San Francisco's WomenROCK Collective Celebrates Four Years of Empowering Female Artists in the Music Industry

San Francisco, CA, June 16, 2010

On Wednesday, June 16th, 2010, San Franciscans will pack The Independent to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the WomenROCK Collective, a group that has contributed to making the city by the bay a great place for women musicians and their fans.

Founded in San Francisco in 2006, the collective strives to empower female artists in the music industry at the local, national, and international level while raising awareness and money for important causes.

Women make up less than ten percent of the music industry and less than six percent in executive, producer or engineer roles. Women who do achieve commercial success are often over-sexualized and objectified, leaving women who don’t fit the mold out in the cold. WomenROCK was created in response to this situation by a group of talented and motivated women musicians, producers, and promoters (including *bernadette*, Valerie Orth, Lisa Sniderman, Sylvia Roberts, Kristin Hathaway, Zarah Gamaldi, Jessie Woletz, Melissa Rapp, Nomi Adiv, Nkechi Live, Vanessa Verlee, Eva Jo Meyers, Marianne Barlow, Abigail Picache and others) who decided to work together to raise visibility and opportunity for themselves and the other women artists in their community.

“We are organizing ourselves to work together to showcase our creative endeavors, talents, intellect, business savvy and penchant for community-building and activism,” says the celebration’s organizer and WomenROCK visionary *bernadette*, who is also one of the artists being showcased at The Independent.

Since its inception, WomenROCK has presented monthly showcase performances and special one-off shows in San Francisco, and has raised money for Bay Area and national organizations, including IMPACT Bay Area, Breast Cancer Action, Blue Bear School of Music, Women’s Community Clinic, and more.

Wednesday’s performers will include:

Stripmall Architecture (http://www.stripmallarchitecture.com/)

As members of San Francisco’s celebrated Halou, Ryan and Rebecca Coseboom built up a remarkable body of material and worked with a wide range of iconoclastic artists including DJ Shadow (on his infamous Radiohead remix), Low, Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie, and the Velvet Underground’s John Cale. When Halou came to an end after a US tour with indie legend Bob Mould, they regrouped quickly and launched their new project, Stripmall Architecture with guitarist Tim Hingston and drummer Patrick Harte. Now, in 2010, Stripmall Architecture have released their second album, Feathersongs for Factory Girls, entirely funded by their dedicated fanbase across the US and the globe.

Conspiracy of Venus (http://www.conspiracyofvenus.com/)

Conspiracy of Venus is a groundbreaking women's community activist a cappella choir based in San Francisco. Under the artistic direction of Joyce Todd McBride, the ensemble’s 40 singers perform McBride's daring and inventive arrangements of songs ranging from the classic (Joni Mitchell's “Big Yellow Taxi”) to the cutting-edge (Bjork's “Possibly Maybe”). Their repertoire also includes works by Bill Withers, Rufus Wainwright, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Roger Miller. Conspiracy of Venus has performed to sold-out crowds in venues around the Bay area ranging from The Palace of Fine Arts to the Dublin Women’s Prison.

ZIVA (http://www.zivamusic.com/)

Israeli-born, Ziva grew up on a small kibbutz, where she began her musical journey playing the cello, saxophone, and singing in the local choir. Becoming increasingly drawn to jazz and R&B music of the United States, she soon found herself as lead singer in a funk band, becoming a local sensation. After serving in the military and attending the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, she relocated to sunny California where her American dreaming is becoming a thriving phenomenon not only in her musical performance but also her organizational skills with WomenROCK and her new endeavor as producer and promoter of the newly formed Bay Vibes.

*bernadette* (http://www.bernadettelovesyou.com/)

*bernadette* is taking the stage by storm with her vibrant musical presence and unique vocal sound. She writes heartfelt, sultry songs that encapsulate the essence of San Francisco's timeless sound with a 60's sensibility and authentic purity. Hailing from San Francisco, *bernadette* has played the Grand Rooms of San Francisco - The Fillmore, Great American Music Hall, The Independent, Slim's, Bottom of the Hill, Café Du Nord and festivals around the Bay, playing across the United States as well as touring Europe. Backed by co-conspirator Garrin Benfield on guitar, the two harmonize and play together akin to Gillian Welch & David Rawlings in a brutally honest, soul-baring live performance. *bernadette* is the visionary and one of the co-founders of WomenROCK as well as running the thriving Box Factory art, community and culture space and a co-producer of one of the largest festivals in San Francisco, Power to the Peaceful.

