6 Women @ 60 in 2006
a celebration!

A Wonderful Time was had by all! Photos to come.....
Read to see what it was...

Benefit  & Reception on Thursday for 
Battered Women's Shelter & Services

Staged Readings: October 19 - 22
Playwrights Forum: Sat. October 21
"Women & Aging Forum: Sun. October 22
 The Playwrights

What, you may ask, is this all about?

The Valley Players is pleased to be part of a multi-state project celebrating the energy and creativity of the mature(ing) woman. The idea was conceived by two baby boomer playwrights who were turning 60 and wanted to celebrate via theater. They sought one-act plays written by women who were also turning 60 this year. Required to include at least one good role for an older woman, the playwrights tackled the issues of family, friendship and aging through original works written for audiences of all ages. These weekend festivals are being presented on six separate weekends in various locations around the country during 2006. The Valley Players’ weekend on October 19 - 22 will be the final celebration and we want to make it a great ending!

JTickets

Tickets for General Admission are $10

Tickets for those 60 or over are $6 

Tickets on Thursday, Oct. 19 for the Benefit Reception and Performance for Battered Women's Servces & Shelter are $20

To purchase tickets in advance with a credit card call 802-583-1674

To purchase tickets in advance with cash or check go to the Mad River Chamber of Commerce before 5 pm M-F; before 12 pm on  Saturday.

Or purchase tickets with cash or check at the box office after 7 pm the night of the show (after 1 pm on Sun Oct. 15)

No Tickets are needed for the forums. Please let us know you are coming by email or call 583-1674

Join the Party! 

You don’t have to be 60, you just have to want to get there or appreciate getting beyond it! And you don't have to be female, you just have to enjoy being around them at all ages!

The Plays & Actors

Mimi and Me by Kitty Dubin

About the Project  

“You only go round once, kiddo, and if you screw it up, you only got yourself to blame.” So says Mimi, an outspoken ninety-year-old nursing home resident in the delightfully optimistic short play, Mimi and Me, by award-winning playwright and playwriting professor Kitty Dubin. Along with five other short plays directed specifically at the issue of aging American women, Dubin’s work is part of the unique traveling drama festival called “6 Women @ 60 in 2006.” Previous festivals held in Florida , Kentucky , Colorado , California and New York met with rave reviews.  

The Valley Players of Waitsfield, Vermont is very pleased to be host the sixth and final celebration of the creativity and energy of the mature(ing) woman on October 19 – 22. All six playwrights will be gathered together for the first time in this muti-state festival at the Valley Players Theater.  

The festival each evening includes staged readings of the 6 short plays performed and directed by local directors: Teresa Langston, Alex Maclay and Ruth Ann Pattee and local actors followed by talk back with the playwrights and of course, birthday cake. 

Thursday, October 19 will be a fundraiser for Central Vermont Battered Women Services including a catered reception at 6 pm. The reception includes a light finger food supper starting at 6:30 and curtain at 7:30 pm. Tickets for the benefit are $20.

Curtain on Friday and Saturday is 7:30. On Sunday, October 22 curtain  is a matinee only at 2 pm. Tickets are $10 or $6 for anyone 60 or older  

In addition, the Valley Players will offer the following related events

♦   Saturday, October 21: Playwrights’ Brown Bag Lunch Conversation. This is an opportunity to discuss the art and business of playwriting with the 6 playwrights and others from around the area.

    Playwrights and other participants are encouraged to contact the VP at 496-3751 or email  with questions and topics for the group to discuss.

♦  Sunday, October 22: A pot-luck lunch Forum on “Women and Aging” featuring a number of prominent women in the fields of health, business, social services and government.  

Both Forums are Free and Open to the public. Please let us know you are coming  by email or call 802-583-1674

♦   The 6 winning poems written by Vermont women 60 and over are included in the playbill. All 30 of the poems that were submitted will be exhibited

♦   An art show of works by Vermont women 60 and older is  displayed in the small gallery in the theater

How the Project began….

