Brava presents the workshop presentation of Untold
FRIDAY, APRIL 27 – 8PM (with post-performance reception)
SATURDAY, APRIL 28 – 8PM
SUNDAY, APRIL 29 – 3PM
Brava presents the workshop presentation of Untold, a theatrical adaptation by Lisa Marie Rollins and Susan Ito. Directed by Lauren Spencer.
Moving beyond the dominant reproductive rights conversation centered on abortion, Untold examines the many facets of race, class, gender identity, and sexuality that affect reproductive health experiences. How do individuals navigate the stories and myths of shame, secrecy, and respectability surrounding their bodies and choices? Untold moves beyond "choice" to showcase the unique stories of women who have relinquished children to adoption, of queer and trans women, of women of color, of an abortion provider, and stories of women who have chosen not to bear children.
Untold is a theatrical adaptation of Untold Stories, a collection curated by the Sea Change Project. The book explores the cost of holding and hiding the secrets and explores the ways women are taught to carry shame and stigma, and eventually heal by coming out of isolation. Untold provides an intimate look at experiences rarely heard outside of internal activist or medical circles.
TICKETS
$0 - $25 sliding scale. No one turned away for lack of funds (subject to availability).
ARTIST BIOS
Lisa Marie Rollins is playwright, poet, freelance director and dramaturg. Most recently she co-directed Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment (Crowded Fire Theater) and a reading of Tearrance Chisholm’s Br’er Cotton (Playwrights Foundation). She is the director of All Atheists are Muslimby Zahra Noorbakhsh and was co-producer of W. Kamau Bell’s “Ending Racism in About and Hour”. Lisa Marie performed her acclaimed solo play, Ungrateful Daughter: One Black Girl’s Story of Being Adopted by a White Family…That Aren’t Celebrities in festivals, universities and academic conferences across the US. She was Poet in Residence at June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at U.C. Berkeley, a CALLALOO Journal London Writing Workshop Fellow and an alumni in Poetry of VONA Writing Workshop. Her writing is published in Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, River, Blood, Corn Literary Journal, Line/Break, As/Us Literary Journal,The Pacific Review and others. Currently, she is finishing her new manuscript of poems, Compass for which she received the 2016 Mary Tanenbaum Literary Award from SF Foundation. She is in development with her new play, Token. She holds degrees from The Claremont Graduate University and UC Berkeley. She is a Lecturer at St Mary’s College in Performance Studies, and a Resident Artist with Crowded Fire Theater. Lisa Marie was a 2015-16 playwright member of Just Theater Play Lab and was a 2016 Fellow of the San Francisco Writers Grotto.
Susan Ito is author of The Mouse Room. She co-edited the anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. She has been a columnist and editor at Literary Mama, and her work has appeared in Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Catapult, Hyphen, The Bellevue Literary Review, Making More Waves and elsewhere. She has performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the United States. She writes and teaches at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, at Bay Path University and Mills College.