The celebration will also include a burlesque performance by the Cheese Puffs, spoken word by Scorpio Blues, SHEketch comedy from PianoFight’s Monday Night ForePlays, and a dance party with DJ Kipp Glass.

ASL Interpretation of each performance will be provided, and the show will be broadcast live at: http://realize2actualize.ning.com/.

If you live in the Bay Area, come support the power and potential created by women artists who work hard – and play hard – together.

WHEN: Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 7:30PM

WHERE: THE INDEPENDENT 628 Divisidero Street, San Francisco, CA 94110.

http://www.theindependentsf.com/ , (415) 771-1421

The Independent is a 21+ venue and is wheelchair accessible.

TICKETS: $12 Advance/$14 at the door.

http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=1912905

WPA Artist Mary Perry Stone Honored for SWAN Day

Dayton, OH -
On Friday, February 5, 2010, 70 people, including Dayton’s mayor, braved a snowstorm to attend the opening reception of “Art Makes Us Human,” an exhibit of work by Mary Perry Stone (1909-2007), a WPA artist who focused on social justice and civil rights. The exhibit inaugurates “The Mary Perry Stone Women’s Art Gallery” at the Missing Peace Art Space, which will house a permanent collection of works by Stone and showcase work by women artists from around the world whose art is dedicated to peace. The gallery will hold a SWAN Day event the weekend of March 5-7, 2010 in conjunction with the exhibit.

Mary Perry Stone was one of 40 women employed by the New York City Federal Arts Project as part of the WPA during the 1930’s as a sculptor and teacher. It was during this period that her work became focused on social protest, her lifelong subject. After working in the shipyards during World War II, Stone moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she continued to sculpt and paint. Much of her work during the 1960’s opposed the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. She moved to Ashland, Oregon, in the 1990’s, where she continued to sculpt, paint, and exhibit her work until her death in 2007. Stone’s art was shown in numerous group and solo exhibits at museums and galleries in New York, California, and Oregon, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, and Rockefeller Center.

Over the course of her career, Stone made over 50 social-protest canvas murals on subjects ranging from the struggle for civil rights to the exploitation of labor. Her work “was all grounded in her belief that an artist… has a responsibility to work for a more humane world,” said Ramie Streng, Stone’s daughter. According to Streng, her mother’s lifelong commitment to social justice was largely influenced by the Great Depression and her involvement in the WPA. Wanting to remain true to the anti-commercial, progressive spirit of her mother’s work, Streng created a website where visitors can view Stone’s social protest murals for free. With a new gallery home at the Missing Peace Art Space, Stone’s colorful, dynamic, deeply humanistic art will continue to inspire generations to come.

WomenArts is delighted to celebrate the life and work of Mary Perry Stone as part of our WPA 75^th anniversary retrospective for SWAN Day 2010. Special thanks to Ramie Streng for getting in touch with us about her mother’s work, and to Steve Fryburg and Gabriella Pickett of the Missing Peace Art Space for planning the SWAN Day event in Dayton.

If you’re in or near Dayton, be sure to visit The Mary Perry Stone Women’s Art Gallery at the Missing Peace Art Space, 234 S. Dutoit St., Dayton, OH 45402-2215, T: (937) 241-4353. Read more about the exhibit and see a video at: http://www.missingpeaceart.org/missing_peace_art_space_upcoming.htm.

Visit http://maryperrystone.com/ to learn more about the life and work of Mary Perry Stone.

Recognizing Artists as Workers

It is always exciting at this time of year to hear from people who are organizing SWAN Day events for next month. As the calls and emails come in, I am often struck by how hard most women artists work. We put in long hours for under-staffed non-profits or juggle several part-time jobs along with childcare duties. In spite of this, the general public seldom considers artists as "workers," and we tend to be overlooked in conversations about the economy.

In his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama said that two million Americans had been hired as a result of his economic stimulus programs. He spoke proudly about hiring construction and clean energy workers, teachers, cops, firefighters, first responders, and correctional officers. He did not mention artists.

Thanks to Americans for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts did receive $50 million of stimulus funds last year for arts jobs in spite of strong Republican opposition - but that's only enough for a maximum of 2,000 jobs at $25,000 each, and it is a miniscule percentage of the total Recovery Act package of $787 billion.

