@dramatistsguild @nancygall 

The Kentucky Women Playwrights Seminar (KWPS) will mark its tenth anniversary with Impressions, a festival of eight new scripts inspired by the lives and paintings of Impressionist artists.

These artists were chosen from a packet of postcards purchased at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which the playwrights visited when they were in New York to present their collaboratively written piece Shh! at the Dramatists Guild’s Friday Night Footlights in 2014.

Guild member Trish Ayers, the group’s founder and director, set up the Footlights presentation and the trip from Kentucky to New York as well as the museum outing. When she discovered every artist in the museum packet was male, Ayers used her talent and passion for bringing people together by asking members of the Feminist Artists of Kentucky (FAK) to create art to accompany the new plays. Three members of KWPS are also part of FAK – Ayers, Pat Cheshire Jennings, and Patricia Watkins, and all three are crafting both visual art and scripts for Impressions.

Patricia Watkins used collage to sculpt heads of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin for Brenda K. White’s play titled Expressions and a Soul after a phrase found in letters written by Van Gogh. Watkins shredded prints of paintings by Van Gogh and Gauguin to create the heads.

Readings of the new work and an exhibition of the visual art will be presented by the Berea Arena Theater, a longtime supporter of KWPS, on April 30, 2016. Ayers hopes KWPS can eventually present Impressions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ayers founded the Seminar using an Art Meets Activism grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Motivated by a successful first year, Ayers continues to mentor, foster collaboration, teach, lead discussions as new work is shared, and at the end of each season, organize a presentation of members’ work.

In 2011, the Foundation honored Ayers with the Sallie Bingham Award, which recognizes “Kentucky women who are leaders in changing the lives of women and girls across the state by supporting feminist expression in the arts.”

Composition of the group changes each year. Ayers tries to “put together the right mix of personalities” and likes having new members. The youngest member is in her twenties; the oldest are in their seventies. Four members travel at least 50 miles for the five-hour monthly workshops in Berea, and half belong to the Guild.

This season, two women are writing their first plays: Beth Myers, editor of The Berea Citizen, and Pat Cheshire Jennings, a retired social worker.

Karen Devere, who says she is not yet comfortable calling herself a playwright, is writing her second play and heartened to “be among people who purposively work toward bringing us to a better place in our writing and in our lives generally.”

Glenda Dent White, the author of two shorts, had never written a play when she was invited to join. An experienced actor, she is serving the group as a reader during the development process this season.

The author of a dozen plays, Brenda K. White, finds KWPS a “wonderful group for a playwright, novice or experienced.” She recently retired from teaching to pursue writing fulltime.

Kristin Hornsby teaches at Northern Kentucky University and is writing her sixteenth play. After graduate school, she missed having a support group that both encourages and pushes its members. Hornsby finds KWPS fills that void for her.

Betty Peterson teaches at Somerset Community and Technical College and is the author of ten plays including Desert Flower, which is included in World Premieres from Horse Cave Theatre (Motes Books 2009). Peterson praises Ayers for fostering an atmosphere where writers respect one another and offer honest criticism without trying to rewrite others’ plays.

Peterson sums up her admiration of KWPS this way: “Every state should have its own Women Playwrights Seminar.”

For more information, visit http://www.kywomenplaywrights.org and the Facebook pages for KWPS and the Feminist Artists of Kentucky.

 Trish Ayers, founder and director of Kentucky Women Playwrights Seminar

 Kentucky Women Playwrights Seminar at work

 Heads of Van Gogh and Gauguin created by Patricia Watkins for Impressions

ngallclayton@dramatistsguild.com