FLOODESIGN

Walking the Talk Dear Peak audience member, As the saying goes, you can talk the talk all you want, but if you do not walk the walk, you will not go anywhere. A young woman composer said to me recently that it's about time that we looked more closely at the creative work of the larger half of the world's population. Very true. In the last 75 years, only eight women have won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. BUT… four of those were in the last seven years! The Peak 17/18 season celebrates women innovators at a moment when the national conversation about gender equity is infused with new passion: employment and rewards are paramount issues. I worry that the women innovators of our time are not being recognized for their unmatched role in the creative revolution that has made ours a glorious age (despite its current disappointments) rich with very smart art works. To deepen your awareness of the singular artists featured in Peak's 17/18 season, I asked that our brochure be a thought- provoking magazine. I invited the brilliant artist, writer and editor Claudia La Rocco to select women to write about the artists and ideas associated with each work in the Peak season. A corps of women assembled to write about women innovators. This is more than a walk; it is a sprint. To say that I am happy is an understatement. See you at the Kasser! Sincerely, Jedediah Wheeler Executive Director, Arts and Cultural Programming Editor's Note When Peak Performances approached me about editing this catalog, I imagined something similar to how I think about a theater's season: a container in which individuals with different sensibilities might engage in conversations both direct and oblique. I'm all for gender equality, and on this, as with other issues of access and equity, the arts have a ways to go. And yet I'm not interested in women writers per se, anymore than I am women artists — the adjectives that draw me are "smart," "provocative," "thoughtful," "funny," "strange," "evocative." Those were the sorts of words in my mind when I invited the writers in the following pages to contribute, and I love seeing how they have chosen to engage with Jed Wheeler's programming. With his permission to go after think pieces (hurrah; the world has enough puff pieces), I tried to give the writers specific but open prompts, so as to celebrate a variety of forms, approaches and styles. There are as many ways to respond to art works as there are ways of making art: I hope, dear reader, that you enjoy (and by enjoy I mean wrestle with, question, debate!) the examples that follow. Claudia La Rocco Editor in Chief Jedediah Wheeler Claudia La Rocco www.peakperfs.org 3 Jedediah Wheeler. Photo: Daisy Wheeler. Claudia La Rocco. Photo: Jose Carlos Teixeira.

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