SAPPHO IN LOVE is a riotous romp across the slippery terrain of Lesbian romance, as the goddesses on Olympus come down to earth to recruit among Sappho and her followers.
Artemis, the Goddess of Lesbian Celibacy, and Hera, the Goddess of Coupledom, join forces to challenge Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, for her hegemony on Lesbos. Sappho, the great poet and teacher on the island, is a devotee of Aphrodite, and because of this, her school has become a center for the cult of lesbian sexuality and romantic love. Artemis, denouncing Aphrodite's use of her intoxicating nectar to attract followers, vows to found a rival school on Lesbos where young girls will be weaned away from Sappho's decadent teachings to learn the more sober arts of wilderness survival.
But Artemis underestimates the power of lesbian seduction, when Aphrodite sends Persuasion, her handmaiden, to enroll in outdoor school - and when the Goddess of Celibacy finds herself entangled with the Slave of Desire, she discovers that freedom without intimacy can be as meaningless as intimacy without freedom.
Meanwhile . . . Sappho herself is experiencing girl trouble when her longsuffering partner, fed up with Sappho's infidelities, begins to date another woman. Add to the midsummer mix-up, the arrival of a new student who can't wait to taste the pleasures of Lesbian life, and the painful trials of a student whose best friend is on the eve of leaving the island to marry a soldier.
Sapphic poetry abounds amid meteor showers, midsummer eve trysts, masquerades and melodramas - all overseen by the benevolent trio of lesbian "deae ex machina!" Throw in a rowdy troupe of soaking-wet naiads and it all adds up to a tasty dish of lesbian comedy. In the end, the couples sort themselves out, for better or worse, and Hera pronounces her blessings on a new matriarchal order.
10 women, 1 little girl, unspecified number of chorus members
2 hours
Multiple sets
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The following three one-acts, Mason-Dixon, Jane Addams and the Devil Baby, and Louisa May Incest, are all single-set, small-cast plays which are thematically and stylistically related. They may be presented together as a full program: THE ROAR OF SILENCE. (The title is taken from George Eliot's quote, ". . . we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.") I recommend production of these with the afterpiece Battered on Broadway.
The Vanguard, Portland, OR:
". . . extremely powerful piece . . . Gage takes on race issues, feminism, incest . . . stunning . . . . "
Lithiagraph, Ashland, OR:
". . . complex and painful subtleties of racism . . . "
MASON-DIXON explores the complex relationship between a Black woman and a white woman, who loved each other as children, were separated at puberty, and who find themselves at mid-life divided by race, class, and politics.
As a plantation owner's daughter, Elizabeth was "given" an enslaved child, Mary, who was her same age. The two girls grew up together, loving each other as sisters and sharing their resources. At puberty, Elizabeth was sent to a private boarding school, and it was thirty years before she was to see Mary again, by then a free woman teaching in a Black school in Philadelphia.
When the play opens, Elizabeth is demanding that Mary recognize their former friendship. Mary, now an angry Black separatist, is not so eager to reclaim the past. Elizabeth has become a spy for the Union army, and in what she sees as the ultimate gesture of reconciliation, offers Mary the "opportunity" to gather intelligence by working as a maid at the Confederate White House.
Mary, repudiating Elizabeth's claims of sisterhood, reveals that she was sexually molested by Elizabeth's father. She is shocked to discover that Elizabeth was also his victim. The women struggle with issues of race, class, and gender oppression as they alternately challenge and deny the great love they once had for each other. The play is based on the true story of Elizabeth Van Lew and Mary Bowser.
2 women
35 minutes
Single set
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In 1912, Jane Addams was witness to a strange phenomenon, as thousands of immigrants flocked to Hull House in response to the rumor that there was a "Devil Baby" there. The Devil Baby was supposedly an infant with hooves, horns, and tail. According to folk myths, this incarnation of the devil was the result of a drunken husband's curse that he'd rather see a devil in the house than another baby.
In this one-act, Jane confronts an elderly Irish woman who has broken into Hull House with the single-minded intention of gaining access to the Devil Baby. The woman is not to be deterred, and Jane matches wits with her in her attempt to find an explanation for this strange obsession which seems to have taken possession of half Chicago.
A radical confrontation between the sensibilities of a nineteenth century emigrant wife and mother, and a modern American lesbian of independent means.
Three women
20 minutes
Single set
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Louisa May Alcott has locked her alter-ego, Jo March, out of her study in order to finish Little Women alone. Jo manages to break in. She confronts Louisa about her desire to end their collaboration. Louisa admits her intention to have Jo burn all her writing and marry the aging and self-righteous Professor at the end of the book.
Jo knows her author better than Louisa knows herself, and she begins to uncover Louisa's true motives in violating her own creation. When Jo introduces evidence of Bronson Alcott's child molesting and Louisa's lesbianism, the conflict between Jo and Louisa becomes a life-and-death struggle for control of the book.
Two women
30 minutes
Single set
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THE ANASTASIA TRIALS IN THE COURT OF WOMEN makes theatre history with a courtroom drama which engages an audience of women to serve as both judge and jury. The play is shaped by the audience decisions to overrule or sustain the attorneys' motions, and every night's audience sees a different play.
THE ANASTASIA TRIALS is a farcical, but profoundly engaging excursion into the hidden world of ethics for women who are both survivors and perpetrators of abuse toward women. The format is a play-within-a-play, where a radical feminist theatre company comes together in order to perform a courtroom drama.
In presenting the play, the Emma Goldman Theatre Brigade has instituted a new system to ensure equal opportunity for the actors: a lottery. As the women assemble to draw their roles from the hat for the evening's performance, sisterhood is put to the test. The performance itself is a conspiracy trial against five women accused of denying a woman her identity. The plaintiff is none other than Anastasia Romanov, sole survivor of the massacre of the Russian imperial family in 1918. The audience is required to serve as judge and jury for the case, providing both rulings on the motions and the final verdict.
THE ANASTASIA TRIALS IN THE COURT OF WOMEN requires intense audience participation, and the question of women betraying women is called for every member of the audience.
Nine women
Two hours
Single set (nine folding chairs)
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A radical re-telling of the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty," The Spindle exploits the conventions of children's theatre to give adult audiences a child's-eye-view of incest and its effects on the survivors.
The Princess Beauty has been kept from the knowledge of a curse which decrees she must be pricked by a spindle before her sixteenth birthday and fall asleep for a hundred years. She has been best friends from childhood with Doko, the cook's helper in the palace kitchen, and the two girls have plans to renovate a gypsy wagon and travel about the kingdom with a puppet theatre after Beauty's sixteenth birthday.
