On Sunday, April 24, at 2.00 pm, award-winning actor and Ebell member Sharon Lawrence performs a staged play-reading of THE SHOT, written by Robin Gerber at The Ebell.
For more than 20 years, Katharine Graham was a self-described “doormat wife,” secretly enduring years of domestic abuse from her husband. After his suicide, she took over as publisher and CEO of The Washington Post and shocked her male executives who bet against her success. She defied the government by publishing the Pentagon Papers, took on Nixon in the Watergate investigation, and stood down a violent labor strike.
While THE SHOT is based on Katharine Graham’s life, the intimate details grew from many interviews with women who had the courage to share their stories with writer Robin Gerber. “The performance…can be a call to action for audiences who want to learn more about the issue [of domestic violence],” says Gerber, who also wrote the best-selling Katharine Graham: the Leadership Journey of an American Icon. “One of the purposes of presenting the play is the power of theater to create radical empathy and compassion for people who are in circumstances that we can’t personally or intimately relate to. Abuse of any kind against women is deeply connected to the cultural failure to embrace women’s full equality.” Gerber hopes the play will help women who are abused to feel less alone in their suffering and struggle. She hopes it will help everyone understand that violence against women must end.
Sharon Lawrence is probably best known for her multiple EMMY nominated and SAG Award-winning portrayal of ADA Sylvia Costas Sipowitz in the groundbreaking NYPD Blue or as a stay-at-home prostitute in Desperate Housewives, as well as for beating up Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and memorable roles in Grey’s Anatomy (for which she earned her fourth EMMY nod), Monk and Rizzoli & Isles.
After a self-confessed “well spent youth” involving drugs, sex and feminist activism, Robin Gerber took the next step and became a Washington DC lawyer. She worked on Capitol Hill for a leader of the House of Representatives, before leaving to be a labor lobbyist during the Clinton years. Post politics, Robin went into writing and penned the bestselling advice book, Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way; Barbie and Ruth, about the founder of Mattel, and the novel Eleanor vs. Ike.
THE SHOT will be performed in the Fine Arts Theatre. Stay with us after the reading for a talk-back focusing on domestic violence survivors. Don’t wait to get your tickets, this reading sold out in March of 2020!
