Celebrate Earth Day
with the Woman Who Saved DC’s Last Tidal Wetlands

A public play reading and guided lily pond tour
at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, April 22

D.C.’s least known National Park was home to Washington’s least known environmental activist Helen Shaw Fowler. Helen fought the federal government for decades to save her water lily farm and in the process, preserved DC’s last remaining tidal wetlands.

On Earth Day, April 22, 2018, Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens will host a free, public reading of a new play, Kenilworth by Kitty Felde. The play tells the tale of Helen’s battle with the Army Corps of Engineers, but also the story of the Kenilworth neighborhood, one of the first to be integrated in Washington - until neighbors signed a racial covenant.

The reading will begin at 2:00 p.m. at Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens, 1550 Anacostia Ave. NE, Washington, DC.

National Park rangers will conduct a tour of the water lily ponds at 12:30. Tommy Wells, director of DC’s Department of Energy & Environment, will also speak about the current state of the Anacostia River. Audience members are encouraged to come early and bring a picnic lunch. All events are free.  

This reading is made possible by a grants from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford University and Planet Earth Arts, with the generous support of the National Park Service, Theater Alliance, and Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.
 
A ten-minute version of Kenilworth was performed in 2017 for the Planet Earth Arts New Play Festival, with readings at Theater Alliance and the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center. The first of its kind in DC, the festival generates new theater that poses questions and engages audiences in a dialogue about our human relationship to the environment.

Playwright Kitty Felde won the Open Book/Fireside Theatre Playwriting Competition for Alice: an evening with the tart-tongued daughter of Theodore Roosevelt – “critic’s pick” by The Washington Post at the 2011 Capitol Fringe Festival. Her play Lake Titicaca was part of the 2015 Arise, Baltimore! Festival. Felde won the 2009 LA Drama Critics Circle Award for her adaptation of a trio of Nikolai Gogol short stories and a two-time finalist for DC’s Larry Neal Writers Award. Felde hosts the Book Club for Kids podcast, winner of the 2017 DC Mayor’s Award for “Excellence in the Humanities."