The plans are disrupted when Beauty's godfather shows up unexpectedly at the birthday banquet with a gift which awakens Beauty to the power she could wield by exploiting her sexual appeal to men. The Queen, torn between a desire to protect her daughter and a need to neutralize her as a potential rival, reveals a family secret, which sets the stage for Beauty's pricking.
Meanwhile, Doko's three godmothers wrestle among themselves with their various strategies for dealing with the world. Betheen, who sees herself as the cultured one, practices denial in the name of acting grownup. On the other hand, Andrea, the butch, relies on her prowess in the martial arts to confront her fears. The third godmother, Mary, surrounds herself with ritual and magical charms. It is Doko's marionette (played by an actor) who alone knows the truth. She carries Doko's traumatic memories of her childhood, and it is she who has witnessed the events on the night of Beauty's sixteenth birthday. But the puppet is mute and can only communicate through acts of sabotage.
When Doko attempts to rouse Beauty from her spindle-induced trance, she becomes a target for a bewildering array of homophobic, morning-after behaviors, and the godmothers fare no better in their attempts to break through the Queen's alcoholic narcissism.
The final showdown takes place in the perpetrator's pornographic gallery, where the forces of good meet the forces of evil in an old-fashioned, knock-down-drag-out, chandelier-swinging, skull-cracking free-for-all. The moral of the story is that life is not a fairy tale, and the price of empowerment is coming out of denial, as Doko and her godmothers discover.
The juxtaposition of standard children's theatre conventions in The Spindle with what is usually considered adult subject matter accentuates the evil which lies just under the surface of so many apparently happy childhoods, raising the question of whether plays like this, more so than those about Aladdin and Cinderella, might not just be the ultimate children's theatre for these times.
9 women, 2 girls, unspecified extras
Multiple sets
2 hours
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UGLY DUCKLINGS picks up where Tea and Sympathy and The Children's Hour left off. Set in a girls' summer camp, the play explores the dynamics of homophobia in a same-sex environment.
A thriller, UGLY DUCKLINGS examines the unhealthy turns that relationships between girls can take when they are not allowed their natural expression. The so-called "Ophelia Syndrome" comes alive as the cabin of younger girls, their self-esteem still reinforced by the primacy of their relationships, comes into contact with the older girls who have begun to turn against themselves and each other in their attempts to conform to the pressures of compulsory heterosexuality.
Angie, a middle-class college student, is falling in love with another counselor at the camp, Renée, who is a working-class "out" lesbian. Against this backdrop of intense homophobia, the young women struggle with their feelings for each other and the problems of defining themselves in a society that insists they be invisible. The camp legend about a monster in the lake parallels the adult phobias about lesbianism, and, confronted with an attempted child suicide, campers and counselors are compelled to face their worst fears in the microcosmic world of the summer camp.
Ugly Ducklings breaks ranks with male-centered queer drama in foregrounding the experience of women and girls who are survivors of sexual violence and shattering romantic and sentimental conventions about the "gentle sex."
Nine girls, four women
Two hours
Single set
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This is a rollicking farce about the world's most dysfunctional family, a doctor with a penchant for assisted suicide, and a lesbian housekeeper with a crush on her employer. An over-the-top comedy about leaving, being left, and what it takes to stay.
The play opens a few hours before Molly Hawthorne's assisted-suicide, going-away party. Molly, a depressed, middle-class housewife, has become distressed by what she perceives as a loss of memory that has impaired her ability to function as a perfect wife and mother. Convinced that suicide is an empowering choice, she encounters a snag in her plans when she attempts to recruit her lesbian housekeeper to bartend for the party.
Dani, an Italian butch, is appalled by Molly's project and disgusted with her family for supporting it. She teams up with Caitlin, the ten-year-old, tomgirl daughter, to sabotage Thanatron, the notorious "death machine" for the doctor-assisted suicide.
Thanatron relies on a sodium pentathol intervenous drip to render the "patient" drowsy enough to trigger the lethal chemical that will stop the heart. When the sodium pentathol dose is altered, Molly finds that, instead of losing consciousness, she is regaining her memories including memories of repressed childhood trauma.
A satiric commentary on a culture that would rather see its women dead than telling the truth, Thanatron deconstructs the social machinery that makes death an appealing alternative for the old, the disabled, the single, and the lesbian.
Five women, five men, one girl, and a variable number of adult extras
Single set
Two hours
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A radical feminist retelling of the traditional Purim story from the Bible a retelling that foregrounds the part of the story that is glossed over in the patriarchal text, namely, the sexual colonization of women.
Esther, a radical Jewish lesbian living in exile, and Vashti, a Persian woman of privilege, were lovers. Complying with her family's expectations, Vashti has married the king of Persia, but Esther cannot interpret this as anything except a betrayal and an abandonment. When Vashti encourages a Persian captain to court Esther, Esther is outraged and goes to the palace to confront her former girlfriend.
The ambitious vice-chancellor Haman has been stirring up anti-Semitic sentiment among the officers of the Persian army, in order to use a massacre of the Jews to divert attention from his usurpation of the throne.
In the meantime, during Esther's visit to the harem, the king is holding a banquet for his officers a banquet that features the rape of one of the women from the harem. Vashti is shocked and terrified when she discovers that she has been called to "dance" for the officers. Esther engineers her escape from the palace, and the two women go underground, hiding in the homes of Jewish women.
Esther is discovered by Haman during a roundup of eligible virgins as candidates for queenship. Vashti, knowing that Esther could never submit to sexual violation, goes to the palace to die with her lover. The play reaches its dramatic climax when the plight of the two women coincides with the palace takeover by the army, a revolt of the harem women, and a daring rescue attempt by Jewish vigilante women, led by Esther's young cousin.
Esther and Vashti attempt to avert the impending massacre of the Jews by issuing an edict granting the Jews permission to arm and defend themselves against their enemies. This mandate for self- defense is ritualized in the final scene, when the Jewish women and the harem women join together to commemorate the anniversary of their victory and to pledge themselves to the defense of their daughters and each other.
This is a fast-paced, high-action drama where the love story of two women of different cultures and class backgrounds plays itself out against a backdrop of anti-Semitism and the sexual colonization of women.
Thirteen women, eight men, two teenaged girls (unspecified of male and female extras)
Two hours
Multiple sets
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Dr. Lorraine Livingstone leads women's tours to ancient, sacred sites of goddess worship. She and five members of her tour are gathering at an inn on the Burren of Western Ireland for a tour of Celtic sites. The guests include a feuding lesbian couple on their way to China to adopt a baby, a celebrated author of best-selling murder mysteries, a frivolous divorcee, and a mysterious last-minute arrival.
