Composer Kyu Park and the cast of “Last Song on Earth” (All photos courtesy of SheATL)
A decade ago, Danielle DeMatteo, the artistic director of SheNYC Arts, was in New York, working a lot of different positions in the Broadway and off-Broadway scene, and met other young women who were doing the same. Through sharing their stories, the women learned that many of them had similar experiences about what was essentially sexism in the workplace — and they decided to put their heads together and do something about it.
Their response was to stage the SheNYC Arts Festival in 2016, not knowing if it would catch on. But it did — and the success spurred DeMatteo and her team to turn it into a year-round nonprofit organization and expand into other cities, such as Atlanta. As SheNYC Arts celebrates what DeMatteo calls the 10-year anniversary, the SheATL Arts Festival gears up for its fifth in-person event.
The SheATL Summer Theater Festival runs from September 3 to September 7 at 7 Stages Theatre. All of the company offerings are written primarily by women, non-binary and trans writers. The productions include workshop versions and full mountings with less of a budget for props and costumes. In the mix this season are a trio of new plays and one new musical.
One of the offerings is Erin Davis’ Honeyhole, a queer play about Lou, a young woman who falls for the new girl in town, Ellis. Lou’s mother wants her to be a beauty queen, thinking it will help them bond after the death of her father, but Lou wants more than pageant life. What she really craves is to accomplish a dream of hers — hiking the Appalachian Trail like her father once did.
Honeyhole is a personal work, and Davis drew a lot of inspiration from her own life. “I live in Hiram, Georgia — the middle of nowhere, like I like to say, and I am the first person in my family to leave [the area],” she said. “I like to describe [the play] as fan fiction of what my life could have been.”
Another of the productions is Last Song on Earth, an original musical written by Danielle Llevada, with music by Kyu Park and lyrics by Riley Glick. In it, the characters of ONE and TWO strike up a friendship in a futuristic world.
The first version of the musical was in Park’s backyard as an “immersive outdoor production” followed by some readings. Park wanted to announce to the world the team’s philosophy — that we are not meant to do life alone. “It’s a post-apocalyptic world, and you find people you are not expected to see and you find each other through the hardest times of your life,” Park said.
The other plays are Mariposa by Britney Lizbeth Quiroz, described as a “magical play empowering first-generation Latinas to combat alcoholism,” and Zahria Moore’s Pass the Okra, a coming-of-age story set in a post Roe v. Wade era.
Close to 500 patrons attended the SheATL Arts Festival last season, and DeMatteo is hoping for more this year.
As she and her team were considering Atlanta as a location (alongside Los Angeles and Dallas, the most recent addition) they started conversations with women who were working both in the theater and film world. That was back in 2019, when Georgia had passed a restrictive abortion law. In retaliation, a bunch of film and TV production companies were pulling out of production in the state. The impact is that it left a lot of people in the industry without gigs for a while. “A group of women who were losing gigs decided to band together and form a support group,” said DeMatteo. “They said they’d love to try and do something meaningful and action-oriented with the group. They thought starting a branch in Atlanta would be the best way to spend their effort and energy.”
It’s been important for the SheATL Arts Festival to spotlight work that revolves around the South. Many of the Festival’s audience members or artists identify as LGBTQ+ or are impacted by a lack of reproductive health care or other gender-based health care. As such, many of the shows SheNYC Arts ultimately decides to produce wind up being about gender-related issues or other matters important to the community.
It never ceases to amaze DeMatteo how many angles there are to the kinds of stories the company tells — and how many ways they impact people’s lives.
“Topics like abortion are not one-size-fits-all issues. Pass the Okra shows how lack of access can affect people’s lives and health. These shows impact people in so many unique and different ways. It’s important to get [them] out there so people can watch and feel emotionally connected to them. That is how we are going to get some of the changes we really need. “
Where & When:
The 2025 SheATL Summer Arts Theater Festival is at 7 Stages September 3 through September 7. Tickets depend on shows and passes.
1105 Euclid Ave. NE.
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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theater Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband Craig.
