Peripheral Visions

Marginal Women and Peripheral Visions, two terrific projects with awful titles, spawned about 35 short plays that focused on women's lives in history and roles in popular culture. Both MW and it's follow-up, were very successful, selling out most nights. The playwrights and cast donated their work and time in exchange for the chance to work outside their area of specialty. Playwrights performed and directed, Directors wrote and performed and Actors did a little bit of everything. The collaborative nature of the process meant that the artists always had a mentor to help them, Directors advising first time directors and Actors supporting the many performers who were onstage for the first time. To develop the plays, we met every Saturday morning from September 1 until the week before Christmas and in this time read and commented on new work the writers generated. These writing sessions were supervised by myself and Patricia Henritze, another local Director and Playwright. Over the Christmas break the writers finished a working draft and by January 1 we began casting. In both iterations, the shows ran during the month of March, Women's History Month. Both projects received funding from The Georgia Bureau of Cultural Affairs and Council for the Arts.

ARTS | VISUAL ARTS
Femme fantasia
Peripheral Visions gives a nod to notorious females

BY CURT HOLMAN

Most surveys of the famous women of history focus on the role models and icons of the sort you'd find on a dollar coin -- your Susan B. Anthonys and Sacagaweas. Theatre Gael and Blue Machine consider the ladies of the flip side with Peripheral Visions, an evening of vignettes devoted to notorious females.

An off-shoot of the Marginal Women project of short plays (from which come three of the evening's 15 pieces), Peripheral Visions, offers a distaff rogue's gallery from history, literature and pop culture, ranging from Ophelia to Anna Nicole Smith, from notorious Transylvanian sadist Countess Elizabeth Bathory to Barbie and her pal Midge.

With the exception of director and Marginal Women co-founder David Crowe, Peripheral Visions features only women as performers, writers and directors. The cast includes Johanna Linden, Sharron Cain, Wesley Usher, Claire Bronson, Dede Bloodworth, with scripts written by such playwrights as Marki Shalloe, Karla Jennings, Shirlene Holmes, Kendra Myers and Lauren Gunderson, and directors including Carol Mitchell-Leon, Brenda Porter, Lorna Howley, Rachel May and Emily Pender.

Marginal Women: Peripheral Visions plays May 14-23 at the 14th Street Playhouse, 173 14th St., with performances at 8 p.m. Mon.-Wed. $10. 404-876-1138.