It's February 2, Imbolc -- the Celtic celebration that marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring. It's also the season when, according to legend, the Greek earth-mother goddess Demeter emerges from the Underworld with her rescued daughter Persephone. The theme of lost daughters haunts the inn and its inhabitants, as mysterious voices and artifacts point to the murder of a girl-child, and each of the guests admits to some form of betrayal of the sacred mother-daughter bond.
Lorraine is haunted by the memory of the out-of-wedlock child she was forced to relinquish at sixteen. The divorcee laments her failure to fight harder for the custody of her children. The lesbian partners, still bedeviled with the demons of their own childhoods, debate the wisdom of becoming mothers.
The inn harbors a secret that is shared by the mysterious innkeeper Bridie and her nemesis, the author. Their history unfolds as a backdrop to the secret history between Lorraine and her mysterious latecomer.
This is a murder mystery with all the classic ingredients: the dark and stormy night, the remote location , the strangers at the inn with their mysterious pasts, the ghostly intrusions, the attempted murder, and the obligatory gathering of the guests in the parlor for the final denouement.
What sets The Goddess Tour apart from the genre is the depth of exploration of the potentially murderous dyad of mothers and daughters, pitted against each other in a struggles for survival in a corporate, capitalist, colonialist world. Celtic ritual and goddess lore are interwoven with sacred imagery of gestation and birth, as these are counterposed with legacies of violence against women and children, the brutal history of Ireland's colonization, and the horrors of slavery on the American continent. Class and race divisions inform discussions of adoption, with a pervasive critique of "globalization" and its impact on motherhood.
A good, old-fashioned murder mystery that packs a feminist punch.
7 women
Single set
2 hours
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Based on a true story, Stigmata is a five-act tragedy about the extraordinary life of the 16th century, Italian nun, Benedetta Carlini.
Benedetta, raised like a son by her father, is caught acting out sexual tableaux with her girlfriends. Fearful of the consequences of Benedetta’s precocious sexuality, her mother incarcerates her in a convent when Benedetta begins to menstruate.
The Abbess, whose enlightened policies have kept the convent from becoming enclosed, makes Benedetta her assistant, and the two women fall in love with each other. On the eve of the move to a large convent, Benedetta confronts the Abbess on this love, and the Abbess suffers a heart attack and dies. Benedetta, without the protection of the Abbess, faces demotion to a convent servant position. In an attempt to counter this, she stages a miracle in the middle of the procession to the new convent, receiving the stigmata (spontaneous bleeding of the hands and feet, in imitation of Jesus’ wounds) in front of the entire town of Pescia.
On the strength of this miracle, Benedetta becomes the new abbess. She moves for immediate enclosure of the convent and adoption of the draconian Rules of Saint Augustine. With the approval of the old-fashioned, misogynist confessor of the convent, Father Ricordati, she introduces Church-sanctioned, sado-masochistic practices, including whipping, in order to punish her critics and consolidate her power. She seduces a gullible young nun by convincing her that it is the will of God for the girl to have sex with an angel named Splenditello, who will come and occupy Benedetta’s body for the duration of the sex act.
Benedetta organizes a public wedding between herself and Jesus. The town provost, realizing that things have gone too far, orders Ricordati to stop the wedding. When Ricordati tries to confront Benedetta, she stages a miracle that sets Ricordati up for blackmail. At the height of the wedding spectacle, the provost confronts Benedetta with the charges against her. She manages to hold her own, until the victim of her seduction steps forward with her story. Placed under arrest, Benedetta curses the town and promises that God will send the plague to punish them.
Fifteen years later, when the plague is once again ravishing Italy, the townspeople storm the convent, demanding the release of Benedetta, who has been imprisoned all these years. Benedetta defies her tormentors, including her mother, dying with a vision of her beloved Abbess. At her death, she manifests authentic stigmata. The provost and the new abbess decide to parade Benedetta’s body through the town in order to appease the crowd – knowing that this concession to popular ignorance and superstition, will result in mass contagion of the plague.
Ten women, two men, unspecified number of extras Three hours Multiple sets
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COMING ABOUT is a play which looks at the dramatic change in the institution of marriage over the last forty years. Kay, in her early thirties, is married to a man over twice her age. Finally confronting the facts about their age discrepancies, she begins to move toward establishing her own life.
The play opens at the wedding reception for a neighbor, and the presence of Kay's husband's grown children, the question of inheritance, and her mother's bitter reminders about her own marriage turn the festive weekend into a pressure cooker of gender roles. The wedding gives way to a hurricane, and the five couples in the play undergo a sea change before the night is over as the women come to terms with their loss of identity in marriage.
Six women, three men
Two hours
Single set
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Nellie Forbush of South Pacific is in Mame's Manhattan penthouse to host a benefit luncheon for a Broadway Battered Women's Shelter. Her guests include Bess of Porgy and Bess, Julie Jordan of Carousel, Sally Bowles of Cabaret, Mei Li from Flower Drum Song, Maria from West Side Story, and Aldonza from Man of La Mancha. These women, most of them now in their sixties, look back in horror on their various onstage rapes, batterings, and partnerings with inferior men.
Orphan Annie puts in an unexpected appearance and is outraged to discover that Daddy Warbucks has donated the money to buy the building for the shelter. She tells Nellie that when the reporters arrive, she will expose him as a child molester. Nellie is concerned that this will jeopardize the project. She threatens to have Annie arrested if she doesn't leave. Sally Bowles intervenes, and Annie is in for a surprise when the nun reveals her secret identity and initiates Annie into the mysteries of an underground men-killing vigilante group.
BATTERED ON BROADWAY is a theatrical tour-de-force, combining the farcical romp of comic strip characters with the conventions of an old-fashioned murder mystery in a plot which not only rewrites the history of musicals from a woman's point of view, but which also tackles the most divisive social issue of the 90's: violence toward women. A play with many layers!
Ten women
35 minutes
Single set
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CALAMITY JANE SENDS A MESSAGE TO HER DAUGHTER is the first act of the trilogy, Deviant Women, which includes Cookin' with Typhoid Mary and Artemisia and Hildegarde.
This work is based on the real Calamity Jane. Vulgar, debauched, and raunchy, Jane is considered a freak by women and a laughing stock by men. Without the strictures of compulsory heterosexuality, she might have had the freedom to live the life of a roughrider without having to pass as a man. She might have been given the place in history which was accorded to her sidekick, James Butler Hickok. And she might have found a way to satisfy her frustrated desire for acceptance by women. Jane is a butch woman who had the misfortune to be born in an era before lesbian culture. She is a feisty woman with a keen sense of humor, who has kept herself going with a number of destructive myths which are familiar to all of us.
