Florida Studio Theatre announces several new play commissions for Suffragist Project

There was plenty to toast to May 5 at the FST President’s Dinner.

Florida Studio Theatre staff, board members and top donors gathered in the Goldstein Cabaret for the event, which celebrated the start of the summer cabaret season and doubled as an announcement that the theater is awarding a $10,000 commission to four playwrights to create a new work inspired by the Woman Suffrage Movement.

The four commissioned playwrights are FST familiar faces Mark St. Germain and Jacqueline Goldfinger, soon-to-be FST playwright Sandy Rustin and Rachel Lynett, who’s new to FST. Details aren’t finalized yet, but each playwright will be given at least a week to develop the work at FST and then all four plays will be performed at a public reading in 2020.

The commissions are part of the Suffragist Project, a community-wide project celebrating the upcoming 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Over the next 18 months, the project — which is made possible by partnerships with more than 20 confirmed community organizations — will consist of panel discussions, workshops, lectures, exhibits and more that are connected to women’s suffrage.

“These were dangerous ladies,” FST Associate Director At-Large Kate Alexander told the crowd at the dinner. “This is an opportunity for organizations and people to weave together to make a beautiful tapestry (honoring suffragists).

She says this is the theater’s chance to dive deep and try to tell all sides of the suffragists’ story — both what they did wrong as well as what they did right, and she hopes Sarasota can change from it.