Brava! For Women in the Arts and Cultural Odyssey present in collaboration with Planned Parenthood Northern California
BIRTHRIGHT?
April 9-19, 2015
Thursday through Saturday at 8 PM
Sunday at 3 PM
with a Special Gala Show Saturday, April 11
Women’s health is at the center of a political maelstrom cloaked in religious ideology, abuse of power and a blatant disregard for the women and families impacted by the fall out. Rhodessa Jones and THE MEDEA PROJECT will unearth the questions, issues, and pros and cons of the debate surrounding women’s reproductive rights. To honor and 25thAnniversary of THE MEDEA PROJECT excerpts from past shows will also be interwoven throughout the evening paying homage to the innovative and empowering concept of “art as social activism”.
“Each woman moves distinctly, decisively, crisply, channeling their personal experience into felt confidence....an aggressive, unapologetic, self-assured femininity.”
BIRTHRIGHT? celebrates THE MEDEA PROJECT: THEATER FOR INCARCERATED WOMEN’S 25th ANNIVERSARY!
About The Medea Project:
In 1989, while conducting exercise classes at the San Francisco County Jail, Cultural Odyssey Co-Artistic Director Rhodessa Jones and prison officials observed that African American and Latina women inmates were more likely to honestly confront their personal problems by telling autobiographical stories than through traditional counseling techniques. Based on this observation, Rhodessa, together with representatives of the Sheriff’s Department and the San Francisco Health Department founded The MEDEA Project in 1990 to explore whether an arts-based approach could reduce recidivism and divert women from the criminal justice system. Since that auspicious beginning THE MEDEA PROJECT has become a model for transforming and rehabilitating female inmates, and working with ex – inmates as well as HIV positive women utilizing the performing arts.
About Planned Parenthood:
Founded in 1962, and with roots dating back to the 1920s in San Francisco, Planned Parenthood provides essential reproductive health care and sexuality education programs in adherence to the belief that all people have the right to make their own decisions regarding their reproductive and sexual lives. Its mission is to promote and protect sexual health, reproductive freedom, and social justice through services, education, and advocacy by providing urgently needed reproductive health services at 20 health centers and 10 satellite sites across 17 counties and conducting robust preventative health education efforts that reach deeply into their communities of service.