When Donna Guthrie of California and Colorado and her sister playwright, Nancy Gall-Clayton of Kentucky, invited four other female playwrights, all celebrating their sixtieth birthdays this year, to help create a blockbuster sixtieth-birthday celebration, “6 Women @ 60 in 2006” was conceived. Each woman submitted a short play that reveals her take on the issues related to women’s aging in America .  

“6 Women @60 in 2006” is an artistic response to the lack of progress in the portrayal of older women on stage and screen. Answering subtle sexism and marketing myopia with candid humor and pointed dialog, the six authors have created remarkably brilliant plays that are sure to draw both laughter and sighs. All are simply staged and, in the hands of gifted local actors, ready to pierce to the bone in spite of the laughs. Donna Guthrie, the creative force behind the project, explains “This is a grassroots production, purposely done on a small budget. I am particularly excited about working with local directors and actors in small theaters across the nation.”  

About Playwrights and the Plays….  

Gall-Clayton, who was a winner of the Streisand Festival of New Jewish Plays and whose work has been seen across the country, created a poignant story of an elderly woman who dotes on a family she has had to scrounge and steal, literally. The play, with a surprising twist at the end, is called Felicity’s Family Tree. On the subject of turning 60, Gall-Clayton says, “I'm fortunate to know several women in their 80s who are active and vibrant and productive, and I see no reason why I can't be just like them when I grow up.”  

Kitty Dubin - (Mimi and Me) is an award-winning playwright whose productions include Mirrors, The Last Resort, Change of Life, The Day We Met, and Dance Like No One's Watching. Her newest play, Coming of Age premieres in 2006 at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Kitty has been a semi-finalist twice as well as a winner in the Turnip Festival of Short Plays. Mimi and Me was included in the American Playwright Theatre Festival in New York City. She received a Jewish Woman in the Arts Award for lifetime achievement in the Detroit Metropolitan area and received two playwriting grants from the Michigan Council of Arts. She teaches playwriting at Oakland University and is a popular speaker at writers' conferences. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Judith Estrine of New York has already celebrated the big “6-oh.” She says, “I am finding the quintessential ‘me’ and that's a lot of fun.” Executive Editor at the International Longevity-USA nonprofit research center, Estrine has won countless awards for her dramatic work.  For the birthday gala, she created She/He, a brilliantly concise, fast-paced dialog between a man and a woman tracing the happy/sad trajectory of a marriage.  

Donna Guthrie, author of 23 published children’s books, has seen her drama produced across the country. For the 60^th birthday extravaganza, she has produced The Missing Zygote, a fun glance back through the past 60 years, mixing social commentary with wry humor and featuring one little girl who bears a striking resemblance to Guthrie herself. About turning 60 she says, “I feel enthusiastic, curious and hopeful. I have more plans now than I did when I was twenty. When I look in the mirror and see the wrinkles and gray hair, I’m a bit surprised.  I feel young. There’s still so much to experience.”  

Linda Holland Rathkopf of New York is a bit more apprehensive about the looming birthday. “I
feel challenged. I would love to think that I will become more self assured and confident. Without my ‘dewiness’ to hide behind, I know I’ll need my inner strength to keep me sane. It is in nourishing my ‘authentic self’ that I will be able to age with grace.” Rathkopf has taken a very different approach from the others in The Airport Encounter. “Miriam” encounters her former therapist and proceeds to grill him about his misguided therapy, exposing the pain and loneliness that have been the results. Through an increasingly tense and accusatory dialog, one wonders which is the patient and which the healer. Rathkopf is an artist/illustrator and cabaret singer as well as a highly respected playwright whose dramatic work is archived in the Louvre.  

Sadie and Ida, by Susan Shafer of New York , rounds out the festival. These two elderly women, who have been roommates for thirty years and yet are strikingly different in every way, gradually discover within each other a depth and goodness they had never suspected. Shafer’s witty dialog combines subtle humor and outrageous visual comedy with a touching record of suffering on both sides. A writer, editor and educational consultant, Shafer was thrilled to see this, her first play, win regional competition in 2003.