Incorporated in 1900 by the philanthropists Spencer and Katrina Trask, Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, NY. Its mission is to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment. Yaddo annually hosts 200 or more artists.

YADDO and THE MAURER FAMILY FOUNDATION recently presented

SWEEPING THE NATION by Susan Miller - A READING
May 8, 2006 - The Vital Theatre - New York City
Directed by Leigh Silverman
Coordinating Producer-Cynthia Fritts Stillwell

Cast:
Patricia Wettig
Susie Essman
Sarah Paulson
Katherine Moennig
Dierdre O'Connell
Christina Kirk
Zachary Quinto
Haviland Stillwell
Diane Scanlon (Songwriter)

This play takes place as a group of people are creating a television series about lesbians. It's as much about the creative process as it is about relationship and identity-the writers' struggles with each other; their personal lives and their work;the actors' challenges to play their parts within this framework against a backdrop of current affairs. It is funny and irreverant; and it illuminates the larger social and political conversation. Its emotional resonance comes as the characters grow beyond their context.

The Maurer Family Foundation
The Maurer Foundation was founded in 1996 by Ann and Gilbert Maurer to support the arts in America. Through its charitable gifts, The Maurer Family Foundation aims to provide financial assistance to those organizations and institutions whose goal is to enrich their communities and the lives of their patrons through programs of cultural value encompassing all creative human endeavor.

Playwright Susan Miller is a Yaddo graduate and Guggenheim Fellow whose works include the critically acclaimed one-woman play MY LEFT BREAST, for which she won an OBIE, A MAP OF DOUBT AND RESCUE, which earned her the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Pinter Prize for Drama, and NASTY RUMORS AND FINAL REMARKS, also an OBIE winner. She has been produced at The Public Theatre, Second Stage, Trinity Rep, Actors' Theatre of Louisville, and Theatre J, among others. Her extensive film and TV credits include, most recently, Supervising Producer on Showtime's THE L WORD.

Director Leigh Silverman directed the world premiere of WELL at the Public Theatre, a subsequent production at ACT, and the Broadway premiere. She has also directed at New York Theatre Workshop, Second Stages Theatre, Women's Project, Rattlestick Theatre on London's West End and regionally at The Cleveland Playhouse, Actors' Theatre of Louisville, and Wooly Mammoth Theatre Company, among others.