One woman
15 minutes
Single set
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Mary Mallon, dubbed "Typhoid Mary" by a hostile press, never admitted that she was a typhoid carrier. Her persistent refusal to defer to medical experts infuriated George Soper, a sanitation engineer for New York City. He built his career on tracking down Mary and incarcerating her. In this monologue, Mary speaks for herself. An Irish emigrant, she traces the story of her persecution back to the Potato Famine, all the while eyeing and chopping potatoes for the stew pot in the kitchen of the mysterious institution where she cooks.
Mary's version of events is both humorous and chilling. She resists a theory of germs that would indict her for murder, when half of Ireland starved to death before the indifferent eyes of the world.
One woman
25 minutes
Single set
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ARTEMISIA AND HILDEGARDE is the third act of the powerful trilogy, Deviant Women, which includes Cookin' With Typhoid Mary and Calamity Jane Sends a Message to Her Daughter.
ARTEMISIA AND HILDEGARDE is a complex and powerful two-woman show, featuring two of the most famous women artists in history, together on an explosive arts panel about survival strategies for women artists.
Hildegarde Von Bingen, German abbess from the 12th century, and Artemisia Gentileschi, Italian baroque painter from the 17th century, have been scheduled as guest speakers on a panel titled, "Women Artists: Strategies for Survival." As the women display slides of their work, the sparks begin to fly. Confronted with conflicting philosophies, each woman attempts to take control of the evening's agenda.
Hildegarde, whose art is multi-disciplinary and created in an all-women collective environment, has strong words for the woman who does her art for hire. Likewise, Artemisia, who struggled hard to achieve the same status and independent income as her male contemporaries, has a lot to say about the so-called virtues of poverty and humility. She resents the accusation from women that she is "just like a man," because of her commercial success.
But the debate takes a personal turn when the women are pressed to defend their positions. Both women are compelled to reveal secrets of their childhood, secrets which have shaped their strategies for survival. Hildegarde's parents banished her to a convent at the age of eight, where she was walled up for ten years in a cell, a form of extreme religious renunciation she "practiced" as an anchoress. Her rationalization of this trauma into a form of spiritual blessing requires an elaborate mythology about a mystical calling and special relationship to the deity.
Artemisia was raped at sixteen by her father's colleague who had been hired to give her lessons on perspective. Her possessive and covertly incestuous father exposed her to a humiliating public trial, which involved an examination of her vagina and the administration of torture to determine if she were telling the truth. Artemisia has devoted her life to downplaying the role of gender in her life and in her art.
As the women struggle to justify their choices, choices which invalidate each other's work, they find themselves exposing the contradictions in their own lives. The panel ends on a dramatic high note, as the audience is recruited in the debate about strategy for women artists in patriarchy.
Two women
One hour
Single set (podium)
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HARRIET TUBMAN VISITS A THERAPIST is a gripping confrontation between two women who share the same oppression, but whose definitions of survival are in direct conflict.
Harriet Tubman, suspected of planning an escape on the Underground Railroad, has been sent to the Therapist for an evaluation. The Therapist, another African American woman, warns Harriet about the dangers of radical action. Harriet accuses the Therapist of colluding with the enemy in the guise of practicing therapeutic intervention.
As the Therapist attempts to convince Harriet of the benefits of accepting the things she cannot change and learning to live one day at a time, Harriet uncovers the Therapist's secret - a secret which will give her access to the information she needs.
The plot takes a sudden twist during one of Harriet's spells of sleeping sickness, and in resisting the suggestions which justify the Therapist's ideology, Harriet discovers a source of spiritual support rooted in her own activism.
Two women
20 minutes
Single set
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In October 1923, Eva Le Gallienne was raped in her dressing room during the Broadway run of Liliom. She checked herself into a private hospital for three days, and for the rest of her life, she refused to name the rapist. After the three days, she returned to her starring role as the battered girlfriend of the alcoholic, abusive carousel operator.
Entr'acte takes place in the private hospital on the night of the rape, after Eva has checked herself in. She wakes up from her sedation in a state of extreme anxiety, waiting for a "friend" to arrive.
The friend is Mimsey Benson, Eva's former lover who left her ten months earlier in order to marry a man. The two women have not had contact with each other since the breakup, but Eva, in the crisis of her life, has sent for her on this night.
This play is a tour-de-force for a young actor (Eva is twenty-three) playing a survivor of sexual assault. Eva, in the space of the thirty-minute drama, runs a gamut of extreme dissociative emotional states as she attempts to deal with what has happened to her: the abandoned lover, the imperious Broadway star, the enraged child, the brilliant performer, the terrified victim, the skillful seductress. Mimsey, an older actress who had lost herself completely in her relationship to Eva, walks a tightrope between compassion and protecting herself from Eva's overwhelming neediness.
The interpersonal drama of the two women is punctuated by interactions with two of the nurses on the staff, one of them an adoring fan of Eva's and the other a hard-nosed pragmatist. Balancing between the two poles represented by the nurses, Eva and Mimsey struggle to negotiate a way of loving and living without denial, but still cherishing their dreams for each other and for themselves.
Four women
30 minutes
Single set
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Cornelia Crosby, a 19th century lesbian, was the first licensed hunting guide in Maine. Six feet tall and known as "Fly Rod," she led fishing and hunting expeditions for wealthy vacationers in the Rangeley Lake district.
The play opens on the day that Fly Rod, who has been sidelined to a hospital bed in Portland with a serious knee injury, is scheduled for surgery. She may, in fact, never walk again. This prognosis poses a threat not only to her livelihood, but also to her plans to rendez-vous with Annie Oakley in New York at the annual Sportsman's Exhibition.
Fly Rod has befriended Annie, and Annie has confided her growing discontent with touring with the Wild West Show. Annie has also shared with Fly Rod the story of her appalling sexual abuse as a foster child. Fly Rod, deeply infatuated with a woman whose non-traditional lifestyle mirrors her own choices, has been making plans to lure Annie away from the Wild West Show, and, more to the point, from her husband/ business manager Frank Butler.
Rationalizing her scheming, she proposes to teach Annie the art of fly-fishing as an antidote to her obsessive-compulsive target practice. Explaining the difference between "imitations," the flies designed to replicate actual species of insects and "fancies," the flies that make no attempt to resemble anything except themselves, Fly Rod notes that she and Annie are "fancies" like the Parmachene Belle. It is her dream to have Annie move to Maine and share a home with her, teaching the occasional shooting lesson and accompanying Fly Rod on her hunting trips. In desperation over the knee injury, Fly Rod has converted to Catholicism to bargain for a miracle with St. Anthony.
Fly Rod's optimistic fantasizing is disrupted when she opens a gift that Annie has sent her. It is an arrow case that belonged to the famous Indian warrior Sitting Bull. Disturbed by the potential meaning of the gift, Fly Rod reflects on the death of Sitting Bull, who was killed for his participation in the Ghost Dance, a form of ecstatic trance-dancing believed to bring back the buffalo and get rid of the white man.
