In This Issue:
Featured Feminists: Rhiannon Lewis, Ryan Manikowski, and Britney Gomez-Landeros
10 Historical Figures You Should Support Instead of Christopher Columbus by the FTM Leadership Team
Intimacy Directors and Directing Intimacy by Ray
Eileen's Fundraiser
Featured Feminists:
Rhiannon Lewis, Ryan Manikowski, and Britney Gomez-Landeros
This week, three students who are new to the CSULB Theatre Arts Department sat down over Zoom with Feminist Theatre Makers Member-at-Large Mattie Limas to check in and talk frankly about their experiences so far of this new and, at times, difficult mode of learning.
All three students noted that one of the biggest challenges was having an organized, productive space. Ryan mentioned that it’s harder now that there is no physical separation between school and home. Other issues that came up for Britney and Rhiannon, especially in acting classes or rehearsals, were related to their physical spaces themselves, like having to rearrange a room to find a blank wall space, or plan how to “enter” the camera view in a small room. Britney noted that planning her responsibilities down to the hour really helped make everything feel possible, even when it feels overwhelming.
Another huge change these students had to adapt to was the loss of the social aspect of college. Obviously, this online college experience is not exactly what we learn to expect from the movies and media about college we consume growing up. All three students noted the lack of hallway conversations or opportunities to feel the visceral energy of a room full of people, a necessary experience especially in a performance discipline. As Rhiannon put it: “When class is over, the Zoom just ends.”
However, students noted that Discord group chats and the student-organized department events have been an effective way to mitigate some of the loneliness and social isolation that many are experiencing, especially students starting their first semester of college in this format. Ryan also praised the department, specifically Theatre Threshold, for finding workarounds to being fully online and still producing a show or podcast at the end of each week.
He said he felt “amazed and empowered” by the perseverance.
Rhiannon mentioned that participating in this semester’s Zoom mainstage play, Sonnets for an Old Century, has helped her feel connected to her peers. She specifically remembered a time last week, when the cast and production team stayed on Zoom for a few minutes after rehearsal ended, just talking, joking, and experimenting with silly Zoom filters. “That was really fun,” she remarked.
For the most part, the new students assured Mattie that teachers in the theatre department have been extremely accommodating. Rhiannon described an experience where she was the only one home and her dog threw up while she was in class. She sent a message to voice and speech teacher Tyler Seiple explaining the situation.
His response was kind and encouraging; he told her not to worry, and that things are bound to come up when we are working from home in this new medium.
Britney had a similar experience. She said she was 10 minutes late to her first day of class because her Zoom would not work, and she was “freaking out.” Her instructor reassured her that everyone is figuring it out at the same time.
While this pandemic continues to take many frustrating and saddening tolls on day-to-day lives, we can all be encouraged by the determination that our newest peers exhibit in order to manage school, home life, and other responsibilities like work and rehearsal, under these confinements. We offer a huge thanks to these three students for sharing their time and their stories with Feminist Theatre Makers. If there is anything we can do to help your Zoom semester go a bit more smoothly, we are always committed to supporting and providing resources for students. Please reach out to us at feministtheatremakers@gmail.com or on our Instagram: @feministtheatremakers.
10 Historical Figures You Should Celebrate Instead of Columbus
1. Hattie McDaniel
Best known for being the first Black actor to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in her role of “Mammy” in ‘Gone with the Wind,’ Hattie McDaniel is an icon in cinema. However, many people are unaware that Hattie McDaniel had a well established career in entertainment before her breakout success with ‘Gone with the Wind,’ of which included a singing and comedy career on radio; in fact, her restricted opportunities as a performer were primarily in her film career alone. At the time, McDaniel would receive much criticism from the NAACP for her portrayals of stereotyped Black women, to which she famously responded ''I'd rather play a maid and make $700 a week than be a maid and make $7.'' Despite her prolific career, her success did not exist in a vacuum. At the Academy Awards Ceremony, she was not allowed to sit with her white counterparts and was relegated to a table at the back of the room. Despite the mistreatment she was made to endure, McDaniel is credited by many as a trailblazer for all future Black creatives to come. In the Ryan Murphy miniseries ‘Hollywood’ on Netflix, McDaniel’s alleged affair with actress Tallulah Bankhead is brought to light, expanding on possibility of McDaniel’s being a queer person as well. Dying on October 26, 1952 at the age of 59, McDaniels was not survived by any children and not by her four ex-husbands. McDaniels currently has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in film and radio, firmly cementing her as a Pop Culture Icon.
