SKOAL!
As often as we can, Guerrilla Girls On Tour! tries
to bring together badass feminists and women artists to celebrate their talent and create solidarity. Well, the Women Playwrights International
Conference hosted by Riksteatern, the national touring company of Sweden, did
this in a big, wonderful and global way!
We toured to Stockholm in August of 2012 to participate and perform at
WPIC 2012.
Day 1: We're HEEERE!
Bleary-eyed and drunk (figuratively, much to my
disappointment, airlines always had the gin and tonics flowing when I traveled
around for my poetry tour in the 1960s) from an international flight, the Girls
- Aphra Behn, Fanny Mendelssohn, Josephine Baker and myself checked into our
ultra-chic Swedish hotel in the south of Stockholm. Then we headed up to
the Sodra Teatern, the beautiful venue right on the water, where the conference
was being held to sign-up for all the fabulous lectures, workshops, readings
and performances we wanted to see over the course of the week. Nothing
could prepare us for the illustrious, fancy opening ceremony to come -
Stockholm's City Hall, with gold-gilded walls, beautiful mosaic painting and
stately terraces.
With women playwrights from Afghanistan
We tried to imagine what it must be like to receive a
Nobel Prize in the room where they were handed out. Women don't receive
those very often, and Guerrillas... well the odds aren't great, but one can
dream!
Elizabeth Blackburn - Nobel Prize winner!
WPI, a fabulous organization: Women Playwrights
International, hosts these conferences and themed the Stockholm Conference
"The Democratic Stage". We invite all of you to look up this
organization and take part! http://www.wpinternational.net/
Here's a debriefing:
WPI is a non-profit and non-governmental
organization dedicated to facilitating communications, meetings, interchanges,
and activities among the international community of women in theatre. This is
done mainly through maintaining ongoing international Women Playwrights
Conferences every three years at different locations in the world. The mission
of WPI is to further the work of women playwrights around the world by
promoting their works, encouraging and assisting the development of their works
and bringing international recognition to their works. ”Women Playwrights”
shall be understood to include all women working in the theatre of all races,
classes, ages, ethnic or religious background, sexual preferences, and women
with disabilities.
The six goals of WPI are:
• To extend opportunities for meeting,
international networking and artistic exchange
• To increase and further production opportunities
for women’s writing for the stage
• To encourage, create and assist the education and
development of women playwrights and their craft
• To defend the right of women playwrights to
engender their own artistic forms and critical standards
• To encourage study and informed critique of the
work of women playwrights
• To support women playwrights against censorship
and political persecution for the expression of their ideas
The first conference was held in Buffalo, USA in
1988. It gathered more than 200 women from 30 countries around the world. The
second conference, in 1991, was held in Toronto, Canada, followed by Adelaide,
Australia 1994, Galway, Ireland 1997, Athens and Delphi, Greece 2000, Manila,
Philippines 2003, Jakarta and Bali, Indonesia 2006, and Mumbai, India
2009. Of course there's Stockholm, Sweden in 2012 and you'll want to take
part in the 2015 conference -- it's in South Africa!!
Day 2: Conference or Buuuuust.
On our second day we attended a smorgasbord of
keynote speeches focused on the Arab world with Nidal Al Achkar, founder &
director of Al Madina Theatre in Beirut and most charismatic women known to
walk the planet, Mona Knio, Chair, Department of Communication Arts at The
Lebanese American University...
Nidal Al Achkar of Al Madina Theatre
...and last, but not least, the young and fearless
Sondos Shabayek, Egyptian journalist, dramatist, director and activist, who
told us about her experience taking part in the protesters at Tahrir Square in
Cairo. Sondos gathered stories of several protestors in Cairo and compiled them
into a theatre piece called The Tahrir Monologues, stories from the revolution.
