"Lesbian, Vagina, Feminist!" - our show at Lincoln Center

June 19, 2011

Dear Diary, 


Three days later and I'm still reeling from our show at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center - Target Free Thursdays! on June 16^th.. The day started with a marathon 4-hour rehearsal. We then donned our new bright yellow jumpsuits designed by GGOT costumer Liz Claiborne and headed out. We quickly learned how difficult it is to hail a cab in New York City dressed as a Guerrilla Girl On Tour! Thank goodness for our rock star tech grrl Laura Keene. She saved the day and whisked us off to Lincoln Center. Upon arrival we were greeted by the amazing staff and coordinators of the Atrium - and instantly felt at home.

The show was a huge success and a fun romp through historical and current feminist and LGBTQI events and issues. At the end we were asked why we felt LGBTQI issues were relevant to our stated mission of focusing on discrimination and racism. Why do 'queer issues' become so important to feminists? Because the people of a culture cannot be free if one group is being discriminated against. The concerns of every minority group are the concerns of feminists. We then posed with audience members for photos - everyone from young feminists, to baby dykes, to a mom and her [5-year-old] daughter. The mom with the young girl told me that she was a single mom and that she went through college - as a women's studies major - with her child. She pointed to her daughter and said 'she's been to tons of feminist events already' - her face was full of pride and her smile absolutely lit the room. 

Last to leave were a group of senior citizens who came together in a van from their senior center. With walkers and canes they lined up, smiling and thanking us all for the show. We often look out on multi-generational audiences - but this time a truly diverse, and completely full group met our masked gaze. Many thanks to all! 


Until next time – Eva Le Gallienne

Dearest Blog,

A place you would take refuge in only if you were desperate to escape one more summer thunderstorm your mother didn't warn you about. That is how I remembered the public atrium at Lincoln Center. Not any more. The David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center is gorgeous and green. The die-hard regulars enjoy sandwiches and Wi-Fi and Target Free Thursdays.

We members of Guerrilla Girls On Tour! didn't know what to expect. The audience is used to jazz music. They want their jazz music. They show up for their jazz music. Who are we? A bunch of feminist in masks and bright yellow jump suits carrying around a supply of ripe bananas and not so ripe statistics. Are we swanky? NO. Are we smooth? NO. Are we a little be-bop? Nah. But we did rock the house. Can I say that? Why not.

Thank you audience. Thank you playwright in the front row whose jaw hit the floor at the unbelievable statistics of women playwrights on Broadway from 1908 to the present. Thank you lovely woman in the front row who was holding too much in her hands to snap so tapped her feet instead. Thank you lovely man audience right who stepped in as the “question from the audience” guy when the first audience member backed out. Thank you first audience member for pulling out your glasses and giving the “question from the audience” your best shot. Thank you two lovely ladies from the all girls high school for loving the show and having a chat afterwards. Thank you younger sister from the Florida University who started the feminist blog on her college campus. Thank you older sister for introducing her. Thank you Julia Miles for producing plays by women and announcing those from your seat in the audience during “announcements from the audience”. Thank you everyone for supporting the Marriage Equality Bill. Thank you toddler for joining in the chant during the sound check. You are precious and adorable.

It was a happy, happy night.

xoEdith Evans

Dear GGOT Diary,

Wow! What an amazing show! We just performed at The Atrium at Lincoln Center. Lincoln Center! Can you believe it? It was all in honor of Gay Pride Month. And now, with the new ruling honoring gay marriage in New York, how apropos! We're so current :)

Right before we began making our entrance, I could feel that my wig was a little tighter than normal. And, as we grew nearer to the stage, I could feel it ejecting itself off of my head! It was like it was alive, and wanted no part of me! I just prayed that it would stay on, and not come flying off during our dance sequences! I tried to make jokes, but it was a serious deal. I never have wig problems! Eventually, I was able to move around enough pins to insure that I wouldn't loose it.

Finally, I could fully focus on the show - our energy was so high that the audience quickly got swept away in our feminist furor!