Outcasts, misfits, and survivors Annie, Fly Rod, and Sitting Bull all struggled to invent ways to continue in the face of shattered dreams and hopeless prospects. Fly Rod, in her monologue, wrestles with her fears and negotiates the fine line between faith and denial as she constructs a system of belief that will hold some possibility of happiness for her, a lesbian in a heterosexual man's world.
One women
30 minutes
Single set
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The play opens in 1969, with Dr. Evelyn Bateman, a white college professor, interviewing Miss Lydia Aholo, a ninety-two-year-old Native Hawaiian. Miss Aholo is the adoptive daughter of Queen Liliuokalani, the last queen of Hawai'i. Dr. Bateman is preparing to write the first Western biography sympathetic to the Queen, detailing her overthrow by the US government.
During the course of the interview, Miss Aholo reveals that the Queen entrusted her with a mission before her death. She asked her adoptive daughter to answer the question that tormented her at the end of her life: "What did I do that was so wrong that I should lose my country for my dear people?"
Dr. Bateman is shocked by the question, insisting that the Queen was a helpless victim of a colonial effort that had its beginnings before she was even born. Dr. Bateman is adamant that the Queen could have done nothing to change the course of history. Miss Aholo is equally insistent that there is an answer to the Queen's question and that the future for Native people depends on an understanding of this answer.
As the Western liberal historian and the Native woman struggle with the sovereignty issue, their collaboration begins to unravel, and Lydia Aholo succeeds in shifting the paradigm of a fixed historical narrative.
Two women
Single set
Thirty minutes
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This one-act for five women drummers explores the dramatic uses of the language of the drum.
In the play, the drum teacher Aisha has lost control of her class: One student is improvising with no attention to the directives from the teacher; another student who keeps losing her rhythm has voluntarily moved herself out of the circle; a third student has not even unpacked her drum.
Confronted with the lack of unity in the class, Aisha admits that her skills are in the language of the drum, and that her poor verbal skills were one of her reasons for taking up drumming. When the tensions escalate to the breaking point, one of the drummers begins to drum. What at first appears to be an act of defiance is quickly perceived as a distress signal from a woman experiencing a serious break with reality.
Aisha attempts to establish communication with her runaway student via her own drumming. Initially shut out, Aisha gradually insinuates herself into her student's chaotic, percussive monologue. Eventually, the student begins to respond to Aisha's patterns, and a dialogue is established. With skill and compassion, Aisha is able to "talk" her student down from her metaphoric ledge.
The lesson is the power of the circle, which can contain our defects and our conflicts, and as Aisha resumes her drum class, her students, chastened and inspired, rejoin the circle.
Five women who can drum
Single set
Twenty minutes
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Five women, all mothers, have gathered in a classroom of their children's middle school to take part in an experimental, new program designed to eliminate playground violence. Experts from international "think tanks" and peacekeeping forces are training the women on how to analyze playground dynamics in order to detect the class, ethnic, and racial inequalities among the children that are, in theory, the sources of conflict. On the chalkboard, there is a diagram of the playground, which has been divided up into "safety zones" in accordance with sophisticated formulas intended to balance out these inqualities. The program's focus is emphatically on confronting social imbalances, not individual behaviors, and, to facilitate this focus, the women have been forbidden to look out the window at the playground. In fact, the blinds are shut.
As the women enter the classroom to wait for the trainer, they register varying degrees of discomfort and distrust. Evidently something traumatic has happened a week earlier, at the first session of the training, but, because of the injunction against focusing on individual behavior and especially against "male-bashing," they are reluctant to talk about it.
An enthusiastic newcomer joins the group, excited to have found a school for her daughter where the problem of violence is being so openly addressed. Her enthusiasm changes to confusion as she learns that the program prohibits any form of disciplining of the children, insisting that all conflict be resolved through the rules of the playground.
As the newcomer's concerns escalate, the women's self-censorship begins to break down, and it is revealed that, a week earlier, one child was shot on the playground and another was raped. The newcomer reacts with disbelief and then alarm, as the sounds of gunfire and screaming are heard from the playground. She is intercepted as she attempts to raise the blinds, and flees the room, accusing the other women of being insane. After she leaves, the mother of the raped girl begins to question the absence of a gender analysis amid all the sophisticated formulas for equality on the chalkboard. She calls for a division of the playground that would provide a safety zone for girls. This proposal is met with hysterical denial, and the play ends with the women whose losses have been the greatest joining forces to close the partially-opened blinds and to reinforce the attention to the rules of the playground.
This is a scathing social satire, along the lines of Shirley Jackson's electrifying short story "The Lottery." The Rules of the Playground demonstrates how the everyday social conditioning of women is exploited as a means of enabling the perpetuation of male violence. Women's collective failure to identify war as an unacceptable expression of male aggression, and our acceptance of it along male-identified terms of "political expedience," is depicted as nothing less than complicity a complicity that renders us victims and betrayers.
Six women
Single set
Twenty-five minutes
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This one-act was originally written as a radio play, but it can also be produced as a stage drama.
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO is the story of Dr. Frances ("Frankie") Kelsey's fight to keep thalidomide out of America. The play traces the development of her friendship with Dr. Barbara Moulton, who resigned from the FDA and was testifying against the agency's corruption at the time when Frances was hired. In her courageous act of befriending a whistle-blower, Frances was laying the foundation for her subsequent battles with the drug companies.
The play unveils the conspiracy between the German manufacturers, the American distributor, and the officials in the FDA to pressure Frances to issue a license for "the sleeping pill of the century." Frances plays for time against the good-old-boy network, while the horrifying evidence mounts that thalidomide, prescribed as a cure for morning sickness, causes severe birth defects.
Since 1960, the date of the thalidomide "scare" in this country, companies whose products are designed for women have continued to follow dangerous and deceptive practices. In 1991, a Texas jury awarded $33 million in damages to the parents of a child born with birth defects as a result of taking Bendectin, an anti-nausea drug, which had been on the market since the 1950's with no testing for its effect on human fetuses.
Nestle persisted in promoting their infant formulas in Third World countries, despite the proof that it was responsible for infant malnutrition, disease, and death. Proctor and Gamble engaged in an extensive cover-up of the fact that their Rely tampon was responsible for toxic shock syndrome, even after the deaths of many women. And A.H. Robbins dragged its heels for more than a decade, fighting settlement awards for victims of their deadly Dalkon Shield IUD, a birth control device that has left women sterile, crippled, and dead. The most recent example of the medical exploitation of women has been the scandal over the use of untested silicon breast implants.
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO is an old, old story - but one which points a moral for a happier ending.
