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. Vision, Voice & Valor

    OCT 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
  2. Sex, Love, Gender, and Trust

    JUN 1

    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
  3. LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVIII: Lust vs Love

    MAY 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
  4. 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
  5. LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVIII - AIDS Hospice with Hywel Sims

    12/11/2024 · 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
  6. LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVII: Peter DeLancey

    12/04/2024 · 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
  7. LETTERS READ: The Josephine Louise Newcomb Story

    11/08/2024

    LETTERS READ: The Josephine Louise Newcomb Story

    October 29 at 7:00 pm CDT Newcomb Institute Diboll Gallery, room 300 3rd floor of the Commons 43 Newcomb Place Tulane University campus. A second reading from the archives of Josephine Louise Newcomb. This one performed, live, at Newcomb Institute. Emcee and Readers: Nick Slie, Lisa Shattuck, Shadow Angelina Starkey, and Robert Valley H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was established by Josephine Louise Monnier Newcomb (“Jo”) as she was called, 1816 to 1901) as a memorial to her daughter Sophie who died at the age of 15. At a time when women were discouraged from education, an institution devoted to higher learning for women was a revolutionary idea. Ladies of Mrs. Newcomb’s privileged class were instead taught to have “accomplishments”. Such as parlor entertainments like piano playing and polite conversation. For the lower classes—who had to hire themselves out as domestic help to survive—cooking, cleaning, sewing, nursing, and caregiving for other people’s families were their lot. For them, education, such as it were, was learned scrubbing pots on the job. Until its post-Katrina consolidation into Tulane University, Newcomb College was a separate, four-year, baccalaureate-giving institution. Entirely – for – women. Through Josephine Louise Newcomb’s letters, this reading tells that tale. It was created in grateful partnership with Susan Tucker and Beth Willinger. In great part, this presentation relies on their scholarship, insights, and their project of the same name, The Letters of Josephine Louise Newcomb.

    29 min
  8. LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVI: Brad Ott, Activism & Independent Publishing

    10/18/2024 · BONUS

    LETTERS READ INCUBATOR XVI: Brad Ott, Activism & Independent Publishing

    From 1981 to 1998, K. (Kenneth) Brad Ott wrote, edited, and published the grassroots Dialogue Newsjournal reporting community activism and activities in New Orleans. This third mini podcast in the four-part LETTERS READ series is produced in support of LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana and New Orleans AIDS MemoryProject. Antenna is LETTERS READ fiscal sponsor. This podcast is about activism. Independent publishing in the later part of the 20th Century. At a time when mainstream media would not, The Dialogue Newsjournal published progressive ideas in New Orleans questioning social issues such as: immigration and poverty, police corruption, racism, reproductive rights, gay bashing and AIDS paranoia, that strange new disease plaguing the male gay population, intravenous drug users, sex workers, and marginal members of society country-wide. Until 1982, there wasn’t even a name for the disease later known as HIV|AIDS. Letters Read is an ongoing series in which local performers interpret letters and written documents about culturally vital individuals from various times and Louisiana communities—focusing on New Orleans. Now in its eighth consecutive season. Performances are free and open to the general public.

    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 - 2025
  • Episodes
    48
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Nancy Sharon Collins
  • Show Website
    LETTERS READ