The Mirror Monologues: A Call for Submissions to Women Writers of All Ages to Create Dramatic Monologues About the Mirrors in Their Lives

NEW YORK, NY, January 10, 2013 (Press-News.org) Being a woman isn't simple. No matter how well we live, work and play with the other gender, we just aren't the same. The way women see themselves, and the way they are seen by others, is one way females and males differ. Among the most telling differences is how women see themselves, both literally and metaphorically. Whether it's feeling glamorous when we see ourselves in a tutu at age six or a wedding dress decades later, agonizing over a pimple, a scar or "bad hair," or wondering if we look too thin, fat, wrinkled, old, or young, women don't just glance in a mirror and dash out the door. As Elissa Melamed explains it, men look at themselves in mirrors while women look for themselves.

The Mirror Monologues is a project to collect stories involving mirrors by women of all ages and experiences. The best and most representative stories will be woven into a 90-minute script, which will be presented in New York in the spring of 2014. While the script will inevitably include both painful and celebratory stories, we intend for the overall message of the script to be positive, affirming, and inspiring.

About the Women Behind the Mirror Monologues
The Mirror Monologues was created by four women Judith Estrine, Nancy Gall-Clayton, Donna Guthrie and Linda Rathkopf. The women met when Gall-Clayton and Guthrie put together a short play festival called "6 Women Turning 60" in 2006 after they met at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. The "6 Women" festival traveled to six venues across the country. Four of the six playwrights stayed in touch, vaguely thinking they would create a festival around their 70th birthdays. But they didn't want to wait that long − and they also realized they wanted to tell the stories of many women. They communicated by email and telephone as they began brainstorming, and then almost literally locked themselves (and their laptops) into a house for a three-day weekend in late 2012. The result is The Mirror Monologues. For more details about the playwrights − and the three directors whey will be working with, Chris McGinn, Kathi E. B. Ellis and Leah Chandler Mills, please visit the website (http://themirrormonologues.com).

How You Can Be Involved
We invite all women age 16 and older to submit one (only one) monologue of 1-3 pages in English by mail with a postmark between February 1 and March 31, 2013. We are not accepting emailed submissions. There is no submission fee, and winners will be notified by email about two months prior to the event.

Your monologues should share an experience involving you and a literal reflection-whether you're talking to yourself or to someone with you in the bathroom, bedroom, department store or anywhere else you're looking into a mirror, including a compact mirror, a rear view mirror inn a car, or a store window that creates a reflection. Please be honest, but avoid gratuitous profanity as we expect our audiences to include people of all ages. Our websites has guidelines for formatting and other helpful information. We look forward to reading your monologues.

Contact: Donna Guthrie
Phone: (858)-775-9607
Email: DonnaG6113@aol.com
Website: http://www.themirrormonologues.com