For me, there were two highlights of the night. The first came when I went into the audience to find a guy feminist. I looked out, and spotted a man who looked perfect. So, I go to him and ask him to participate in the show by reading a question. At first he was really excited. He even asked if he should come on stage! But then when it was time to read he started fumbling for his glasses, and it became pretty evident that he couldn’t do it….the words just weren't coming out right, then he looked at me and goes 'What does this mean?' I, myself, became confused! Do I walk away from this guy, and find someone else? Or should I force him, in true Julia Child style, to read the damn card? I decided to ask him what he wanted to do, and as I figured, he did not want the job. So now, on to find someone else! I asked the guy next to him. Nope. He wasn't into it. I called out into the general audience. No takers. I began feeling a little disheartened. Like I had blown the joke, and now, no one would be into it. But then, the girls started motioning toward a man who would do it! And he was great. Thank Goddess!

The second highlight was when we debuted our new song "Lesbian, Vagina, Feminist!". The audience sang, and clapped along with us. We totally rocked out with our vaginas out, and it was so much fun.

Thank you Lincoln Center – Next stop Avery Fisher Hall!

Xxxx

~Josephine Baker

GIRL FACTS! from Aphra Behn

Facts about my experience as a member of the group GUERRILLA GIRLS!

I joined the Guerrilla Girls in 1997.

Between 1985 and 2000, close to 100 women, working collectively and anonymously, produced posters, billboards, public actions, books and other projects to make feminism funny and fashionable.

In 2001 Guerrilla Girls experienced what I affectionately call the "Banana Split" - when three separte and independent groups formed.

These groups were new groups as the old group stopped meeting. Old Girls retired to the jungle. Some joined the new groups.

The new groups are:

1) Guerrilla Girls On Tour! www.ggontour.com www.twitter.com/GuerrillaGsOT www.facebook.com/GuerrillaGirlsOt www.tumbler.com/GuerrillaGirlsOT

2) Guerrilla Girls BroadBand www.ggbb.org

3) Guerrilla Girls, INC.

Any questions? Fe-mail info@ggontour.com

Expect a Pop(e) Quiz during summer school.

Institute for Women and Art - FEMINIST FETE!

June 5th was a fabulous Sunday. We celebrated the opening of our exhibit "Feminist Masked Avengers" at Rutgers Institute for Women and Art!

GGOT, Josephine Baker

Aphra Behn with Guerrilla Girls BroadBand member, Gerda Taro

The exhibit lasts until September 7th. For more info visit: http://iwa.rutgers.edu/home/

Stand up for Women in Theatre June 16th

Guerrilla Girls On Tour! will include a special section of our show this Thursday Evening June 16th at Lincoln Center where we ask for announcements from the audience re plays by women in the tri-state area. If any of you are attending and have upcoming productions, please stand up and announce them loud and proud! Also feel free to put flyers on our information table. The details again:

David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center’s Target Free Thursdays presents: Guerrilla Girls On Tour!: Feminists Are Funny

Special Gay Pride performance

Thursday, June 16^th at 8:30PM

The Atrium is located on Broadway between 62nd and 63rd Streets in New York City. Enter on Broadway. Please plan on arriving at least one hour before curtain time to get a seat.

For More information visit

http://new.lincolncenter.org/live/index.php/atrium-guerrilla-girls-june-16-2011

Annual Tony Award Poster - Go Bananas!

Feminist Masked Avengers EXHIBIT Opens June 1

I became a Guerrilla Girl in 1997 and lead the Girls into their primary activity for the next three years - addressing discrimination in the theatre world. In 2001 the original Guerrilla Girls group split into three groups: Guerrilla Girls On Tour! is one of those groups.

