Piece Description

Action Speaks! is a series of contemporary topic-driven panel discussions framed by the theme "Underappreciated Dates that Changed America."  Each panel draws three or four experts, academics, creatives, and other relevant guests into an open-ended discussion with the larger community in the casual atmosphere of the downtown Providence arts organization, AS220.  Action Speaks! has partnered with RI's NPR station, WRNI, since 1995, and holds the honor of being been the first locally generated show aired on the station. Now you can tune in nationwide to Action Speaks! to hear host Marc Levitt and an endless parade of perceptive intellects and insightful audience members!

The spring season of Action Speaks: Underappreciated Dates that Changed America is organized around the theme ‘What Now?’ With our country mired in its worst economic collapse since the great depression, history can be a guide for what actions our nation should or shouldn’t take to provide for its citizens and whether or not it is time to re-set our priorities.

Featured Guests

Kym Moore is currently the Gerard Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre, Speech and Dance at Brown University where she teaches acting and directing. Moore has previously taught at Swarthmore, Hampshire, Sarah Lawrence and The Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at SUNY Purchase. She has guest directed at Notre Dame University, Smith, Swarthmore, and Dartmouth. Moore is a multidisciplinary stage director, writer, and producer. She is an associate member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, and the Lincoln Center Theater Director's Lab. As the founding director of Frogs on the Water Theatre in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kym Moore has produced a number of plays, formed community outreach programs, and experimented with theatrical form by way of her unique performance style combining fine art, film, dance and theatre.

Monica Teixeira de Sousa teaches about Education Law, Education and Class Mobility, Family Law, and Property. She researches and writes extensively on issues of equity and education. Before joining the New England Law Boston faculty in 2007, she was a staff attorney at Rhode Island Legal Services. Teixeira de Sousa also taught for two years as an adjunct faculty member at Roger Williams University School of Law and served as a trainer for the Legal Services Training Consortium of New England. She has worked extensively with the Rhode Island College Upward Bound Program, from which she graduated in 1994, and is one of the founders and co-chair of the Education Justice Council of Rhode Island.

Scott A. Sandage, PhD is a cultural historian and Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Sandage has been a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, the National Park Service and a number of film and radio documentaries. His commentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Industry Standard, and Fast Company Magazine, among others. He contributed an essay on loserdom to the catalog of the 2004 Whitney Biennial Exhibition. His book, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Harvard University Press 2005) is a study on how the mid-19th century saw a cultural redefinition of failure as a word that could summarize a whole human life.

Jim Rubens a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist is the author of OverSuccess: Healing the American Obsession with Wealth, Fame, Power, and Perfection (Greenleaf Press, 2009). From 1994-1998 Rubens served as a term as a New Hampshire State Senator and the Chairman of the Education Committee. Rubens book, OverSuccess, explores the how and why our innate ambition has become unhinged from our capabilities, and our healthy and necessary status-seeking has turned into a pathology.

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Action Speaks!, a co-production of AS220 and the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, would like to thank The National Endowment for the Humanities who provided major funding to our program; our Media Partners: WRNI, RIPBS & the Providence Phoenix.  Thanks to The What Cheer? Brigade for our intro music.

Find out more at http://actionspeaksradio.org/ 


Contact the production crew at actionspeaksradio@as220.org with any feedback, ideas for future shows for press info or to request a personalized ID. You can also write to us at Action Speaks! c/o AS220 Main Office, 95 Mathewson St. Dreyfus #204, Providence RI 02903. If you are a radio station and wish to receive a CD of Action Speaks! please visit Creative PR's website: creativepr.org to make a request or contact them at info@creativepr.org / 1-888-233-5650. After December 2009, please contact actionspeaksradio@as220.org with any CD requests.