Three women, eight men
Thirty minutes
Single set
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Two "gangs" from rival Off-Off Broadway productions of Romeo and Juliet meet in an alley to rumble, sixteenth-century style. Female-to-male transgender meets lesbian cross- dressing, and lesbian butch squares off against male machismo in this swashbuckling gender- bender!
A male "Romeo" from a traditional production shows up at the stage door of an all-women theatre company, challenging their "Romeo" to come out and fight like a man. The fact that this cross-dressing, female Romeo has stolen his former girlfriend by offering her the role of Juliet only fans the flames of his indignation. When Juliet's Nurse, a lesbian butch, takes up his challenge, however, Romeo finds himself outclassed in the martial arts. On the brink of surrender, he is rescued by his own masked "Mercutio," who takes on the Nurse in dazzling display of sword-fighting techniques.
In another surprise twist, "Mercutio" is unmasked, revealing his identity as a transgendered male. Accused of being a woman by his former buddy, he is also attacked by the lesbian butch for alleged lesbo-phobia. Meanwhile, the female "Romeo," threatened by the butch's superior fighting skills attempts to put her back in her place as a character actor. The butch, however, joins forces with the transgender actor, with the result that both find themselves expelled from their respective companies.
Having pronounced a plague on both their houses, the butch launches into a tender coda about the unsung heroism of those who renounce gender roles, the female Cyrano's whose stories will never make the stages of mainstream theatre. She discards her skirt, as the erstwhile Mercutio detaches his codpiece, and the two warriors exit the stage committed to creating a new kind of theatre that can support their stories.
Two males, four females
Thirty minutes
Single set
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A LABOR PLAY is a satirical piece about what might happen if surrogate mothers become a commodity in the corporate world. The two chief executive officers are concerned about the bad publicity which might result from a worker's desire to gain control over the distribution of the goods. (The mother has decided to keep the baby.)
The collision of male dominance with the women's value system is violent, and the scenario, in light of the Baby M case, might not be as far-fetched as it seems.
One woman, two men
Fifteen minutes
Single set
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Five women come together for a regular meeting of Heterosexuals Anonymous, an organization designed to help women overcome their unmanageable addictions to men. The women share their experiences of automatically deferring to men, of battering, of rape, of sex discrimination, and of inability to relate to the males in their own families.
The women, having admitted that they were powerless over their addiction to men, work through the steps of the program towards recovery. The steps include Step Two: "Believing that a power greater than men can restore us to sanity" and Step Four: "Making a searching and fearless moral inventory of all the men in our lives, including fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons."
A lighthearted spoof, the play nevertheless points up the political analysis which is lacking in tradition 12-Step programs, a lack which often leads women to believe personal growth is possible without social change.
Five women
Twenty minutes
Single set
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RADICALS is a play about straight women during the late sixties. The play illustrates the damaging effects of compulsory heterosexuality on women who must express affection for each other through each other's boyfriends. An explosive play, examining the roots of violence between women.
In RADICALS, two women live together; one is an activist in the anti-war movement, and the other is apolitical - but paying all the bills. The women's inability to communicate their feelings for each other leads them towards increasingly destructive and competitive roles. Finally, Margo invites a fugitive radical, wanted for killing a policeman in Miami, to stay in their apartment. Sexual and political tensions become entangled, and the war comes home.
The play moves swiftly as a political thriller for a close ensemble group. The idealistic rhetoric of the characters stands in stark contrast to their day-to-day choices. RADICALS interweaves the personal with the political, never losing sight of the fact that these self-styled radicals are no more respectful of the life around them than the "enemy" they oppose.
Two women, two men
Forty-five minutes
Single set
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THE BOUNDARY TRIAL OF JOHN PROCTOR takes up where Arthur Miller's Crucible leaves off. This play opens with Miller's anti-hero stumbling into the boundary lands where women's lives are lived, a territory so marginal to patriarchy that it has escaped by Proctor and his creator's awareness.
The women accused of witchcraft in Miller's play are assembled in a sewing circle. We meet Elizabeth, Proctor's pregnant wife, and Abigail, the employee he sexually exploited. We also meet Tituba, the formerly enslaved Carribean housekeeper; Sarah, the town baglady; Martha, the spinster intellectual; and Rebecca, the town matriarch.
The women are assembled to make baby clothes for Elizabeth's child. They ask John Proctor to join their circle and take up the knitting. Balking at "women's work," John discovers that he is unable to assert his male supremacist values in the Boundary of wome's existence. He is as marginal here as the women were in his world, and his discovery that witches are real results in an explosive verdict.
Six women, one man
Thirty minutes
Single set (bare stage)
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PATRICIDE is a one-minute monologue by a woman of any age, race, ethnicity, physical ability, sexual orientation, or class background --- who telephones her father and confronts him with her memory of his sexual abuse of her.
More than a novelty piece, this monologue provides actors with the opportunity to run an intense gauntlet of peak emotions in the space of sixty seconds: panic, terror, disorientation, relief, euphoria.
One woman
One minute
Bare or elaborate set with telephone
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THE P.E. TEACHER explores the interface of misogyny, racism, and homophobia in the public schools.
Dana Willets, an African American lesbian, has just been hired to teach PE classes at Rosa Parks Middle School. She is replacing another lesbian teacher who resigned suddenly in mid-term under mysterious circumstances. Dana's attempts to discover the reason for this resignation are frustrated by the Vice Principal, who lectures her on the need tobe a team player.
The computer teacher and the guidance counselor come into the lounge discussing the computer teacher's recent strategy to embarrass the boys in his class, who were using class time to access pornographic sites on the Internet. Dana's attempts to engage in a serious discussion of the impact of this on girls is aborted by both faculty members' discomfort with the subject.
Two students come to the teachers' lounge to report an incident of sexual assault. Dana is stunned as the guidance counselor minimizes the violence of the episode and focuses attention on the attitude of the victim.
The English teacher, Anne, and Dana recognize each other as former college roommates and lovers, and Anne, distinctly uncomfortable, tells Dana that she is married and heterosexual. When Dana presses Anne for information about the teacher she is replacing, Anne becomes uncommunicative.
The issue comes to a head when Anne becomes scapegoated for a recent breakdown, and a gun that was concealed in the sofa of the lounge figures in the violent resolution of the drama.
Five women, one man, two girls
Thirty minutes
Single set
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Five members of a play selection committee have gathered in the Green Room to choose the plays for their Festival of Poorly-Written Plays. The artistic director begins with a review of the more common criteria for a bad play: blatant exposition and contrived names for the characters. He then suggests that they all go around the table and introduce themselves and say a little something about themselves – blatant exposition if ever there was. As he calls on Hedda, the literary manager, and Mrs. Bracknell, the benefactress, it becomes obvious that the folks around the table all have contrived names.
