THE SENIOR & THE COMPUTER Staged Reading Follows Baltimore Playwrights Festival's Monthly Meeting Today

The Baltimore Playwrights Festival has announced its monthly public meeting to be held at 7:30 p.m. tonight, January 15, 2013, at Fells Point Corner Theater, 251 South Ann Street, Baltimore, MD 21231, 410-276-7837 (www.fpct.org). After the meeting, at 8:30 p.m., there will be a staged reading of The Senior and the Computer, a one-act play by Nancy Henley, followed by a discussion of the script with the playwright, director and actors. Both the meeting and the reading are free, and the general public and all BPF members are encouraged to attend.

The Senior and the Computer, by Nancy M. Henley, is a dialogue between an older person and a computer, the former having difficulty with the latter. In it the two find differences and yet many similarities between them. The concept and experience of memory are central to the play, bearing emotional overtones and fear of loss for one, and a simple question of storage capacity and retrieval for the other. Despite the Computer's superior mental capacity, the Senior finds she knows some things the Computer doesn't know.

Nancy Henley's inspiration for The Senior and the Computer came from her experiences teaching computer classes to other retirees in the retirement community where she lives. Before that she earned a Ph. D. at Johns Hopkins, taught at UMBC, and was a professor of psychology at UCLA. Although she has done a lot of writing and editing in her professional field of interest, the intersection of communication, gender and power, this is the first play she has written. She has enjoyed years of theater-going as a subscriber in Washington, Baltimore, and Los Angeles, is 78, divorced, with one adult son, and lives with her domestic partner Ben in Baltimore County.

The Baltimore Playwrights Festival has presented over 282 productions by 173 playwrights at 27 different theaters. Our mission is to provide an environment that nurtures the talents of Maryland and DC playwrights through public readings, discussions, critiques and workshopping of new plays. Our summer season is devoted to the presentation of these newly developed works to area audiences in cooperation with local area theaters. We are a volunteer-operated 501(c)3 organization, and welcome any and all participation. Get Involved! Become a Member! Further information can be found at www.baltplayfest.org.

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