Usual Girls playwright Ming Peiffer has teamed up with Obie-winning director Whitney White (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord) for Finish The Fight, an online production that will shine a light on the lesser-known activists—namely the Black, Asian, Latinx, Native American, and diverse others—who helped to win voting rights for women. The world premiere will be August 18 as part of The New York Times' Unfinished Work series, a digital exploration of the Suffrage Centennial.
Finish the Fight will stream at 7 PM, and will be available for free to viewers who RSVP in advance here.
The digital production will feature Harriett D. Foy as Mary McLeod Bethune, the influential women’s and civil rights activist; Zora Howard as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, an abolitionist who co-founded the National Association of Colored Women and was the first African American to have a short story published in the United States; Q'orianka Kilcher as Yankton Dakota Sioux writer, artist, educator, and activist Zitkála-Šá; Leah Lewis as Chinese advocate for suffrage Mabel Ping-Hua Lee; and Chelsea Rendon as Jovita Idár, a journalist and activist who fought on behalf of Mexican Americans and women.
Finish The Fight is adapted by Peiffer from the forthcoming book Finish the Fight!: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote, written by NYT senior editor Veronica Chambers and fellow NYT journalists.
The digital world premiere culminates NYT's Unfinished Work, marking the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment and investigating the ongoing battle for women’s rights in America.For more information on the series, visit timesevents.nytimes.com.