California – Performers and Authors

ROBERTA BASSIN
Granada Hills, CA 91394
Phone: 818-366-7288
Email: RobertaBassin@gmail.com
Website: http://robertabassin.com/

Performance Description: Amelia Earhart: In Her Own Words: It is 1937, Lae, New Guinea. Emmy-submitted actress, Roberta E Bassin, brings to life famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart as she is about to leave on the last leg of her round-the-world flight reflecting on her childhood, passion for flying and her flight for the rights of women, “A pilot is a pilot.” The show culminates with an exciting audience Q and A for discussion. Amelia Earhart: In Her Own Words has thrilled, delighted and inspired audiences at luncheons, museums, corporations, libraries, schools, conferences, playhouses, colleges, and benefits. “It is a must see.”

Amelia Earhart’s stepson George Putnam Jr. and his wife Marie, commented upon seeing Roberta’s performance “You can see your heart is in it. Amelia Earhart is a part of you.” Elgin Long, consultant on the new Amelia Earhart film starring Hilary Swank added. “You are a wonderful actress. You really bring Amelia Earhart to life.”

New Video: Amelia Earhart “live” on stage, written & performed by Roberta Bassin 

Watch an interview with Roberta Bassin about “Amelia Earhart: In Her Own Words”

AND NOW THE BOOK!

“Amelia Earhart, Me and Our Friends: Journaling the Journey.

The Amelia Earhart Self Help Book.” http://www.amazon.com/dp/1523738561

After bringing America’s legendary heroine, aviator Earhart, “to life on stage,” Roberta’s many fans and supporters have encouraged her to author a book presenting what she has learned from her years of research and personal experiences in performing this role.    Roberta, a graduate of UCLA in History and English with a lifetime teaching credential,

 is available for Book Signings and Discussions about Amelia Earhart. 

Learn more about Roberta: http://www.imdb.me/robertabassin

TERRY BAUM 
San Francisco, CA 94114
Tel. 888 – 372 – 5622
Email: lilithperformances@gmail.com
https://www.liliththeater.com/terry-baum
  

Performance Description: Award-winning playwright and actress TERRY BAUM (https://www.liliththeater.com/terry-baum)  has toured internationally as a solo performer and taught at colleges, conferences, and festivals throughout the world, including the U.S., Canada, Europe, Morocco, South Africa, and Cuba.  Four of her plays have been published and translated into French, Dutch, Spanish and Swedish.  Terry’s speaking engagements bring history to life as they educate and delight audiences.

TERRY’S TOPICS:

Nevertheless She Persisted Series: Three different presentations on three remarkable women.

Terry brings to life the challenges and contributions of IDA B. WELLS, NELLIE BLY and LORENA HICKOK; three groundbreaking journalists and Human Rights activists.   

• Ida B. Wells: Journalist  and  the Mother of “Black Lives Matter”

IDA B. WELLS was born into slavery in 1862. She edited and wrote for her own newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee until her truthful journalism provoked a white mob to burn down her office and threaten her life. Despite ongoing death threats, and more than a century before the “Black Lives Matter” movement, Wells relentlessly investigated and publicized the shocking epidemic of the lynching of black men in the Jim Crow South.  A founding member of the NAACP, she was also active in the women’s suffrage movement.   

• Nellie Bly: The First Undercover Journalist

In 1888 at the age of 23, NELLIE BLY became the first reporter to go undercover to get a story when she faked insanity to get committed to New York’s notorious Blackwell Island Mental Hospital for Women. Her expose, “Ten Days in the Madhouse” for the New York World, led to a Grand Jury investigation of patient abuse. In 1889, with her continuing flair for the sensational, she won her greatest acclaim by circling the globe on her own in 72 days. Bly’s stories startled and enlightened the American public for decades and launched a new kind of investigative journalism.  

• Lorena Hickok: Star Reporter & Documenter of the Great Depression

LORENA HICKOK, Lesbian and born dirt poor, became the most famous woman reporter of her day and the first woman with a byline on the front page of the New York Times.  In 1932, the Associated Press assigned Hick to cover Eleanor Roosevelt for FDR’s Presidential campaign. The two women became lovers and constant companions. Both ER’s press conferences for women reporters and her daily column in the papers were Hick’s ideas. The relationship between the First Lady and the “First Friend” created increasing ethical challenges for Hick as a journalist – challenges that still resonate today. After leaving the AP, Hick became Chief Investigator for FDR’s New Deal. Her compelling reports on the desperate conditions throughout the land became a powerful tool for FDR to get legislation passed.

