Sunday, January 24, 1999
What is women's theater?
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
So what about this moniker “women's theater?”
Is there an artistic difference between work by men and women?
“Gender makes no difference,” says D. Lynn Meyers, Ensemble Theatre producing artistic director.
Checking out local stages, gender makes a difference sometimes, certainly in subject matter and probably in inclination of a producer to have it be seen.
Vagina Monologues (Miami University) is about female sexuality. How I Learned to Drive (Playhouse in the Park) is about child molestation. Ice Floe (ETC), is about an elderly woman in a nursing home.
One could argue that these are topics more likely to inspire a woman than her male counterpart. The women writers also depart from American realism to embrace a sense of fantasy or reverie in their storytelling.
Two of the three entries in ETC's current Off-Center/On-Stage Festival are projects by or about women.
“I do care about giving women a shot. I have a vocation for the underdog,” Ms. Meyers acknowledges.
We'll see the lighter side, too, like puppet artist Joanie Leverone's telling of The Canterbury Tales (Cincinnati Public Theatre), Red Corners (Playhouse) and the cabaret show Love & Shrimp (ETC).
A significant amount of the work on view suggests commonalities: Many of these women start with personal issues: what touches their lives, the lives of their families, of their community. A lot of their personal issues hit social and political hot buttons.
“I want to write plays that are relevant to what's going on in the African-American community,” says Liz Presley Fields, a longtime local playwright and a social worker by profession. Her contemporary family “dramedy” Strength for Home will be produced in March by Second Chance Productions.
“In theater you can present issues in a way that life doesn't allow. You can put issues on a stage and (audiences can) look at them in a safe environment.”
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