This split was preceded by lots of going back and forth between lawyers representing members who were no longer anonymous – FYI, you can’t sign a legal document as a dead woman artist. I agreed, with three other former Guerrilla Girls, to form Guerrilla Girls On Tour! a touring theatre company that would continue fighting discrimination with humor and fake fur. Another new group, Guerrilla Girls BroadBand did the same. But problems surfaced when the new herstory of just how our new groups came about was not embraced and celebrated by all. I realize that change is not always welcomed and that sometimes the truth is a bitter pill. But here’s the upside – sexism still runs rampant around the globe and Guerrilla Girls On Tour! is actively fighting it with humor and scary statistics.

(Two of our most popular posters)

In 2001 Guerrilla Girls On Tour! took a forward swan dive into the future and began our new mission – to make great comedies about feminist ideas and tour them around the world. In one week we will be exhibiting the video and visual works that cropped up out of our touring theatre along with the work of the other new Guerrilla Girl groups as well as some of the work of the original collective at Rutgers. The show runs June 1- July 18. This will be a chance for all to see where we’ve been, how far we’ve come and the complex journey we’ve been on.

(Me in front of part of our exhibit - a huge collage

from workshops we've led around the globe listing

the issues that participants want to address)

What we now refer to as the “banana split” will be on view for the first time since 2001. Guerrilla Girls On Tour! will make sure it has extra whipped cream and a cherry on top! See you there! – Aphra Behn

(Maya Deren in front of one of our video displays)

Feminist Masked Avengers: Guerrilla Girls, GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand and Guerrilla Girls On Tour!

http://iwl.rutgers.edu/calendar_2011.html

Dramatists Guild Says ‘No’ to Women

ALL WHITE MALE THEATRE REPORT: The Dramatists Guild is not allowing its members’ Women’s Initiative to become an official part of the Dramatists Guild. Or, as the Guild’s president, Stephen Schwartz, put it in a March 27 e-mail for the Conveners of the Women’s Initiative,

“While we have several small committees directly formed and overseen by members of the Council, there are no separate groups of members from the organization that have Council committee status. I hope you can appreciate that were we to make an exception in the case of the Women’s Initiative, we would have to do so for groups wishing to address other valid issues such as bias based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, etc. The Guild is a grouping of many different voices, and while we greatly appreciate the fine work you’re doing, we have to be sure to balance the needs and concerns of our entire membership.”

Read the entire article here: http://worksbywomen.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/dga-says-no-to-women/

THE TONY GETS IT WRONG

Number of women nominated for TONY's

0 plays by women

1/4 nomination for best book of a musical (SISTER ACT lists 4 writers)

0 best score

0 best revival of a play

Direction : Play: One and a half nominations

Direction Musical: 2 nominations out of 4!

Choreography: Also 2 out of 4!

0 Orchestrations

1 Scene design

2 costume design

1 lighting design

0 sound design

AND only 4 women nominated for Best Actress in a Musical (usually there are 5)

More broads on Broadway please.

Antoinette Perry (for whom the TONY is named) directing the 1940 Broadway production of Glamour Preferred by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements.

Grrl Action - Austin, Texas

L to R Edith, Kate Roark of UHD, Aphra, Josephine

First off, I have to give a shout out to Kate Roark, theater history professor at UHD. I loved meeting you. You are smart, funny, intelligent, athletic (rides her bike to work everyday), and great with your students (even sleep deprived). There's always room on a GGOT road trip for you!

Now, (make your reading in your head voice light and mystical):

The Apocalypse of Feminism (dun dun dunnnnnn):

"You're making a spectacle of Feminism" - angry female,

"I'm playing devil's advocate, I'm from a Christian family (Happy Easter), and with all these liberals coming out, have you seen a trend in discrimination against conservative white men?" - calm female

"I'm a size 0 and I have a rear end!!!!!!!!" - happy with her body female

"If you are a feminist and you define it by equality, doesn't that mean you are looking to discriminate against men?" - sincere male

Just bill yourselves as comedy!!!!! - laughing male

The ERA never passed??????? - female

(return to your natural reading in your head voice, unless you have an Edith voice you use when you read my diary entries, you can use that voice now!)

