10/21/14
Dear Diary,
Why, hello! Long
time no see. It was great fun to rise up out of the grave again
after a little hiatus to visit The College of Staten Island with Azucena,
Isadora, and Aphra on October 21st.
The day started early with the journey across land and see
to that far and distant borough.
We kicked off our visit with a poster-making workshop. The group, all students in an acting
class, were very engaged and got fired up about a wide variety of issues to make
posters about: the Ebola media craze, parking issues at their school, domestic
violence, misconceptions of feminism, animal abuse, and more. I think my favorite poster was one made
about misrepresentations of feminism, and how gendered language – like, “you
throw like a girl” or “man up!” - affects men AND women.
Azucena, Isadora, and me during the workshop
A group works on a poster about “sexy” Halloween costumes
After the workshop, we had lunch and explored the College of
Staten Island campus a little.
Apparently, there is a law banning smoking anywhere on all CUNY campuses
city-wide – and CSI will not have you forget it! There were so many foreboding signs reminding us that
smoking was illegal, we ended up throwing some jokes about it into our performance
later that evening. We also may
have sneaked a photo or two of a student blatantly smoking a cigarette in front
of one of those signs…but he’ll never know it was us! Mwahaha…the benefits of anonymity.
After lunch, we rehearsed in the beautiful theater at CSI
and met our student volunteer, Crystal, who would be making her performance
debut (first EVER!) with GGOT. I
love working on “Silence is Violence” because in addition to interacting with
the audience and dancing and singing like the feminist fools we are, we also
get to play around with scenes and play characters in our segments depicting tactics
for fighting date rape. I think
Azucena’s performance of a frat boy is one of the most hilarious things I’ve
ever seen – even Crystal had trouble keeping it together in rehearsal.
The performance was a hit. We and the audience all had great energy, and they were with
us every step of the way. There
was definitely a variety of opinions in the audience in response to our feminist
spin - we could tell by their responses during the show as well as by their
questions afterwards – but it was
all in good spirits and overall, they were engaged and responsive and that’s
the best we could ask for as performers.
After the show, one student even came up and interviewed us so she could
include us in a project she’s doing for a class. Cool!
Lots o love,
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