Community women unite for ArtSpring event
Posted on Sun, Nov. 18, 2007
BY CHRIS MAYO
ChristinaMayo05@aol.com.
 

Celebrating a successful performance are, from left in back, Claudia Kitchens and Leslie Neal, and in front, Ellen Shisko, Eve Ensler and Janice Billie.

Claudia Potamkin, Hunter Reno, Fleur Sack, Ellen Shisko, Betty Weinkle, Ilien Hechtman, Vicki Lopez Lukis and Miami-Dade Commissioner Katy Sorenson were among the many community cast members in the recent production of Any One of Us: Words From Prison, conceived by Eve Ensler and revised by choreo- grapher Leslie Neal.

Presented by ArtSpring and Women's Fund of Miami-Dade at Gusman Center for the Performing Arts, the production used writings by women in Florida prisons and elsewhere to show the connection between women's incarceration and their history of abuse.

''We brought a difficult subject out of the darkness and into the light,'' said cast member Leslie Sternlieb, board president of ArtSpring. ''It's time for people to see the connection between violence and despair and the explosion of girls entering Florida's juvenile justice system and, eventually, state prison.'' For more information about ArtSpring, visit artspring.org.