LETTERS READ

Nancy Sharon Collins
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LETTERS READ is a series of readings in which local performers interpret letters and documents written by culturally vital individuals from various times and Louisiana communities presented by stationer, Nancy Sharon Collins, and Antenna. 2025 is the ninth consecutive season. Productions are free, open to the public, and presented live and as podcasts.

  1. An Interview with the Director

    18 HRS AGO

    An Interview with the Director

    Dave Walker, veteran journalist and creator/producer of The Museum Goer, interviews Letters Read director Nancy Sharon Collins about ten years of this project's programming. Yet another example of 2026's "outtake-sub-theme, what activates activists?” This podcast begins with an outtake from the 2024 Armen Merjian interview., a multi-decade civil rights and public interest attorney. According  to the New York Law Journal, he’s “one of the nation’s leading civil rights lawyers". Merjian’s full interview is podcast later this year. The first activating activists outtake aired earlier this year with local reproductive rights activist Allyn Goff.  The musical soundtrack, Happy Blues, is courtesy of Hans Witchi. As is the cover art painting. This podcast audio engineering was by Steve Chyzyk, Sonic Canvas Studio. Letters Read fiscal sponsor is Antenna.

    16 min
  2. LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XIX: How Activism Activates

    FEB 18 ·  BONUS

    LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XIX: How Activism Activates

    This mini-podcast introduces the 2026 and 10th anniversary season. Listen to this research outtake about how one Louisiana woman decided to take action about the first direct hit to overturn Roe v Wade and destroy abortion rights in the United States. Letters Read director first interviewed Allyn Goff in 2025 for the Terri Bartlett reading. Goff became close to Bartlett as they both worked tirelessly for reproductive rights in Louisiana. Allyn Goff joined NOW, National Organization for Women in 1989 and became president of the Louisiana chapter. In 1989, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a United States Supreme Court decision upheld a Missouri law imposing "restrictions on the use of state funds, facilities, and employees in performing, assisting with, or counseling an abortion. The Supreme Court in Webster allowed for states to legislate in an aspect that had previously been thought to be forbidden under Roe v. Wade (1973)." —wikipedia.org

    8 min
  3. Vision, Voice & Valor

    2025-10-30

    Vision, Voice & Valor

    Remembering the Legacy of Terri Bartlett. In 1984, Terri Bartlett moved to New Orleans to found Planned Parenthood Louisiana. For more than a decade thereafter, Bartlett fought tirelessly for reproductive rights and human dignity in this state. This performance endeavors to serve as an inspiring model for grassroots and political activism, justice, and equal rights for all. Watch a video of the live event, HERE. And, watch this brief story about the event on NOLA NPR with Dave Walker and The Museum Goer.

    32 min
  4. Sex, Love, Gender, and Trust

    2025-06-01

    Sex, Love, Gender, and Trust

    Welcome to the first, full, 2025 Letters Read episode. This program was recorded in two locations. The overlying structure in a studio. The other in a noisy restaurant near Lake Pontchartrain, New Orleans, during lunch. You will be able to hear the difference. Thanks to Steve Czyck who engineered it all together. In this podcast, we meet Angela Breckenridge, PhD educator and Mr. Tedd Walley, cartoon artist, designer, and educator. They were mature adults when they met, fell in love, and married. This is truly a love story. More it is—as the title suggests—about sex and love, gender, and trust through the letters and memories of a cis-gender, normative, monogamous couple in the twenty-first century. References to research material can be found HERE and the previous, Incubator podcast can be found HERE. Antenna is this project's fiscal sponsor. This project is brought to you with major support from Corner Foundation a our very anonymous donation.

    20 min
  5. LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVIII: Lust vs Love

    2025-05-11 ·  BONUS

    LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVIII: Lust vs Love

    This mini-podcast continues the 2025 season about sex. Today’s reading is about love letters. Inspired by documentation of love, two letters in particular. Moreover this segment focuses on how love works. Like when two people fall for each other. What’s the motivation? Is it simply physical attraction, raw sex appeal? Or is feeling love something more? Listen and learn.

