Date: Mar 10, 2008

Women Respond to War: Two Productions by Award-Winning Actress Ellen McLaughlin

"Penelope," March 10, 2008; "Lysistrata," March 12, 2008

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY:  Hofstra University’s Women’s Studies Program and the Center for Civic Engagement present "Women Respond to War!" featuring award-winning actress Ellen McLaughlin.

Penelope
Monday, March 10, 2008, 4:30 to 6 p.m.
Room 103, Dempster Hall, South Campus
Ms. McLaughlin will perform Penelope, which premiered in February at the Getty Theater Lab in Los Angeles, California. Based on Homer’s Odyssey, McLaughlin’s play is about a woman who must cope with a former husband who has returned to her after suffering a brain injury in a modern war. Admission is free.

Lysistrata
Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 4:30 to 6 p.m.
Plaza Rooms, Sondra and David S. Mack Student Center
Ms. McLaughlin, a participant in the international Lysistrata project, will direct Hofstra students and faculty in a staged reading of Aristophanes’ classic anti-war play, Lysistrata. Admission is free.

For more information contact

Associate Professor Cindy Rosenthal, Women’s Studies Program

at (516) 463-4966 or e-mail cindy.d.rosenthal@hofstra.edu.

About Ellen McLaughlin

Ellen McLaughlin’s plays have received numerous national and international productions. They include A Narrow Bed, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Tongue of a Bird, The Trojan Women, Helen, The Persians, Oedipus and Penelope.

Her grants and awards include The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Writer’s Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund and the T.C.G./Fox Residency Grant for a play written for American Repertory Theater. 

She has taught playwriting at Barnard College since 1995. She has also taught at Yale Drama School and Princeton University. Ms. McLaughlin is also an actor. She is most well known for having originated the part of the Angel in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, appearing in every U.S. production from its earliest workshops through its Broadway run. Her most recent publication by T.C.G. is The Greek Plays.