To put this in perspective - the California Department of Corrections received $1 billion in federal stimulus funds, i.e. Congress allocated 20 times as much money for prison officers in California as they did for all of the artists in the country. Do the guards really contribute that much more to our economic potential?

During the Great Depression of the 1930's the U.S. government paid more attention to the needs of artists. In 1935 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched an economic stimulus program called the Works Progress Administration (WPA) with a goal of giving people "self-respect and self-reliance" by giving them meaningful jobs.

The WPA provided jobs to approximately 40,000 artists at its peak, including many of the best artists of the period, such as Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Nevelson, Langston Hughes, Orson Welles, and Arthur Miller.

Zora Neale Hurston's WPA Legacy

Zora Neale Hurston worked on the WPA Folklore project, recording folk songs and stories in the black communities of Florida and preserving oral traditions that might otherwise have been lost. The recordings are now available online in the Florida Memory State Library and Archives. (See www.floridamemory.com/Collections/folklife/sound_hurston.cfm)

It is amazing to hear one of the finest writers of the Harlem Renaissance singing these songs as part of her government job during the depths of the Great Depression. Alice Walker once wrote that Hurston's great gift was to show her people "relishing the pleasure of each other's loquacious and bodacious company."

In the link below, you can hear Hurston describe and sing the song Halimuhfack. Even though it is a scratchy 75-year-old recording, you can still hear that pleasure and her loving attention to the details of cultural expression in her community. www.floridamemory.com/Collections/folklife/mp3/hurston/halimuhfack.mp3

Organizing in Your Community

As President Obama calls for $30 billion more for jobs stimulus programs, what can we do to make sure that Congress puts artists to work again as part of our country's recovery?

Many of you are already taking the first step by organizing SWAN Day events in your community that raise the visibility of women artists and stimulate discussion about the value of the arts.

If you would like to do more on this issue as part of your SWAN Day event or later in the year, WomenArts has compiled resource materials about the WPA and suggested activities. (See www.WomenArts.org/wpa).

The members of NewShoe, a group of playwrights and theatre directors in New York, have created a play about the women of the WPA for their SWAN Day event, and they have agreed to share it with others for free public readings. (See www.WomenArts.org/wpa/wpa_script.htm ) We encourage you to create and share works that express your views on the role of artists in the recovery.

Also, check out Art & the Public Purpose: A New Framework at http://www.newculturalpolicy.org/. A group of 60 arts activists met with White House representatives in May 2009 and then developed this excellent five-point manifesto about ways that artists could participate in our country's recovery.

Since many of you are in book groups, we wanted to recommend two books that really bring the WPA programs to life - Susan Quinn's Furious Improvisation about the Federal Theatre Project, and David Taylor's Soul of a People about the Federal Writers' Project. For those of you in WITASWAN film-watching groups, there is a film version of Soul of a People, and another film about the period by Tim Robbins called The Cradle Will Rock.

Let's hope that seventy-five years from now, our descendants will be able to see that even though times were hard in 2010, we still wrote plays, made films, sang, danced, painted, and most of all, we enjoyed each other's "bodacious company."

If you have comments about this article, please contact us>>
We always love to hear from you.

Martha Richards, Executive Director
WomenArts

Sixty Years of Stubborn Creativity

Since I will turn 60 on Monday, December 14, I have been reflecting on the creative impulse that has been central to my life and work for so many years.

Like many of you, I do this work because I feel compelled by some inner force. Earlier this year, when I interviewed Isabel Allende for SWAN Day, I asked her how she came to write her first novel, and she said, "I was desperate - there was this stuff that I needed to get out of my soul somehow - to give birth."

I have heard similar statements from hundreds of artists over the years, and it's how I feel about my own work. When I started WomenArts, many well-intentioned people told me it was crazy, and yet, here we are 15 years later. I started at my kitchen table with a few friends, and today women all over the world use our services.

I believe that these stubborn creative instincts are our greatest source of power, especially when we work together. As I think about my next decade, I want to find ways to honor that perseverance in each of us and to build a community where we can cheer each other on.

My mother grew up on a farm, and I was actually named after her favorite mule. My mother often told me that I was as stubborn as my namesake, but since she was strong-willed herself, it was always clear that she loved my independent spirit and wanted me to succeed. Perhaps this is why I feel such a deep connection with other obstinate dreamers. I recognize the energy that feels like home.