At least once during every Q & A "The Apocalypse of Feminism" would ring through my head and root me to the spot, and start a little sweat dripping down my back if it wasn't all ready there from doing the traditional feminist dance (see the show or stay ignorant). These statements (Apocalypse) mean two things to me. Feminism has accomplished so much we don't need it anymore or we've done what we could and this is it.

Read them again, I'll go pee. Too much information? I apologize. Now set them aside a moment, I have to finish the tour and there'll be a big Texas round up at the end.

It was a weary Edith (and Aphra and Josephine) that pulled into Austin, Texas for the last stop on the tour. And what a beautiful sight for sore eyes. Not the four horseman re-imagined as a female Tony winning playwright of 2011, a female Tony winning director of 2011, a female Oscar winning director of 2011, and a female Oscar winning screenwriter of 2011; not the four horseman re-imagined as a female President and female First lady, a female Vice-President and a female Vice-President's wife - on horses cause it's Texas; not the four horsemen re-imagined as a female professional, a female primary caregiver, a female librarian and a female cowgirl who all walk into a bar and respect each other - ouch -no no no.....It was the Kimber Modern Hotel who donated our rooms for the night. Yowsa. They were swell. And complimentary happy hour drinks and snacks!

After a short break we went off to a poster making workshop with Grrl Action at the Rude Mechs. (Rude Mechanicals of Austin Texas Theater Company). We did get lost, but that's not because Edith the navigator has no tolerance to alcohol and had half a beer, or because Edith sober or tipsy has no sense of direction, but because google maps was wrong. HA! So we were a little late. I apologize.

Grrl Action is a program run by the Rude Mechs and a more incredible group of young women I have never met. WHY?

They were articulate.

They were willing to participate.

They were generous with their ideas and their creativity with each other and with us.

Their concerns: deforestation, feeling wanted, Israel, teenage dating, Lesbian and Gayism, violence against women, body image, not as strong as boys, and about 30 more topics. In about 4 minutes.

They thought over everyone's ideas before voting.

They asked whose idea a topic was if they didn't understand it and asked if she could explain.

They explained their ideas and took all questions seriously.

They stopped for snacks.

They had focus.

They rescued grasshoppers from inside and brought them outside.

They stood up and shared their work process.

They listened to each other.

They gave positive feedback to each other without any hesitation.

They were supportive of their community.

They were able to express their strengths and insecurities as individuals and as women.

We the aging women of America are in good hands. I did not want to leave.

The next day we had lunch with Women and Their Work. ( A visual and performing arts organization that serves as a catalyst for contemporary art created by women living and working in Texas for over 30 years). We got into a fabulous discussion about feminism. The word. Not the concept, principles, or movement. The actual word itself. One of the women at the table (there were 6 of us) won't use it. So here we are. The Apocalypse of Feminism. (Now I've got Ted Baxter's voice - Mary Tyler Moore Show - in my head and he's trying to sound really ominous. Rhoda would be more appropriate). Has it arrived? or do we just need a new word? Do we need to fix the old word? Are we done? Have we done all we are ever going to do? We have come a long way. One of the women at the table went to law school back in the day and remembered being told she was taking away the place of a man. That wouldn't happen today. Not out loud anyway.

Are we equals now? Are the discrepancies experienced today not the result of discrimination but the natural differences between men and women. Is that what we are struggling through now? Will we ever be able to define equal when men and women are so different? This is not new. But it's what I'm thinking right now.

xoEdith Evans, feminist.

April 8, 2011

Deep in the heart of Texas!

Howdy, GGOT Diary!

We just spent an amazing week in Texas! We kicked this tour off in Houston, where the most fabulous tour guide/professor, Susan, drove us everywhere we needed to go, including an emergency Starbucks run and out to a delicious Vietnamese lunch!

