Cecilia Copeland and I have never met, but I’ve been Facebook admiring her for years. The woman is a force! Not only is she a powerful writer, but she’s also an incredible theatre maker – this woman gets shit done! So when I reached out to her to see if she’d be interested in participating in We’re Not Playing, I was absolutely thrilled that she said “Yes.”
The play she sent, YES THIS SHIT AGAIN, is (unfortunately) incredibly relevant – I felt like letting out a mighty yawp at the end of the piece (and I imagine in performance, I’d be unable to contain myself and would be cheering on the piece like a maniac). I hope the real world awesome female politicians currently working in DC to protect our reproductive rights know that we are collectively applauding their every effort to stem the tide of misogyny advancing on capitol hill.
A few words from Cecilia about YES THIS SHIT AGAIN.
My frustration with having to deal with issues that have been solved in the past, voted on by the Supreme Court, and are now in jeopardy led me to writing “Yes This Shit Again.” The idea for the piece, in the moment I had it, was immediately followed by a need to apologize for writing about abortion rights. I’m tired of having to apologize for writing about women’s issues, as if women’s issues aren’t universal. We are over fifty percent of the population and any governmental infringement upon being in full autonomous command of our own bodies using all of the medicine and science available to our society is an epic humanitarian travesty. It is a cruel subjugation of our rights. The piece I wrote came from a place of shock and horror that our rights are being threatened yet again when at this point in our social evolution towards equality a woman’s right to choose should be enshrined in stone.
More about Cecilia:
Cecilia Copeland is a member of NYWIFT New York Women in Film and TV, the League of Professional Theatre Women, an inductee into the Indie Theater Hall of Fame, recipient of the Lennis J. Holm Scholarship at the Writers Workshop and a Special Effects Grant from Metro Screen Australia, winner Best New TV Pilot for WOMG at Boom! Productions. She is a Kilroy’s List Nominee and Honorable mention for her plays, Light of Night and “R Culture.” Copeland is the Founding Artistic Director of New York Madness, producing over two hundred short plays in over thirty “madness” festivals all over New York from 2010-2016.
Her plays have been presented in New York at Daryl Roth’s DR2, the Cherry Lane Theatre, Culture Project, Ensemble Studios Theatre, The Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, and HERE Arts Center among others.
Regionally her works have been presented at The William Inge Center, Carnegie Mellon University, UT Dallas, Bishop Arts Theatre Center, Cara Mia Theatre, Philadelphia Theatre Company Susanne Robert’s Theatre, University of Iowa and Ohio University.
Internationally her works have been presented at Theatre Royal Stratford East London, Finborough Theatre London, The Anarchist Theatre Festival Montreal, Gun Control Plays Project in Sydney Australia, and featured in the Verlag Textbook on American Drama in Germany. She has been published by the Playwrights Center for Women Writers, NoPassport Press and Amazon.