People always told me that as you get older you cherish your friendships more than anything else and I am finding that to be true. I want to thank all of you for being such wonderful colleagues and friends for all these years. Keep the faith - the world needs our passionate voices, and I am rooting for all of us to be heard!

Much love, Martha Richards

P.S. I have loved getting so many birthday notes, poems, songs, and other samples of your art. Please feel free to keep sending those all year long!

Send Martha a Birthday Greeting!
Make a Birthday Donation to WomenArts 
See Martha's Birthday Wish on Facebook

Being Thankful for the Arts

WomenArts asked one of our favorite novelists, Susan Stinson, to write about why she persists in the arts in spite of the financial hardships. We loved her response below, and hope you do too.

Like Susan, we feel blessed to have the arts as a central focus in our lives and to have the opportunity to work with so many thoughtful and talented people. We are grateful for these precious gifts at Thanksgiving and all year round.    Happy Thanksgiving to everyone from the WomenArts Team!!!!

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Art in Hard Times
by Susan Stinson

Twenty-five years ago, when I was in college, my father warned me that a livelihood as an artist would be hard to come by, especially for a woman. I spent the next couple of decades throwing everything I had into making the strongest art I could, working around practical constraints – like jobs—as necessary. Now, four published books and one wandering manuscript later, during a year in which individual, national and global economies are all shaky, I’m facing the unpleasantly specific realities of being close to fifty and far from financial stability. My father was right.

He was right, but so was I. I persist in keeping art central to my daily life, no matter how badly it pays, both because I have a strong sense of vocation and because having a regular practice of making and seeking out art generates relationships, skills and experiences that get me through hard times. Attending to the work – in whatever fractured, imperfect way I can – saves me. This has happened again and again. It is happening right now.

Today I’m working in a coffee shop with another novelist, who is wearing earphones and a serious look. I feel the pulse of her typing as it shakes the table. There’s a whirr from the juicer drowning out a song by Ella Fitzgerald. Yesterday, when I had just received a rejection from a publisher with my name misspelled (petty signs of inattention gain sting at such moments), I worked here with a different friend, who is a novelist, too. Before we sat down and started writing, she consoled me with an ice cream cone, extravagant with chocolate sprinkles.

Both friends read my work again and again. One of them and I have been critiquing each other’s writing since the eighties. These are friendships with staying power and active depths, built on the fact that we are writers. That’s not to say that there are never challenges. Sometimes I’ve been jealous when a writer I know achieves something that I’ve been thwarted in. Figuring out how to move through that is uncomfortable but intensely rewarding. The relationships I have with other writers and artists are not dependent on material success, but on shared commitments to doing the work. They make my life larger.

Even without the companionship of someone working on another story across the table, the practice of writing (and, I think, of doing art in any form) cultivates skills that are useful for negotiating tough circumstances. For instance, as a novelist, I have to be able to offer sensory details in order to evoke convincing worlds for my characters to inhabit. This forces me to pay attention to small moments of bodily experience. The novel I’ve been working on is set in the eighteenth century, so I’ve had to figure out which parts of my sensory knowledge might translate across time. If a flying bug hits my shoulder with a thud like a hollow acorn, it gives me an experience that might have been shared with someone who sat at this spot in a previous century.

The imperative I have as a novelist to accurately reproduce the minutiae of physical sensation has the effect of forcing me into intense observation of ordinary moments. The concentration calms and empties me, like dance or meditation. At the same time, I employ my worry, grief, and confusion in the inner lives of my characters. Capturing moments of awkwardness and clumsiness goes a long way towards depicting convincing human lives. Giving a book shape, movement and meaning in the form of a plot is an extended exercise in discovering what I think matters most, both to me and to the readers I want to pull and hold. If I am under strain, writing becomes difficult, but I know that finding my way back to it will let me use even my most harrowing experiences and vaguest fears as elements in creating a story that is compelling and meaningful to others.

In addition to nurturing useful habits of mind, being a writer surrounds me with opportunities to experience art made by others. My friends and I lend each other books, and then talk with heat and collaborative excitement about what we think of them. We get up at four-thirty in the morning to travel to another city to see a play by someone we know, offering each other paper fans, band aids and little boxes of animal crackers if exhaustion kicks in. We organize readings and conferences to create outlets for each other’s work. We comment on each other’s blogs and click each other’s links. We know we need each other.