    8 min
  6. LETTERS READ: 2025 The Sex Cycle Introduction

    SEASON 9, EPISODE 1 TRAILER

    LETTERS READ: 2025 The Sex Cycle Introduction

    Hello! Welcome to Letters Read. The ongoing series in which letters and written documents about culturally vital individuals from various times and Louisiana communities are interpreted into spoken word performances. These are free, open to the general public, live sometimes, and other podcasts. This is the ninth consecutive season. This season is about sex. The physical activity we engage in for pleasure, sport, and procreation. Part of this investigation is gender and words we use to define how and with whom we have sex. For 2025 Letters Read, the word “sex” is a corporal act, and “gender” a political construct.  “Sex”was chosen for being a show-stoppingly blatant topic. In addition to its attention-grabbing quality, thinking about sex  can be nuanced. For instance, what kinds of sex are legal and what not? What modes of having sex are socially acceptable? And not? Information for this season is sourced from many institutions including and not exclusive to: the Kinsey Institute website, the Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast organization, the Planned Parenthood archive at Newcomb Institute, and the Historic New Orleans Collection. Additional information is based on recorded interviews with medical professionals, everyday individuals and practitioners of sex and sex-related practices, and members of alternative networks for those outside of official institutions.  Listen to this incubator-style, mini-podcast and stay tuned to Letters Read 2025 and the upcoming Sex Cycle of programming. IMAGE: El Sartorio (also El Satario) (1907 or 1912).

    4 min
  7. LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVIII - AIDS Hospice with Hywel Sims

    2024-12-11 ·  BONUS

    LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVIII - AIDS Hospice with Hywel Sims

    This podcast wraps up the 2024 incubator-style programming on the early days of HIV | AIDS. This series is brought to you in support of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana. Most productions in this series are short, mini-podcasts, five to seven minutes long. This podcast takes longer to wrap up a difficult and emotional topic. It comprises Sims's experience in Los Angeles, ca. 1990s, as director of the second AIDS hospice facility in the country. Sims talks, in a straightforward manner about AIDS, hospice, and dying. Interjecting levity, and, where appropriate, humor. The recording was created in two parts. The original interview with Sims was performed by Nancy Sharon Collins, Letters Read director. The second, narrative part is Collins again. The podcasts circles back to other Letters Read subjects Stewart Butler, Noel Twilbeck, and Mark Gonzalez. Stay tuned to Letters Read for more compelling programming in 2025.

    17 min
  8. LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVII: Peter DeLancey

    2024-12-04 ·  BONUS

    LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVII: Peter DeLancey

    This podcast, and one or two more before year’s end, wrap-up the 2024 incubator-style mini-series on the early days of HIV | AIDS. Brought to you in support of the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana. The recording is about Pierre Rene “Peter”, as he was known, DeLancey. A sad story with a bittersweet ending. He was queer. At a time when being gay or homosexual or light in one’s loafers was not okay in most polite societies. Peter's story brings together two previous Letters Read subjects, Stewart Butler of The Faerie Playhouse and Skip Ward. Both produced, and broadcast, at the beginning of the COVID epidemic in 2020. The featured image is a portrait of Peter from Burt Harter's "Encounters with the Nude Male" self published by Harter in 1997. The image was included in a Doug McCash, Times-Picayune article published June 25, 2002 entitled "The Life and Death of a Painter in Legacy and Limbo".

    7 min
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About

LETTERS READ is a series of readings in which local performers interpret letters and documents written by culturally vital individuals from various times and Louisiana communities presented by stationer, Nancy Sharon Collins, and Antenna. 2025 is the ninth consecutive season. Productions are free, open to the public, and presented live and as podcasts.

Information

  • Creator
    Nancy Sharon Collins
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    50
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Nancy Sharon Collins
  • Show Website
    LETTERS READ