Wales , Germany , New Zealand , Singapore and the USA , and works as a crucible for new ideas and forms in performance discourse and practice. The carnivalesque conference, “Becoming Uncomfortable,” will mix theoretical discourse, workshops, workgroups, panels and performances, structured to create a feast of visual arts, media and cultural studies, theatre, dance, public rhetoric, ethnography, musicology, and philosophy.
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