Ithaca College

Four senior BFA women in theatre arts: Eunice Akinola, Molly Makowiec, Jordan Pesci-Smith, and Brooke Shilling accompanied Associate Professor Kathleen Mulligan to the second annual Statera Conference for Women in Theatre in Denver, Colorado over fall break. 

 Four senior BFA women in theatre arts: Eunice Akinola, Molly Makowiec, Jordan Pesci-Smith, and Brooke Shilling accompanied Associate Professor Kathleen Mulligan to the second annual Statera Conference for Women in Theatre in Denver, Colorado over fall break. The five women were invited to share their presentation "Discovering Ancestral Voices" at the conference. Professor Mulligan gave an introduction to the annual final project of her Dialects for the Stage course in which students research family history and write an original monologue in the voice of an ancestor. Each of the four students then shared her original monologue with conference attendees.

The Statera Foundation, deriving its name from the Latin word for balance, endeavors to serve women in the theatre by expanding employment options, improving salary, and removing barriers to growth and achievement through mentorship, internship, research, outreach, networking, and support to empower them to reach their full potential by bridging the gap between passion, preparation, and opportunity.

Mulligan was a featured speaker at Statera's inaugural conference in Cedar City, Utah in 2015. Attendance at this year's conference was nearly triple that of the inaugural conference. Fellow conference attendee Lia Kozatch from Whittier College wrote to Mulligan: "Your students were engaged, smart, kind, and a force to be reckoned with. I know all four of them are going to come back to Ithaca as stronger women and as student leaders in the department. You’re lucky to work with them!" Molly Makowiec (Class of '17) remarked, "I have never felt such power emanating from a group of women as I did at this conference."