CATA, The Mount Present Poetry and Prose Reading
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LENOX, Mass. — Community Access to the Arts (CATA) and The Mount, Edith Wharton's Home, will present an evening of poetry and prose by writers with disabilities on Sept. 29 at 5 p.m. at the Stable at The Mount, 2 Plunkett St., Lenox.
Tickets are on sale for $25 at CATAarts.org, seating is limited. A reception will follow the reading, where attendees can meet and celebrate CATA writers.
The event will feature a cast of guest readers sharing writing created by artists with disabilities in the CATA Writers' Workshop, as well as original work by artists with disabilities in CATA's songwriting program at BFAIR in North Adams.
Guest readers will include actors, writers, and local luminaries, including Gregory Boover, Dennis Boutsikaris, Caroline Calkins, MaConnia Chesser, Janet Elsbach, Kelly Galvin, Diane Prusha, Emily Rechnitz, and scholars from the Rites of Passage and Empowerment (R.O.P.E.) program. ASL interpretation and open captioning will be provided, as well as braille and large print programs.
EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare card holders receive a 50 percent discount as part of the Massachusetts Cultural Council's "Card to Culture" program.
"We're thrilled to continue CATA's partnership with The Mount to share the work of our CATA writers," said CATA Executive Director Margaret Keller. "CATA writers express their creative voices each week in our workshops. Through this powerful and dynamic annual reading, CATA writers share their perspectives, ideas, and talents with a wider audience—and our community gets to experience the world from their point of view."
CATA's weekly Writers' Workshop is one of many arts programs CATA offers across the community where people with disabilities build skills and develop their creative voices. In the Writers' Workshop, taught by CATA Faculty Artist Janet Reich Elsbach, CATA artists experiment with innovative, adaptive writing prompts, explore ideas of identity and self-representation, and give voice to their lived experiences. CATA offers a variety of adaptive writing tools and approaches to make the workshop accessible to people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities, including volunteer "scribes" who work one-on-one with artists to help them put their ideas to paper.
The Writers' Workshop is part of an array of arts programs that CATA offers for artists with disabilities. At its Great Barrington studios, CATA offers 35 different arts workshops each week in painting, drawing, acting, dance, music, songwriting, juggling, yoga, creative writing, and more. CATA also partners with disability agencies, day programs, residences, and schools across Berkshire County, MA, and Columbia County, NY, to provide arts programs to more than 1,300 people with disabilities.
CATA's reading at The Mount is supported in part by Barr Foundation, Berkshire Magazine, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which receives support from the State of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and other generous supporters.