2. Cheng I Sao
Cheng I Sao made a name for herself in a male-dominated field as a powerful Chinese female pirate in the late 1700s and early 1800s. She began her pirating career after leaving her previous life as a prostitute to marry her husband, Cheng I, a pirate. Together, they led an empire of pirate gangs. At one point, they had more pirates and ships than the Spanish Armada. After her husband died in 1807, Cheng I Sao promptly secured power by getting support from her husband’s most powerful chieftains to squash any rebellion before it began. She developed a strict code of law for her fleet which also helped her maintain power. She made stealing from the villagers or the communal treasury a capital offense, as well as sexual crimes against female captives. When she retired from piracy, she negotiated a deal for herself, her second husband, and all her pirates to ensure that they would have social mobility and access to positions in the empire. She is represented in fiction as Mistress Ching, one of the Pirate Lords in Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End.
3. Chief Siʔaɫ
Chief Siʔaɫ was a renowned chief, warrior, orator, and diplomat, for whom the city of Seattle is named. He was a respected leader of the Salish tribes of the area now known as the Puget Sound. In a speech attributed to Chief Siʔaɫ by Dr. Henry A. Smith, he makes a mournful plea for respecting sacred lands: “Let [the White Man] be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.” Today, the Chief Seattle Club exists in his memory, which is a Native-led agency that serves urban Native people experiencing homelessness. To quote the Deputy Director, Derrick Belgarde: “Native people were never homeless before 1492.” They are one of the only homeless meal providers still operating during COVID-19 in downtown Seattle. You can donate to this organization here: https://chiefseattleclub.z2systems.com/np/clients/chiefseattleclub/donation.jsp?campaign=60
4. Gabriel García Márquez
Márquez’s impact on the world of literature could not be said without being understated. The Columbian writer would reach worldwide fame when his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude was published in 1967, not only generating much acclaim for him but also adding the Latin American genre of Magic Realism to popular literary canon. Well known for being politically left-leaning, he was close friends with Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev, even giving Castro some early drafts of his work. Márquez would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts." Marquez went on to influence many future Latin American writers and playwrights, of which include playwright Jose Rivera, who’s play “Sonnets for an Old Century” will be produced at CSULB this fall.
5. Ida B. Wells
Born to two slave parents in 1862, Wells would grow up in the wake of slavery abolition and the Reconstruction Era climate in the South. After her parents and older brother died of yellow fever when she was sixteen, she was left to take care of her five siblings, becoming a school teacher to make ends meet. After an experience in which she was denied a seat in a railroad car, Wells sued Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwest Railroad Company for mistreatment. She won the case at the local level courts, but lost it once the case made it to the Supreme Court. Racial segregation laws continued to emerge and affect the lives of Black people for decades to come. This experience spurred her to participate in activism and journalism, beginning to start writing under the pen name of Iola. After the lynching of three Black men, on of whom she was very close with, she set out on investigating the cases of lynching in the south, including interviewing the families of the lynched. This was very life threatening work, and yet she persisted, even after a small mob of white men had burned down her printing press in the South. She escaped to New York, where she would continue to push for the criminalization of lynching and for the rights of Black people, especially Black women, to the distaste of well known upper middle class white feminists of the time. Wells’ activism became well known internationally and she continued in her aims despite pushback from other activist groups who did not want to associate with her ‘radical’ progressive beliefs. Ida B. Wells leaves behind a legacy of an uncompromising sense of justice in the presence of violence and inequality, decades before anyone had even imagined it to be possible.
6. Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an African American scholar, activist, and author, best known in her advocacy for civil rights for the oppressed, as well as other social issues. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944, Davis was well-aware of the prevalence and significance of racial prejudice at a young age, having been raised in a neighborhood known to be commonly targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. Starting at an early age, Davis became associated with countless recognizable groups, including the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, while also taking it upon herself to form her own interracial study groups, which were broken up by police. Davis was also tied to the case of the Soledad Brothers and their attempt to flee prison, which led to Davis serving around 18 months in jail before being acquitted. Throughout her life, Davis has spread her ideas by embarking on world tours where she discusses issues of race, the criminal justice system, and women's rights. Angela Davis continues to lecture at UC Santa Cruz under the History of Consciousness Department, and those interested in learning more about her ideas and teachings can view them in her literary works, which includes Women, Race, and Class (1981), Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1989), Women, Culture, and Politics (1989), Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Abolition Democracy (2005), The Meaning of Freedom (2012),and Freedom is a Constant Struggle (2016).