Beyond that, exploring art made by others leads me to insights I could not have found on my own. I have unforgettable surges of change and witness with art by people I will never meet. I try to stay with work that scares me, to let it help me discover my own secrets. Art leads to more art, to cultivating a willingness to be startled, to be nervous and also open, to ride out discomfort in service of discovery. I turn to art to get through small changes, such as the involuntary realignment of ambitions for a book, and also big ones, such as aging, illness, and mourning.

Now, there’s a click as my friend puts down her earphones. She’s got a look of abstraction on her dear, familiar face, but she’s gazing at me. Still absorbed in the very different stories we are each telling, we don’t speak for a few moments. A counter worker wearing pointy glasses comes up the stairs with a bin full of carrots. I can see through the glass door to the lights coming on in the sign for the bank across the street. A woman on the sidewalk, shaved bald, looks alertly behind her. It’s time for my friend and I to leave the coffee shop and go different ways. I need to buy dental floss before I head home. It is an ordinary evening. I haven’t finished a novel or found the next publisher, but I feel changed by the process of working, prepared to move or wait, to do the things I need to do. This may not be a livelihood, but it’s a life. My friend is ready to talk, and so, packing up our computers, gathering the cups, shifting our common world in tiny increments of art closer to the one of our fiercest desires, we do.

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About Susan Stinson

Susan Stinson's novels are Venus of Chalk (2004), Fat Girl Dances with Rocks(1994) and Martha Moody(1995). Spider In A Tree is her novel in progress. Belly Songs, a collection of poetry and lyric essays, was published in 1993.

Her work -- which has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Seneca Review, Curve, Lambda Book Report and The Women's Review of Books -- has received the Benjamin Franklin Award in Fiction as well as a number of fellowships. She was born in Texas, raised in Colorado, and now lives in Northampton, MA.

For more information, please visit SusanStinson.net. You can also read a WomenArts interview with Susan Stinson from 2005 at: www.WomenArts.org/news_archives/June2005Interviews.htm#Stinson

Harmonious Collaborations: Melodia Women's Choir of New York City Premieres New Work by Woman Composer

Melodia Women's Choir of New York City is an ensemble of 35 singers who perform an eclectic mix of women's choral music under Artistic Director Cynthia Powell, often shining the spotlight on women composers. This November 14, 2009 at Saint Peter's Church (Lexington Ave. at E. 54th St., NYC), the group will perform a new commissioned work by American composer Chris Lastovicka, who won the first Women Composers Commissioning Competition held by Melodia.

Lastovicka composed Notes Upon the Breeze specifically for Melodia, setting to music three poems by U.S. poet laureate Kay Ryan. Powell, who has conducted the choir since its formation in 2003, describes Notes Upon the Breeze as "fresh and inspired...matched perfectly" to Ryan's poetry, which has been compared to the work of Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore.

The evening promises to be a celebration of women's creativity and voices in a field in which women composers are still woefully underrpresented. By sponsoring a commissioning competition for women composers and sharing the resulting work with the pubic, Melodia provides a wonderful example of women in music taking the initiative to support and promote each other.

The concert will also feature Songs of the Lights by Imant Raminsh, Songs from "The Princess" by Gustav Holst, and selections from Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. The choir will be accompanied by pianist Taisiya Pushkar and the Transfiguration Quartet.

If you are in the New York City area, support many women artists by attending the premiere performance!

Concert Details:

Melodia Women's Choir, "Notes Upon the Breeze"
Saturday, November 14, 2009
8 pm
Saint Peter's Church, Citigroup Center
Lexington Ave. At E. 54th St.
New York City
T: (212) 252-4134

Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door.

www.melodiawomenschoir.org

Two Inspiring Shows about Women Construction Workers

Two beautiful productions have focused on women construction workers in recent months. Shotgun Players in Berkeley is currently presenting This World in a Woman's Hands, which is about women who worked as ship-builders in Richmond, CA during World War II.  Over the summer, Flyaway Productions did a run at SOMArts in San Francisco of The Ballad of Polly Ann, about women who contributed to the construction of Bay Area bridges. Both productions told stories about women's lives that I had never heard before.