And so it goes – the committee enacts every broken rule of playwriting in the course of their wrangling over their selections of bad plays. These broken rules include the use of asides, characters who unaccountably reverse their positions, overly-complicated relationship histories, unrealistic set requirements, mysterious strangers, phony disguises, implausible explanations, significant action that takes place offstage, reference to scenes that have been cut from the script, and the setting up of the expectations of the audience only to disappoint them.
This is a hilarious “actors nightmare” for playwrights, guaranteed to delight audiences, whose attempts to follow the action are constantly frustrated by the dramaturgical liberties of this “poorly-written” play. The incoherencies and inconsistencies build to a frantic climax, as the artistic director, faced with a plethora of plot difficulties, resorts to the cheesiest playwriting device of all.
Three females, three males
Seventeen minutes
Single set
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Ostensibly arguing about The Taming of the Shrew,a lesbian couple come to grips with their own marital struggles and break their deadlock around the issue of sex.
Vivey and Dru are both graduate students, living together in a committed relationship. Vivey’s distress over being assigned to direct a scene from Taming of the Shrew triggers an argument with her partner about the sexual politics of the play. Dru makes the case that the play is subversive, with Petrucchio exaggerating his gender role in order to mock it. Vivey resists this interpretation until Dru cites the dialogue describing the wedding night, where it is apparent that Petrucchio does not have sex with Katharine. On the contrary, he delivers a mocking lecture on abstinence.
On the strength of this argument, Vivey accepts that the play might indeed be about a companionate, or even “passing” marriage. She redirects the conversation to address the lack of sex in their own relationship. Dru, a survivor of child sexual abuse, is reluctant to discuss the subject.
As the argument escalates, the two agree to role-play an exercise in which Dru plays an alien from another planet, describing her experience. The exercise, set up to pathologize Dru, backfires on Vivey, and she discovers that she is more accurately the alien from another planet. Dru’s experiences are universal and pandemic among women, and Dru’s insistence on incorporating that understanding into her practice of intimacy shatters Vivey’s complacency and self-righteousness.
Deeply in love, but deeply self-assertive, both women struggle to avoid playing out the traditional “obligatory scene” of a break-up or a sexual stalemate. The ending of the play points to a radical transformation the holds the promise of healing for both.
Two females
Twenty minutes
Single set
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Yamashita is a female magician, who promises us an evening of entertainment, where she will personally escort her audience “through the secret tunnels and nubiferous passageways of a post-colonialist, global economic maze, more hidden than King Solomon’s Tomb, more baffling than the riddle of the Sphinx and more impenetrable than the Great Pyramid of Khufu.”
In fact, her Assistant has run away, and the A-Mazing Yamashita is compelled to recruit volunteers from the audience for her classic acts of levitating a woman, sawing a woman in half, and causing a woman to vanish in a magic cabinet, the Cabinet of GATT (yes, as in “General Agreements on Tariff and Trade”).
In the course of her highly unorthodox magic, the Assistant returns via the Cabinet, to warn the audience that Yamashita is actually trafficking the women who volunteer for her magic acts. Yamashita, assuring the audience that this is all part of the act, manages to convince the Stage Manager that there is no need for intervention.
When her Assistant takes matters into her own hands, phoning the police, Yamashita must disappear them all and then undertake the mass hypnosis of her entire audience. Explaining how the association of inequality with sexual arousal will eliminate any sense of discomfort about the evening, and, in fact, greatly enhance their participation in corporate capitalism, she announces her intention to employ a series of pornographic images. At this point, the Stage Manager pulls the plug and the fate of the evening lies in the hands of the audience.
In the end, Yamashita reveals herself to be a trickster, and the women seemingly lost to the Cabinet of GATT reappear as her accomplices. The real trick is to apply the lessons learned to the economic sleight-of-hand that globally erases women’s productivity, disappears over a hundred million women and girls a year, and commodifies the culture via increasing dissemination of pornography.
Seven women
One man
Two teenaged girls, one Asian
Three adults, any gender
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Formidable editor, author and Suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, 67, lies in bed ripping up congratulatory notes from her well-wishers about the recent publication of her lifework, Woman, Church, and State.
Her book, an impeccably-researched, comprehensive indictment of the historical misogyny of the christian church, is intended to start a revolution, and Gage is distressed by the polite responses from those who already share her views. In an attempt to stir controversy, she has sent a copy to a conservative member of the local school board, donating the book to the school library. She expresses her frustration that she has received no response.
After a mini-lecture on the custom of "throwing down the gage," she vents her frustration about the fact that challenges by women are so seldom taken seriously. Gage's exhaustion changes to exhilaration when she comes across a letter from Anthony Comstock, the notorious author of the national "Comstock Laws" that banned birth control and instituted strict censorship in arts and literature. Apparently, the school board member sent the book to him, and he has written to Gage threatening to press criminal charges against anyone who attempts to place the book in the hands of children.
Gage is delighted. She exposes the hypocrisy of Mr. Comstock and tells the appalling story of his persecution of Ann Lohman, a woman who was incarcerated for having performed abortions, and whom he pursued after her release, entrapping her in the sale of contraceptives to undercover agents. Lohman, unable to face the humiliation and trauma of a second incarceration slit her own throat the morning she was to appear in court for the second trial. Gage scores Comstock for his callous indifference to Lohman's death, a direct result of his persecution of her.
Gage is delighted that Mr. Comstock has taken up her challenge and she gleefully anticipates the prospect of escalating the controversy surrounding her book, noting that, if all goes as she plans, Woman, Church and State should make it onto the Pope's list of banned books.
One female
Ten minutes
Single set
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Sara, a young woman in her early 30’s, lies in a hospital bed, waiting to be taken down to surgery for a gastric bypass operation. Sara weighs more than 250 pounds, and she is convinced that, without the surgery, she will never be able to realize her ambition to become a professional opera singer. Her years of training and graduate school will have been wasted.
Sara’s partner, Gillian, is opposed to the surgery, and when she shows up in the hospital room, an argument ensues. Realizing that their conflict is causing Sara distress, Gillian apologizes and asks Sara to sing “Vissi d’arte,” a favorite aria by Puccini. When a nurse arrives to administer a sedative, however, Gillian renews her opposition and exits.
Under sedation, Sara experiences a series of dreams which incorporate elements of well-known operas with concerns about the impending surgery and her experiences with fat oppression. The dream sequences include a comic interlude as a Rheinemaiden, an encounter with the “Ghost of Callas Past,” a confrontation with a Met director who insists on a graphically realistic finale of La Traviata, a duet with Pagageno, confusion between Madame Butterfly’s hari-kari and gastric bypass surgery, and a scene from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in which Gillian plays the tormented troubadour on a mission to retrieve his love from the Underworld, a mission which must be achieved without turning and looking back at her.
