Free coffee! Free cookies! Free performance! No, the coffee and cookies are really not the point, but Saturday night Hall's Little Theater will play hostess to Fem Fest West, a collection of feminist monologues, performance art, poetry and visual art.
The festival was organized by College seniors Sara Daily and Julie Blumenthal and Jane Armitage, associate professor of Theater and Dance, in response to the question: why isn't there more feminist theater at Oberlin?
Their solution doesn't just ponder the question, it goes one better - it attempts to fix the problem that sprung the question. Forget dwelling on theory, it's time for a little practice.
The festival was organized with the intent of being, "a place for thoughts on feminism," Daily said. Planning for the festival started at the beginning of the semester, and since then, whenever someone asked Daily what she meant by feminist theater, her response has been, "Well, what do you mean by feminism? Who am I to say that someone's definition is wrong?" she said.
Fem Fest West is a take-off of sorts on Fem Fest, a feminist theater festival sponsored by Red Hen Productions, a Feminist Theater group in Cleveland. When Armitage asked if she could borrow the name Fem Fest, it was suggested she add the word `west,' - Oberlin being west of Cleveland.
Signs were put up a month ago soliciting acts, asking for any piece that the contributor considered feminist. And then, said Daily, "We harassed everyone we knew to get their help."
The goal is a low-key, interdisciplinary forum, and the roster of acts looks promising. The viewer will be met in the entrance by an installation by College senior Amy Brown, moving on to College senior Sarah Bolitzer's art.
The program itself will feature a collection of monologues by College sophomore Jessica Umphress, Why we have a Body, written by OC grad Claire Chasee. College sophomore Sarah Rooney will be performing a poem for T.S. Eliot's wife written by College sophomore Rumaan Alam. There will also be vocal pieces and performance art.
The evening will be bracketed with two monologues by members of Red Hen Productions, At the Root, by Linda Eisenstein with Zoe Keifer, and Cookin' with Typhoid Mary, by Carolyn Gage with Sara Jackson.
The organizers of Fem Fest West are hoping the festival will become an annual event - a first and continual step in generating feminist theater at Oberlin.
Fem Fest West will go up Saturday night at 8:00 p.m. in Hall's Little Theater. Admission is free and there will be coffee and cookies.
Copyright © 1997, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 22; April 25, 1997
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