Aphra Behn had her share of box-office hits in the 1670s. A comedy by Anna Cora Mowatt was a hit on Broadway during the 1845 season. And our own community boasts such purveyors of dramatic literature as Claudia Allen, Anne McGravie and Kristine Thatcher. But even in a town boasting more than 800 productions in a year, the phenomenon of plays written by guuurls is still considered enough of a novelty to inspire press coverage assignments based in gender...i.e. "Let's do a story on plays by WOMEN playwrights."
The three plays in question would seem to have little in common besides their authors' chromosome count: Two of the plays are peopled exclusively with female characters. Two feature lesbian relationships. In one play, offstage men exercise a strong influence on the action, and in another, the men are physically conspicuous but of marginal importance to the psychological dynamic. Marriages and divorces play a significant part in two of the plays, and only one includes pregnancy, birth and abortion among its complications. Deceased loved ones are a powerful presence in all three, but the circumstances of their departure and of their continuing manifestation vary widely. One play even mocks stereotypical representations of the "women's fiction" genre ( a book critic, reading a particularly vapid bodice-ripper, complains to her boss, "I know I'm the only woman on staff, but that doesn't mean I review ONLY women writers!" )
So is it ghettoization to classify female artists and their art under a single label, whether jocular..."chick flicks," "clit lit"...or reverent, as with the exclusion inherent in the very concept of, say, "women's play festivals"? Does it demean those artists to be discussed collectively?
Robin Rice Lichtig, author of Embracing The Undertoad, opening Sept. 23 under the auspices of Bailiwick Repertory's Lesbian Theater Initiative, thinks so. "Group us together because our plays are GOOD. It's ridiculous to group us together as if 'wow! three women playwrights being produced' is something special."
Ann Noble, the author of Ariadne's Thread, premiering at Victory Gardens, also on Sept. 23, agrees. "There was a time when the majority of the theatre being done was decidedly masculine, and there was a need to point out the 'underdogs,' so to speak. But I don't think that's the case any more. There are so many theaters now that support good writers...period!"
But Grace Carson Becker, author of Book Of Mercy, opening at Chicago Dramatists on Oct. 4, says she doesn't mind: " [ Being grouped together on the basis of gender ] doesn't bother me at all. Sometimes I like the cloister. It gives me a different kind of room, to feel and think in."
The directors, all likewise female, have their opinions as well. Ann Filmer, Book Of Mercy's director, argues, "You wouldn't call Brett Neveu a 'man playwright.' That doesn't define him, so why should it define her?" But Amanda Amadei, director of Embracing The Undertoad, notes, "An interesting thing about grouping together three plays written by women in one comprehensive article is that you're going to get such a WIDE scope of work that the comparison will most likely challenge the whole idea."
On the other hand, could there be something to the notion of a "women's view"...an outlook having nothing to do with subject matter, but reflective of a distinctly female cosmological sensibility? Becker thinks there is. "Women think like a rope, braiding strands in one continuous loop. Men, I've found, tend to think like a chain, in separate links that hook up to some end. [ Book Of Mercy ] started as a play about the end of a marriage. Then it became a play about addiction. I wanted to write about artistic madness from a non-judgmental viewpoint, but also to avoid the 'romantic' nihilistic view. So now, [ the play ] is about Will and Fate, waltzing together in what is the human condition."
Noble is more skeptical. "There is definitely a female energy to [ Ariadne's Thread ] , but what's important is the quality of the writing. Yes, women are different than men, but each person is different from every other person. All my plays have women as central characters, but I don't feel that they are just for women. [ This play ] is about seven women struggling to find meaning in their lives. It's about finding your own way, about life dealing you a challenge that forces you to look outside yourself, to put on someone else's shoes for a while. And when you start to see the big picture, THEN you can find your own place in the world. All these women's lives fall apart and they have to rebuild them, and at the end of the play we're not really sure HOW they're going to do that, but we know that they now have the capability to do it."
A program entitled "Lesbian Theater Initiative" appears to propose a singular "homosexual female" viewpoint as well. Lichtig scorns this separatist sentiment, however. "One of the first rules of playwrighting is to 'be specific'. The fact that my characters happen to be lesbians gives their actions a specificity. At one point in the writing, one of the characters [ in Embracing The Undertoad ] was a MAN...but something wasn't quite right. So I tried making her a woman and voila! Everything clicked into place! It was as if she'd been pounding on the closet door, demanding to be let out and into this play."
"Is it comforting to see portrayals of characters and relationships to which you can relate? Of course it is!" observes Amadei. "Is a lesbian production so much different than any other production? Not really. And that's the point." Adds Lichtig, "We're all on the same wavelength. It's called the HUMAN wavelength." Whatever you call it, there would appear to be plenty of opportunity to explore it in the plays of these three talented authors during Chicago's 2002 fall theater season.