At this point, Sara wakes up, but she is still confused by the drugs. Mistaking Gillian for Orfeo, she insists that Gillian not look at her, because that is the only way to lead her out of hell. Gillian expresses a concern that perhaps Sara’s immersion in operas that reflect morbid male fantasies might be coloring Sara’s perceptions. She points out that what is making life hell for Sara is not the way she sees Sara, but the way other people see her. She challenges Sara to give a voice to her body, instead of trying to give a body to her voice.
Sara considers the suggestion and the play ends with her singing the aria, “This Body Is My Song,” a radical love song between a diva and her body.
Two female opera singers (soprano and contralto), one non-singing role
Thirty minutes
Single set
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Kathleen is directing a play about Countess Constance Markiewicz, after her arrest for her participation in the Easter Rising. The play is based on the writings by the Countess, by her sister Eva Gore-Booth, and by her sister’s life companion Esther Roper.
Kathleen’s partner Grace is performing the role of Eva, while Kathleen plays the Countess. Their real-life relationship mirrors the dynamic between the sisters: Grace, who despises conflict, plays a supporting role to Kathleen, who is multi-talented and very ambitious. Nan, playing the role of Esther is in love with Grace, and she becomes increasingly aggressive in challenging Kathleen’s directorial and dramaturgical choices.
When Kathleen fires Nan from the play, Grace produces excerpts from a play by Eva Gore-Booth, The Death of Fionavar, and requests that they do a reading of them. In the play, Eva has used a tale from Irish mythology to illustrate her political differences with her sister. Fionavar, the Queen’s daughter, is so upset by the sight of bloody corpses, she falls dead – even though her mother was the supposed victor.
Grace points out the emotional and artistic costs of firing Nan, and the women begin to explore other alternatives to the firing. In the course of this, Nan owns up to the fact she is in love with Grace, and to Kathleen’s surprise Grace admits that she is also attracted to Nan. A second conflict ensues, and this time, it is Grace who attempts to walk out.
Acknowledging that desertion is also a battlefield tactic, Grace returns . As the women wrestle with their pride and their options, they make a radical choice to continue to cling to the wreck of the rehearsal process until there is some light. The play, like the love of Ireland among the historical characters, is a thing that unites them and that transcends their ego, and as they continue to inhabit the characters, the actors discover that the script becomes a vehicle for expressing and transforming their emotions. As the template for their former relationships is shattered, they use the Irish play as a temporary structure from which they can begin the process of rebuilding.
Three women
One hour
Single set
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Psappha in Bar Harbor captures a turning point in the relationship between celebrated salonist Natalie Barney and her lover, the poet RenŽe Vivien (nŽe "Pauline Tarn"). In the summer of 1900, both young women spent a month in Bar Harbor (then called "Eden"), on Mt. Desert Island in Maine. Natalie's family owned a cottage on the island, and she had spent her childhood summers among the other wealthy, socialite families who vacationed there. Her mother, Alice Barney, was one of the most popular hostesses in Eden.
The play opens in a suite at the Malvern Hotel, on the night of August 17 -- a mysterious anniversary for RenŽe. She is enraged to discover that Natalie has made plans to go to a ball instead of honoring her agreement to spend the evening with RenŽe.
As the women argue, the subject of their lesbianism comes up. Natalie, who has just ended an affair with the most notorious courtesan in Paris, believes in fighting fire with fire: Generate a scandal so public, it renders speculative gossip superfluous. RenŽe, an introvert by nature, is horrified. Deeply offended by the salacious curiosity of men and the vicious shunning by women, she prefers to live in a world of her imagination -- translating and elaborating on the poems of Psappho (mistranslated as "Sappho").
The women arrive at a truce, when RenŽe suggests that they create their own private costume ball with the theme "An Evening on Lesbos." The women tear down the window curtains to make chitons for themselves, dressing as goddesses and sharing erotic poetry.
When Natalie begins to make love to RenŽe, however, RenŽe's fears overwhelm her, and she discloses the horrific secret behind this anniversary night. As she narrates these events, the extent of her terror of living is revealed. RenŽe's argument shifts from spending an evening inside to spending an eternity together -- via double suicide.
Two women
Single set
Twenty-five minutes
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The year is 1953 and the setting is a middle-school principal's office and the waiting area outside the door. Amanda, a thirteen-year-old tomboy, is waiting disconsolately on a bench. She sports a brand new blackeye, and has apparently been fighting.
Her P.E. teacher, Miss Marshall, has been summoned to a consultation about the incident with the principal. On the way to his office, she checks in with Amanda, and the audience understands that she has been coaching the girl on her fighting skills.
The principal, Mr. Kent, is expelling Amanda and is hoping that Miss Marshall will be willing to convey the news to both Amanda and to her mother, as Miss Marshall is the girl's favorite teacher. Miss Marshall is angered by the decision, arguing that the fight was provoked by the boys' homophobic harassment.
When Mr. Kent attempts to terminate the meeting, Miss Marshall admits that she has taught the girl how to defend herself, and she informs him that she believes in fighting. She threatens to "out" Mr. Kent to the school board if he follows through on the expulsion. Mr. Kent is confident that she will not do this, as he knows that she is also in a same-sex relationship. Miss Marshall manages to trump his ace, however, and he agrees not to expel Amanda.
Leaving the office, Miss Marshall has a final, triumphant and subversive interaction with her student.
A woman, a girl, and a man
Single set
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The first comprehensive "how-to" book for lesbians wanting to produce or direct lesbian theatre. 300 pages of everything you would ever need to know, from script selection to striking the set, about putting on a lesbian play.
The author has been the founder and artistic director of three theatre companies, including a studio art theatre, a large community theatre, and a radical feminist theatre. She has worked with lesbian theatre collectives, toured and performed at women's festivals and conferences for the last six years, and worked with lesbian producers all over the country.
Conversational and anecdotal, Take Stage! is written for the lesbian who has no previous experience with theatre or lesbian organization. In addition to the chapters on auditioning, rehearsals, picking the script, booking the space, assembling a staff, etc., the book also includes special chapters on the unique challenges to lesbians creating theatre.
Take Stage! includes information on how to challenge the "isms" - looksism, racism, ageism, ableism, fat phobia, and all the other prejudices that are entrenched in mainstream theatre. Take Stage! also looks at co-dependence in women and the problems this can cause in an organization staffed by volunteers. The author takes on the class structure and hierarchy that can develop within a theatre, and she proposes concrete strategies for developing alternative systems.
The fifty-page appendix contains sample contracts, audition forms, light plots, budgets, and schedules. A gold mine of practical forms and charts!