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Karen A Gahagan
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春梦直播鈥檚 theatre department continues its 2023-2024 season with ROE by Lisa Loomer. Performances are February 23-25 and March 1-3 in the Sophia Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts.
ROE goes beyond the headlines and the rhetoric, offering a clever, shocking, humorous, and poignant portrayal of the two women at the center of the landmark 1973 Supreme Court Case that established a woman鈥檚 right to an abortion. The personal journeys of attorney Sarah Weddington and plaintiff Norma McCovery (鈥淛ane Roe鈥) follow divergent paths as Loomer鈥檚 script reveals what it is like to be an average citizen caught in the currents of history. The play takes place from the 1970s to the present, acknowledging the 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and presenting characters on both sides of the issued from decidedly pro-choice to decidedly pro-life as the battle of over a woman鈥檚 right to choose rages on.
ROE was commissioned in 2012 by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) as part of their series 鈥淎merican Revolutions: The United States History Cycle鈥, a multi-decade program of commissioning and developing new plays about moments of change in U.S. history. It was developed at the University of Texas and The Kennedy Center as part of DC鈥檚 Women鈥檚 Voices Festival as well as OSF鈥檚 Black Swan Lab before premiering at OSF in 2016.
Loomer's other stage works include Caf茅 Vida, Distracted, Living Out and The Waiting Room. She has written extensively for film and television, including Looking for Angels and Girl, Interrupted. She is the recipient of multiple writing awards, including the American Theatre Critics Award (twice), the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award, the Lurie Foundation Award, the Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award, the Imagen Foundation Award, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award (twice) and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, among others.
ROE co-sponsors are Salem State Sociology Department, Center for Civic Engagement, and Intersectional Feminist Collective.
For mature audiences.