7. Public Universal Friend
The Public Universal Friend was born in 1752 and named Jemima Wilkinson, and emerged as a genderless prophet in 1776 after falling seriously ill with fever. They grew up in the Rhode Island colony, during a great religious awakening. This colony was known for religious freedom and religious diversity, a refuge for those who didn’t fit in with the Puritan beliefs in Massachusetts or Connecticut colonies. Growing up as Jemima, the Friend explored other religions, and was expelled by their local Quaker meeting in October 1776 for attending other religious meetings. This expulsion was devastating. They fell gravely ill with what was probably typhus about a month later, became comatose, and seemed to be on death’s door. However, they emerged from this near-death state and proclaimed that Jemima Wilkinson had died, and that the body has been reanimated by a genderless spirit called the Public Universal Friend. The Friend refused to answer to Jemima Wilkinson any longer and did not use gendered pronouns. When people asked if the Friend was male or female, they replied “I am that I am.” They dressed in an androgynous style, consisting of clerical robes to symbolically take on a minister’s role, but wore woman’s shoes and kept long hair without covering their head indoors, which women at the time did. Their religious message, rejected by the Quakers but accepted by many followers, was that the Day of Judgment was nigh, and people needed to lead a righteous life in order to be saved. Their followers included several unmarried women called the Faithful Sisterhood, who held leading roles usually reserved for men. The Friend advocated for the abolition of slavery, the rights of women, and respect towards Indigenous people. This person was one of the first known non-binary Americans, revolting against strict Puritanical gender roles at the very same time the United States was also revolting against Britain.
8. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky, often hailed as the greatest name of the Romantic musical era, was one of the first composers whose music was internationally recognized during his lifetime. His works such as The Nutcracker or Swan Lake still live on in the Western canon of music as landmark pieces. His melodies have influenced popular culture for over a century from Bugs Bunny to Star Wars. His musical footprint has been colossal to say the least. The one aspect of his life that has been historically downplayed the most is his homosexuality. In recent years, historians have uncovered for the public a series of love letters Pyotr wrote to multiple different men. In 1873, after the suicide of his pupil, Edward Zuk, with whom he was rumored to be intimately involved, he wrote the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. Unlike his brother, Modest, who lived an openly gay lifestyle in 19th century Russia, Pyotr was secretive and protective of his career. In order to dodge rumors of his sexuality, he married a woman; a relationship which only lasted a few months. His journals tell of many short-lived engagements with men although none of these relationships lasted long within the constraints of a restrictive society. His eventual death in 1893 was said to be caused by cholera, but his body was not quarantined after his death and family members were allowed to touch and kiss the body, suggesting that he did not die of illness but most likely by his own hands. It is a shame to think that if he had not been so limited in love we may have more of his fantastical works. For now, we can settle for the 200+ pieces of incredible, influential, romantic music he left behind and appreciate the work of a great queer artist.
9. Billy Tipton
Born in 1914 in Oklahoma City, Billy Tipton was given the name Dorothy Lucille Tipton. He grew up in Missouri and Oklahoma, learning piano and falling in love with the music. It wasn’t until 1933, when Billy was only 19 years old that he started to dress and present as male. This afforded Billy many opportunities that would not have been available to him had he stayed within the social constraints into which he was born. At this time, it was unheard of to find a person who cross-dressed without repercussions, but Billy was slick. Instead of being afraid of the attention he would get for his feminine voice, height, and facial features, he actively made jokes about them. By putting everyone’s suspicions at ease through humor, Billy was essentially able to live his life with all the privileges of a cisgendered male. He played jazz piano for a handful of popular big bands, touring around and making a name for himself, eventually becoming the bandleader of the Billy Tipton Trio. While he never married legally, he had 5 serious relationships with women in his adult life, the latter four of whom he never disclosed his sex to, claiming a car accident had rendered him disabled in that area. In 1961, he settled down with a nightclub dancer named Kitty Kelly with whom he adopted three sons. After his death in 1989 due to emphysema, his birth sex was revealed to the world as well as to his family for the first time. While Billy himself never came out as transgender, his life and legacy has left its mark on the community and his music still plays on.
