UMBC's Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) presents playwright Susan McCully, who will speak on her new work All She Must Possess, a play inspired by the life of Etta Cone.

Along with her sister Claribel, Etta Cone was a Baltimore bon vivant who moved in avant garde circles in Europe during the first decades of the 20th Century. The sisters were friends of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and their social circle included Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. The Cone’s extensive modern art collection is on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Susan McCully, assistant professor in the Department of Theatre, is a scholar of feminist theatre and a dramaturg, as well as a playwright and performer. She is the artistic director of the Grrlparts festival at UMBC. She has performed her one-woman show Cyber Becomes Electra at colleges and universities across the country, University of Toronto, University of Exeter and the Kolibri Pince in Budapest. In 2004, she opened the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival with her show, Inexcusable Fantasies. which she has performed at a number of festivals including Prague Fringe Festival and the New York Fringe Fesitval in 2013. Her play Still the One was performed at Manhattan Theatre Source and has been published by Hawarth Press (2004). At UMBC, she teaches a range of courses in theatre history, dramatic literature and she works on the department productions in the role of dramaturg. She is a specialist in cross-gender casting and gender performance; she also teaches courses in queer performance and feminist representation for the Gender and Women’s Studies Program. She earned her B.A. in Theatre and Dance from DeSales University; her M.F.A. Playwriting from The Catholic University of America, and her Ph.D in Theatre History, Theory, & Criticism from the University of Wisconsin.

Admission is free.