This Word In A Woman's Hands

Although "Rosie the Riveter" posters have become pop symbols of the power of women workers, we seldom hear any stories about the day-to-day lives of the 18 million women who worked in U.S. factories during World War II while the men were fighting overseas. This World in a Woman's Hands by Marcus Gardley points out that although all the "Rosies" in the posters are white, many women of color were working in the factories as well, struggling against racial as well as sexual discrimination.

With an inter-racial cast of nine women, This World in a Woman's Hands explores the complex relationships among the women at Henry J. Kaiser's shipyards in Richmond, California where 93,000 men and women worked around the clock in two shifts daily during World War II. The Richmond shipyards are famous for building 747 ships between 1941 and 1945, a feat not equalled anywhere else in the world, before or since.

The women of color were often placed in lower-paying jobs, and even when they got the better jobs, they were paid less than their white co-workers. At the plant in Richmond, the factory managers fought hard against efforts by the women of color to organize. The women eventually won equal pay, but their victory was brief.  Once the war was over, all of the women were laid off so that the returning soldiers could have their jobs.

Much of the play is sung - either a cappella or accompanied by one on-stage bass player. The composer, Molly Holm, performed for eight years with Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra and has worked with roots-music virtuoso, Linda Tillery, who is listed as a musical consultant for the show.  The show's music reflects those influences, and the jazzy style of Holm's compositions evokes the period of the piece as well as the sounds of the factory.  African-American spirituals also add to the emotional texture of the piece. All of the cast members have terrific voices, and there are moments when the music is simply breath-taking.

The Ballad of Polly Ann

The Ballad of Polly Ann is a dance piece choreographed by Jo Kreiter with music by Pamela Z.   As research for the piece, Kreiter interviewed six women who worked on Bay Area bridges - women who were pile drivers, iron workers, laborers, carpenters and crane operators. Pamela Z integrated excerpts from those interviews with sounds of construction, cars, and the ocean to create rhythmic sound loops that serve as the music for the dancers.

The most remarkable thing about The Ballad of Polly Ann is the way it conveys both the exhilaration and the fear that the women experienced working on steel girders high above the water. Kreiter's company, Flyaway Productions, specializes in "off-the-ground dances that expose the range and power of female physicality," and much of this piece is performed on suspended girders and platforms and on a tall scaffolding around the edge of the stage. The YouTube clip below will give you a sense of the work.





The Ballad of Polly Ann takes its title from the 1870's ballad about John Henry, "the steel driving man", whose wife, Polly Ann, takes up his hammer when John Henry dies. The dancers perform a series of scenes that focus on specific aspects of the women's work experiences, such as their responses to the jeers of male co-workers, the sense of autonomy they get from their paychecks, and the thrill of looking at the ocean from a great height.

The fact that the dancers are often suspended in air or manipulating large beams is a constant reminder to the audience of the sheer physical strength of the women.  Kreiter says, "We experiment with height, speed and gravity, dancing on steel objects that are both architectural and fabricated. We place dancers anywhere from two to one hundred feet off the ground . . .  At its core, our work explores the female body-- its tumultuous expressions of strength and fragility."


Both of these productions show women workers taking tremendous pride in working on challenging, large-scale projects. There is a Rosie the Riveter Monument on the site of one of the Richmond shipyards. The monument is the length of one of the Liberty ships that the women were building, and it visually makes the point that those ships were huge. Similarly, the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge are both amazing construction feats. The Golden Gate Bridge was the longest span in the world when it was built, and cynics believed that the Bay Bridge would be impossible to build due to the potential impact of turbulent waters and gusty winds.

The ability of the women portrayed in these productions to do their jobs in the face of severe discrimination and physical danger is a triumph of women's hearts, minds, and bodies. Thanks so much to everyone involved in these two productions for shining a light on this important piece of women's history. In a world where men generally get all the credit for large public construction projects, it is refreshing to see these two tributes to courageous women pioneers.

This World in a Woman's Hands runs through October 18, 2009 at Shotgun Players in Berkeley, CA. There is more information at: http://www.shotgunplayers.org/womans.htm

For more information about The Ballad of Polly Ann, please visit the website of FlyAway Productions at: http://www.flyawayproductions.com/. On October 24, 2009, they will be honoring ten women who are building bridges between women in the arts and civic life. The evening will include performances by Flyaway Productions and various guest artists as well as intimate, personal acceptance speeches by each of the awardees.  For more information, see The 10 Women Campaign on their website.