At noon, on our first day Aphra, Edith and I we were scheduled to speak at KUHF, a Houston public radio station, about the life of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour! and the ongoing struggles of women in theater. I had never been in a sound booth before so I was excited. As we sat in the green room we joked about what we were going to say and the section from “Feminists Are Funny” that we were to perform. I felt so ready and empowered but then, of course, as soon as we went on air, I got so nervous! St. John, our host, turned to me and asked me the question, "Has the need for feminism changed over the years?" Of course I knew the answer! Had I been in my right mind, I would have said, "Yes, it has. Women have newer things to contend with. The media is constantly in our face, telling us how we should look and smell; how much we should weigh. We don't protest with picket signs. Instead we create performance pieces, or raise funds for women who have been victimized. Today, we have to speak out about women's health care rights, and equal opportunities in the work place..." Had I been in my right mind, I would have gone on and on and everyone would have applauded the brilliance of my answer. Instead, I was stuttering like Porky Pig up in there! I stumbled, and floundered, and finally squeaked out some weird answer, that I'm sure made no sense at all... uggghh... That moment will forever haunt me!

Later that night we performed “Feminists Are Funny” at the University of Houston Downtown, where we were greeted by a warm, welcoming faculty and student body. Frank, the school’s Technical Director, led our tech and he was amazing! Sort of a jack of all trades Frank not only kept our tech running smoothly he was also there if we needed anything.

We also received a huge Texas welcome from Kate Roark, the professor of theatre who organized our tour to Texas. She was helpful and open and she's one of the only people, ever, to identify our slide of funny feminist Charlotte Cushman on sight! Lastly, we met Dr. Lyttle, the head of UHD's theater department. He was so jovial and happy to meet us. It really made us feel welcome (Although, I think I may have upset him a little when I revealed the UHD theater stats :{ It wasn't the worst theater department we've ever been to, but there was definitely room for improvement when it came to opportunities for women. I'm just sayin'.) We gave a great performance, and the audience was really into it. I just love when the audience get's all of our puns, one-liners, prat falls and feminist humor.

The following day, we hosted a poster-making workshop for the combined interdisciplinary arts department. Initially, turnout was good. They were into the warm-ups and our theater games and everyone had great poster ideas. But when it came time to actually create the posters, everyone except for four women, left! Apparently each class unit is an hour long and everyone had an exam to run off to. Oh well, we made some great posters with the few remaining students and got to chat more with Kate about theatre.

Next stop, Austin!

The following day, we jumped in the car, and drove over to Austin. Now, I love Austin. It's a little funky and a little hippy dippy. It's forward thinking but still has that southern feeling. We arrived at this smallish, colorful building and I would have never, in a million years, known that that was our hotel. We entered the Kimber Modern, and were immediately impressed with its architecture, colorfulness and cleanliness. It was also happy hour, so we went straight for the snacks! It was a beautiful day and the three of us sat outside in the lovely courtyard and read newspapers, surfed the Internet, and chatted until it was time to go on to our next workshop.

The workshop that night was sponsored by the awesome theatre company, Rude Mechanicals and their group Grrl Action -- one of the most incredible groups of young women and mentors I have ever seen. It was one of the most exciting experiences of my guerrilla life. We worked on making posters with teenage girls between the ages of 13-16. They were all so bright, and funny, and positive. They had so many ideas for important poster-worthy matters that we could barely fit them on the board! In the end they narrowed their ideas down to Plus-Size Models, Homosexuality, Violence Against Women, and Feeling Wanted. As we walked around the room listening to each group brainstorm we heard all sorts of talk about violence that's happened to them and feelings of rejection. It made me think back to when I was their age and how confused and lonely and all over the place I felt. They produced some brilliant, telling posters. During critiques, they were all super supportive of one another. No one said anything negative. Every sentence began with “I like the way....” They were so funny, and wanted to know if we were wearing wigs, and what our hair really looked like. I loved every second of it!

After the workshop Edith, Aphra and I chowed down on some awesome Austin food and the next day our spring 2011 tour officially ended. Diary, it was a great season. Until next time...

Monkey love,

Josephine Baker

April 7, 2011