Feminist Theater in the 70s

In the 1970s, the feminist movement blossomed, and along with it, theater created by women from a feminist viewpoint.  Lilith Feminist Theater, the Bay Area’s internationally renowned women’s theater, was founded in 1974 by Terry Baum.  This was a time when, not only women, but many marginalized groups – Black, Latino, disabled among them – were starting their own theaters and using their personal stories to tell a more particular truth.  Continuing through 1985, Lilith produced many collectively created original plays and toured the U.S. and Europe to great acclaim.  Using excerpts from these plays, Terry will talk about this exciting and turbulent time in the history of theater. 

Laura Bock
lbock@earthlink.net
415-383-6842
Mill Valley, CA 94941

Discussion topics

My Memoir – Red Diaper Daughter, Three Generations of Rebels and Revolutionaries;
Second Wave of the Feminist Movement;
Coming Out as a Lesbian
Fat Phobia/Shaming and Becoming a Fat Positive Activist

My Disability Experiences

Laura Bock is a 71-year-old lesbian, but that’s not all. She is also Jewish, a red diaper baby, native San Franciscan, disabled (eyes and ears), and ran her own business, a bed, and breakfast, for 23 years in her historic family home on Willard Street. She was a founding member of and performer with Fat Lip Readers Theater for eighteen years and active in movements dear to her heart: fat politics, peace and justice, and disability rights. She is grateful to her grandparents and parents for their values and politics and commitment to activism she still holds dear.

She is a proud member of the second wave of the women’s liberation movement and holds her feminist analysis close to her heart. She joined her first consciousness-raising group in 1975, and in subsequent years facilitated groups, took classes in women’s studies at various venues, and with other women gave presentations around the Bay Area. She is very proud of the work she has done with the GLBT Historical Society on preserving and cataloging the massive collection from the SF Women’s Building and Women’s Centers.

She was co-chair of 2010, the year honoring bay area lesbians with disabilities. Her oral history has been taken by FABLEDASP (Fabulous Activist Bay Area Lesbians with Disabilities, A Storytelling Project) as well as by the Old Lesbian Herstory Project and by the University of Oregon, where she has an archive in its library’s special collections. Story Corps interviewed her and her friend Sally Goldin and broadcast a part of that interview on National Public Radio.

In 2009 she co-founded an Old Lesbian memoir writing group and continued to share facilitation of it for 4 ½ years. She dedicated the year 2014 to processing her collection at the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society. 2015 and 2016 she devoted to writing and publishing her memoir, Red Diaper Daughter, Three Generations of Rebels and Revolutionaries.

MARY BURKIN
PO Box 2373,
Running Springs
CA 92382
818-521-3969
mburkin@hotmail.com

MARY BURKIN has been a professional performer, writer, and director for over 30 years. With two degrees in Theatre Arts, plus a Juris Doctorate from Loyola Law School, Mary has researched, written, and performed her own acclaimed Susan B. Anthony and Clara Barton programs for multiple women’s groups, civic organizations, and colleges from coast to coast. 

 

Susan B. Anthony – Failure Is Impossible:   “Failure is Impossible” was Susan’s motto,  even though Susan died in 1906, fourteen years before women won the national right to vote.    Using actual speeches and events from Susan B. Anthony’s life, “Failure Is Impossible” follows Susan’s transformation from Schoolteacher to Temperance Worker to Abolitionist to Suffragette to America’s most famous organizer for Women’s Rights.

Clara Barton – The Courage of Angels:  Clara was a shy, timid young girl.  While she might never speak up for herself, for others – she was fearless.  Clara’s hard work began long before she began helping wounded soldiers on the battlegrounds of the Civil War, and her battles didn’t end after she’d successfully fought for the creation of the American Red Cross.

 

ZOE NICHOLSON
Writer & Performer of Tea with Alice and Me.
Email:  zoe@missalicepaul.com
Website:  http://missalicepaul.com
Represented by: Wild West Women, Inc.
Website:  http://wildwestwomen.org
Contact: Martha Wheelock martha@wildwestwomen.org
Phone: 1 800 428-7136

Tea with Alice and Me is a full length one-woman performance that invites the audience to visit the many places and ways that women have gathered.  From Parlors to Tearooms, from Bookstores to Marches ~ Seneca, Selfridges, The National Woman’s Party, Springfield to Washington DC.  Of course it is really about a cup of revolution served up in nonviolent direct action.  From 1775 through today, Zoe takes you on her militant, revolutionary, feminist call to action.  Dozens of pictures, clippings and personal stories transport you to each time and place she describes.

