Gloria: a Life
Gloria: a Life
Catching my Mini-Feminists up on some history
The little guys loved this play.
We watched the video of the McCarter/American Repertory Theater production that is available to stream on PBS. The play by Emily Mann was conceived as a one-woman show starring the 86 year old feminist icon, Steinem herself. She quickly demurred playing the part, and when Diane Paulus was brought on to direct, the cast expanded to include an ensemble. So, the production went from 0 to 7 actors. Watching it for a second time with my kids, I recast it in my head - and expanded the cast to a whopping 50 actors - numbers you only see in a high school show. And it was great!
This show should make the rounds of the local high schools, so I can watch my kids watching it all over again. And I can be the creepy person looking left to see if other kids laugh and cry at the same stuff we do.
The 7 year old is more of a rapt attention kind of guy; eyes straight forward and unmoving, barely blinking. You have to watch him intently to pick up the subtle smiles or the widening eyes. The 9 year old, however, is a feedback machine. I counted 5 big holler laughs:
Big laugh and grin when Gloria Steinem explains how to react when getting called a bitch, “I say, ‘Thank you!’.” He nodded like he was putting that one into his comeback collection.
“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” That took him ten seconds, but then he laughed and gave a single clap.
When a woman recounted that she nails her husband’s underwear to the floor when he leaves it there, he exclaimed: “Ha! That’s pretty hilarious. He can’t get his underwear when he needs it.”
He gave another “ha!” when she mentioned that 14 men and a nun were invited to a hearing on abortion.
He knows that when you add a nun to a situation you are likely telling a joke. (No nun jokes from me, Sister Jude. I would never.) However, he understood the absurdity of a nun in that context, because we had to clarify what abortions are in the previous scene. Gloria recounts her experience at an abortion Speak Out, and several actors re-enact the real testimony of women who underwent illegal abortions. He turned to me, glassy eyed, after they were done speaking and asked what an abortion is. I know we have talked about ending pregnancies before, but clearly it did not come in a format that allowed him to remember it clearly. So, his first memorable encounter with abortion rights came through Gloria Steinem. Oh, good.
The local Boston arts reporter asked Diane Paulus, the director, how you do a show about a living person who is “tending toward monument”. Her response was, “The whole purpose of the play, in a way, was to demystify Gloria Steinem and let the audience into her journey.” Stories and photos from childhood are classic parts of the humanizing toolkit, and as an adult, I can say that it does work for me. 3 year old Gloria Steinem, with toddler quantities of cheek chub, peeking out of a trailer with her mom, turned me into an active audience member. How did that normal kid become this national treasure? After that, every new bit of information became a clue worth retaining.
That is a great benefit of giving childhood context to the adults we are being asked to care about for the next couple of hours. But for these boys, she was a fresh new character. They didn’t need to pull her down off a pedestal, she was just another adult to them. That photo of young Gloria and her mom had a hugely powerful effect on my young seatmates - it put them into her shoes.
Seeing kids onstage is nothing less than thrilling for young audience members. Just take a look at a young person the next time a kid comes tap dancing out of the wings, either live or streaming. You will see eyes widen and immediate grins. Kids do empathy super well. My kids became Gloria Steinem as soon as that picture showed up:
I grew up in working class Toledo, and my biggest dream was to become a Rockette. [ Laughter ] Yep. See, I was a tap dancer as a kid. I think back then, entertainment was to girls what sports were to boys -- a way to get out and up. I dreamed of dancing my way out of Toledo. I still tap dance in elevators with Muzak... [ Chuckles ] ...when I'm alone.
When the actor said those lines above, we got to see a little girl tap dancing in her kitchen and a grown woman shuffle stepping in an elevator - in our imaginations. And that is good enough for me. I smiled.
If I wanted a grin, from me and my mini-man companions, we would have seen that grown woman soft shoe-ing it in unison with a real kid tap dancing. Quick little young Gloria cameo.
For this professional production, adding performers would undoubtedly slow the action down. It is very hard to keep things moving if people have to come on and off stage - aside from the fact that a new person is always a little distracting. This production could have gotten away with even fewer actors, and more would not have improved it.
I love the very theater-y convention of having an ensemble of actors play a variety of roles. A decade ago I costumed one of the actors in this production, Fedna Jacquet, in a show in which she was in the ensemble. I recall puzzling over how to turn her from a peasant into the devil in ten seconds. In this show, she gets to play Dorothy Pittman Hughes, Coretta Scott King, an anonymous woman recounting the abortion she had at 17, a protester, a Playboy bunny, and a Ms. magazine editor.
Part of the fun of watching professional actors live is watching them transform. It is not really the differences in the two jackets above that make Fedna both a credible Coretta Scott King and then an editor at Ms. magazine. It is the million subtle differences in her posture and voice that come from embodying these two distinct people.
I have never worked with Liz Wisan, another member of the ensemble, but have known her for 15 years and seen her in a dozen plays. She is a fabulous and funny chameleon. A woman playing a guy that is a jerk is inherently funny. Liz gets to do it several times in this show:
And then she has just a few lines to get us to sympathize and celebrate with her as a mother asserting that she does not want to have more children.
The added hats or vests serve as signals that let us know that a new character is coming. In my experience, audiences need several cues to help them with the idea that one person is going to play several parts. That vest above does make me think of my mom in the early ‘80’s. Costumes make an impression, a powerful one, before anyone opens their mouths.
But, when I imagine the speech below without the vest, or play this scene with my eyes closed, I still get the information and sympathy these lines were written for. I assign them to the character, not Liz:
I have been called unnatural because I don't want any more children. I am the mother of two beautiful daughters whom I have been accused of not loving because I think there is more to life than motherhood alone. Your magazine has given me the strength to go on believing that women were not put on this earth to be the handmaidens of men."
The other performers are as impressive as Liz. All of them perform feats of transformation that this level of professional actor is capable of. On Actor’s Studio, when asked what part she would like to play, Whoopi Goldberg said, “A man. I’m an actor.” A woman plays the male doctor that signed off on Gloria Steinem’s abortion. It isn’t funny, and it does work. Humans are all 99.9% the same. Theater’s policy of casting “against type” helps us understand that.
You don’t need professional actors to get this same effect. The firecracker magic of high school shows is banking on that thrill of watching someone transform - because we know the performers. I did enjoy this show a little more because I got to watch performers I know personally don different hats (and wigs).
Let’s everyone have the privilege of watching their community put some Flo Kennedy, Wilma Mankiller, Coretta Scott King, Gloria Steinem wigs. Maybe hold hands and sing about hope and change.
My 9 year old did leap over his brother, plop down between us and grab our hands to sing along to We Shall Overcome.
Over the next couple of days I will have fun thinking through how to stage Gloria: A Life in non-professional settings. If you want to watch the above production, it is available to stream at PBS.org. You have to be a member of a local public television or radio station in the US to get access. I am a sucker for a 20 year old with a lanyard and a clip board, so I signed up to donate when they knocked a couple of years ago. $10/month gets me access to 20 plays like the one above, and a lot of Nature. I can also guiltlessly turn the radio off when it is fundraising drive time. So, for me it is worth it.
On the production page you can copy and paste the script from the transcript box without being a subscriber. The script is available through Dramatists Play Service for $13, $25 for the e-play.
Tomorrow: Tap Dancing Gloria Steinem.