(www.tahrirmonologues.com)
Sondos Shabayek talks about protesting in Tahrir Square in Cairo
The inspiring day of Arab feminists was completed
with the Scandinavian première In the Lost and Found: Red Suitcase, written,
directed, and performed by Lana Nasser from Jordan, winner of last year's Etel
Adnan Award, a three-part award for an emerging Arab playwright presented by
WPI and Nidal Al Achkar, who gives each winner a week run in her cutting-edge
theatre in Beirut, the Al Madina Theatre (www.almadinatheatre.com).
My spirit was lifted by all these strong, confident
and liberated Arab women who were expressing themselves through theatre and refusing
to be shutdown by any political, social or gender-based prejudices. They
were mentoring and inspiring each other, and in turn, everyone at the
conference. They definitely struck a deep chord with me and I couldn't
help thinking about the disparity in the United States. We have no real
support system of strong women theatre artists to mentor and help younger
theatre artists. Women who have succeeded in winning leadership positions
in theatre around the US and the world should make it a top priority to mentor
younger women, and be active! We may consider ourselves more developed
than the Arab world, but our apathy sets us back decades. As Josephine
Baker so aptly put it in our show, "The fight for gender equality never
takes a day off!”
Day 3: Free Pussy Riot!
The perpetual summer sun was shining in Stockholm
city as the conference was in full swing. Feast your feminist eyes on
these seminars/workshops: Women and Creating: Rights and Possibilities, What
does Red Riding Hood carry in her basket?, Mapping yourself, Do you feel
understood? Young Women Playwrights around the Baltic Sea were just some of the
fabulous workshops taught by women from all around the world.
The women, along with all of us GGOTs were shocked
when three members of the Russian feminist activist group, Pussy Riot, were
charged with “hooliganism” and sentenced to two years in jail for speaking up
against Putin. It is shocking and appalling that in 2012, such a
monstrosity and disregard for free speech is happening to our Baltic sisters!
GGOTs and the other women at the conference marched through the Old City and
gathered at the main square and joined in on a global protest with speeches,
songs and chants.
What an awesome way to spend the day! I have to
say we Girls get some strange looks in our wigs and gorilla masks, but never so
much as when we were marching through Stockholm chanting “Free Pussy Riot!” J
With badass feminist playwright Van Badham from Australia
Day 4: The Day of the Show, Ya’ll.
Backstage at Dramalabbet
The excitement for our show, Feminists Are Funny,
had been mounting all week and we wanted to do our very best, high-energy,
madcap feminist mayhem kind of show for all the ladies at the conference.
Talk about feminist rock stars! We were totally impressed with all these
theatre artists and set the bar very high – we were pounding bananas like no
tomorrow.
And we needed the potassium, because the amazing
energy in the Dramalabbet where we performed was intense! These women
were fantastic! Clapping, cheering and talking back – “Ladies and
Gentlemen, THIS is what a true feminist looks like!”
We had a tremendous night. Thank you to WPI
for having us Girls, and a special shout out to all the incredible women we met
who are kicking theatre butt around the globe.
Day 5: Normal, Natural.
Our last day of the conference was our Street
Theatre workshop! We had about 25 participants and they were burning to
add their issues to the idea board for potential street theatre pieces.
Issues!
My favorite was the “Normal, Natural” group who used the 16-count movement
sequence we gave them as a way to create the ideal “normal, natural”
heterosexual couple. Hilarity ensued. Adorable Swedish girls
playing in the fountain outside the theatre stopped to clap along and watch and
you couldn’t help but hope that a little bit of the message floated into their
sponge-like brains.
Normal/natural Street theatre!
We really did have a mini Feminist UN, with groups
from Sweden, the UK, Jamaica, Estonia, India, the US and more coming together
to collaborate on universal issues. It may be expressed in a different
ways, but I hope the ladies involved saw how similar their struggle as feminist
theatre artists was.
Not too long after, Aphra and I left on a jetplane
while Josephine and Fanny continued on to Malmo, Sweden and the rest as they
say, is Feminist History!
Keepin’ it Normal and Natural (whatever that means!),
xoxo
Anne Sexton