Zoe has been practicing nonviolent direct action for over 50 years and her North Star, Miss Alice Paul has led the way.  Heckling, fasting, marching, organizing, these two women have a lot to teach and inspire contemporary activists.

Betty Slater

Pasadena, CA
Phone: 330-238-8957
Email:  bettyjslater@gmail.com
Website:   www.bettyjewellslater.com

Performance Description: Ms. Betty Slater is a playwright, director, poet and actress.  Her passion is to teach and reach souls through the performing arts. 

She writes and performs monologues of historic black women and women of the bible which include: Harriet Tubman, Mrs. Rosa Parks, Mary; the Mother of Jesus, Bessie Coleman, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, and Mary Magdalene. Betty brings each woman’s history to life with costumes, props, and humor. Her presentation will tie in your organizations theme, values, and or mission statement.  The performances are available for libraries, schools, corporations, universities, civic, and religious groups. They are especially appropriate for women’s meetings, Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebrations in January, Black History Month in February, National Women’s History Month in March; and any time you need a unique presentation to support your individual program. 

Betty has the honor of working with Pastor Danny Wooten and Quiet Fire Productions as the co-director of the life-changing gospel stage play Midnight Cry; where she had the opportunity to direct and perform at the world famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York.

If you’d like her to create a specialized program for your event, please inquire about it when you contact her.

Availability: CA, National

Jeane Slone
Healdsburg, CA 95448
Phone: 707-696-4847
Email: info@jeaneslone.com
Website: http://jeaneslone.com/ 

Performance Description: 

Power Point presentations and discussion of Amazing Women of the 1940’s. Choose one of the following:

1. Women war correspondents

2.American women spies during WW II

3.Women on the home front: the Wendy the Welders and Rosie the Riveters

4.The Women Airforce Service Pilots who ferried over 77 types of aircraft from the factories to 134 Army Bases.

Biography:

Jeane Slone is a board member of the California Redwood Writer’s Club, a member of the Healdsburg Literary Guild, the Pacific Coast Air Museum, the SS Jeremiah O’Brien and  the National Women’s History Alliance.

Jeane Slone is a partner in ESL Publishing, a dedicated company that prints quality books for second-language learners. A volunteer tutor for the Library Literacy Program. The MC for the monthly event Dine With Local Authors. Jeane Slone has received the prestigious Jack London award.

Ms. Slone has published four historical novels, She Flew Bombers, winner of the national 2012 Indie Book Award plus audio book on audible.com, She Built Ships During WW II (including a published edition for ESL students with a workbook) She Was an American Spy During WW II and her current historical novel: She Was a Photographer Behind Enemy Lines.

Jeane Slone’s books have been optioned by a Hollywood producer for a TV series titled “War Gals: Unsung American Heroines.”

Kyle Elizabeth Wood
Monterey, California 93950
Phone: (831) 233-0835
Email: Kylewoodjustwrite@gmail.com
Website: http://kyleelizabethwood.com

Performance Description: Tillie Lewis was the most important woman of business you have NEVER heard of. Dynamic speaker, author, historian, Kyle Elizabeth Wood weaves audiences through American & global history from 1880- 1987 through the experiences of an unequaled business, social changing icon.

Born into the cruel poverty of Brooklyn’s tenements Tillie didn’t create cosmetics, bake cookies, or march for women’s rights. She was a self-propelled dynamo who always knew she had all the rights she needed. Other people just needed to kindly get out of her way.
A humanist, Tillie Lewis’s personal triumphs came from every single crisis of her day. Along with the world she suffered WWI, the Pandemic Flu, Crash and Great Depression, WWII, Korean Conflict and turned each problem into wealth. She was long investigated by the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, and endured arrests for her suspicious behavior “hiring people based upon good character and work ethic and not by race, gender, or faith.”

Tillie rose to become the first #1 producer of diet products and tomato products in the nation, the #5 canner of every product feeding the globe and teaching Japan, Israel, and Italy exactly how to grow their national agri-business.

The story of Tillie teaches us all to waste no time on self-pity, focus on a clear goal, always be ready for change, Create Excellence, your EMPLOYEES are #1, and never EVER give up.

Available at Amazon HERE. Great women have rich beginnings, middles, and ends. We are not a short compilation.

Forgotten to history and researched thoroughly by Summa Cum Laude, Phi Kappa Phi: Keynote speaker and telling history as a performance is Kyle Elizabeth Wood. Refences and photos from Universities, Colleges, Museums, Historical Societies, AAUW, and Service Clubs will be provided upon request.

 

 

 

 

Kyle Elizabeth Wood