Athena Project Arts Festival Presents 3 Weeks of Denver Women Artists

Government Issued Long Johns

Erin Wagoner’s play will premiere at the Athena Project Arts Festival

The Athena Project, a group of professional women artists in Denver, has organized an ambitious three-week festival which will feature a world-premiere play by Erin Wagoner,  workshops of four new plays by women, readings of short plays by teenage girls, as well as two gallery shows, dance events, and a fundraiser fashion show.

The festival runs from March 14 – 30 in several venues in Denver, Colorado.  The full schedule can be found on their website at www.AthenaProjectFestival.org.

This year’s festival theme of Utopia/Dystopia is reflected in the play selections.

Erin Wagoner’s world premiere play, Government Issued Long Johns, is about a woman who decides to challenge the rules in a society where everyone wears regulation long-johns.  On March 15, audience members are invited enhance their experience of the play by wearing pajamas to the show and having milk and cookies afterwards.  The playwright, Erin Wagoner, received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and her plays have been finalists for NYU’s Goldberg Playwriting Prize.

This year’s Plays in Progress series will feature:

  • Laura Maria Censabella’s Paradise – about a female Yemeni-American high school senior studying neuroscience to unlock her past.
  • Marilyn Harris Kriegel’s Harm’s Way – about paranoia and denial in post-911 America.
  • Melissa Lucero McCarl’s Crazy Patterns – about a couple with a secret about their 12 year old daughter.
  • Nicolette Vajtay’s Relative Communication – about estranged family members trying to find ways to reconnect while their mother has brain surgery.

The short plays by girls are a product of Athena Project’s Girls’ Write Program, a year-long playwriting and play development program for girls in grades 6-9.

Their fashion show fundraiser on March 26 will feature designs by Salwa Owens of SNO Couture, Geri Garcia of Green Rose Rags, Carletta Miles of C-Style Designs, Emily E. Geisler of Scandalous Couture, and Caroline Smith of Janie G. Couture.  The fashion show is exclusively sponsored by Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design.