10. Thomas(ine) Hall
Thomas(ine) Hall, born Thomasine Hall, was an intersex person born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, circa 1603. They were classified female at birth and raised as a girl, learning traditional women’s crafts like needlework. In the early 1620s, Hall adopted a man’s hairstyle and dressed in men’s clothing to join the military. After serving in England and France, they returned home to life as Thomasine. When Thomas heard of economic opportunities in the colonies, they resettled in Virginia. Initially, they presented as Thomasine and supported themself with needlework and bone lace. However, they switched to presenting as Thomas in order to be hired by tobacco planters, who preferred to hire men. They didn’t strictly wear men’s clothes in this new environment, which confused villagers. They were even rumored to have had sexual relations with a maid named “Great Besse” while presenting as Thomasine. Men could be prosecuted for sexual misconduct with a servant, and villagers complained about their changes of dress and sexual relations with both sexes. Several women even spied on Hall while they were sleeping to determine their genital anatomy. The villagers took the case to the Quarter Court of Jamestown, where the court ruled that Hall had a “dual nature” gender, or what we would now call intersex. Before this time, any person deemed intersex by a court was forced to choose to present as either male or female. As punishment for Hall’s ambiguity, they were forced to dress in both men’s and women’s items of clothing, as a form of ridicule and to make a public example of what happens to people who don’t conform to one gender identity. After the court case, nothing further is known about Hall’s life or how the dual gender clothing rule was enforced. Though they were shamed and ridiculed for their queerness and non-conformity, Thomas(ine) Hall represents someone who bravely tried to live on their own terms despite strict societal norms that would punish them for their variance.
Directing Intimacy and Intimacy Directors
by Rachel Post
Intimacy:
noun
Close familiarity or friendship; closeness
A private, cozy atmosphere
An intimate act, especially sexual intercourse (Euphemistic)
Intimacy Director:
noun
A staff member who ensures the well-being of actors who participate in sex scenes or other intimate scenes in theater, film and television production.
Intimacy direction is not a profession that has been popular for very long. This, however, is in no way indicative of its worthiness in the team lineup of a production. An intimacy director’s function is similar to that of a dance choreographer or fight choreographer. Like any other designer’s role in a production, their goal is to help attain the right image for the story being told.
Moments of intimacy, sexual or otherwise, will always require a great deal of care to construct in order to secure the safety of all those involved. Is it possible for a single director to be able to successfully direct intimate scenes without the use of a consultant? Absolutely. However, the ability to create a room in which there is a shared standard of consent and communication is a key skill that requires practice and care to build and oftentimes the use of a skilled professional can help expedite this process and ensure fewer missteps along the way. In truth, the tenants of navigating intimacy should be common practice and a core part of any artist’s toolbelt. Siobhan Richardson boils these tenants down to five. “The 5 Cs of Intimacy”, as Richardson coins them, are as follows:
Context
Communication
Consent
Choreography
Closure
By contextualizing the intimate content of the scene, you can navigate the semiotics of the message you are trying to express in this moment. What kind of touch will convey the necessary sentiment for these characters at this juncture in time? Does their upbringing, culture, physical ability influence what kind of touch this is? Essentially, context is the baseline from which to begin.
Communication naturally flows from here. For example, a specific kind of touch is asked for in the script; let’s say it’s a touch on the neck. Perhaps the actor receiving the touch has a very ticklish neck and needs the pressure to be firm rather than light so they do not react out of accordance with their character. This actor needs to be able to communicate this boundary effectively so the situation never arises where the improper response is accidentally elicited. This tool helps us to avoid moments that are not in service to the story.
In order to maintain consistent and effective communication, however, there has to be a standard of consent in the room. When someone feels as though their “no” will be respected, they are more likely to feel comfortable saying yes and therefore more likely to express their true boundaries instead of consenting to an intimate act out of obligation. Some directors do this from day one, assuring that every day there is a verbal check-in for each player to express where their physical boundaries are on that given day. By allowing there to be space for these boundaries to be expressed from the beginning, come time to stage that intimate scene, respect has already been established and consent can happen naturally from there.
This also plays into the necessity of choreography in intimate scenes. Much like a scene requiring fight choreography, the mechanics of an intimate scene need to be specific, repeatable, and safe. If an actor consents to be kissed in one scene, in context, and specifically choreographed with all communicated boundaries in mind, this does not mean they consent to be kissed in another scene or out of rehearsal, out of context and without warning or rehearsal. In upholding this choreography as if it were fight choreography, the level of trust between players is strengthened.
Finally, there must be clear boundaries for when an intimate act ends as well as a clear separation between the actions of the characters and the actions of the actor playing them. Much like consenting to an act in one scene does not grant permission for the act to be performed in another scene, the consent given in the context of the story does not translate to the actor’s personal consent outside of the rehearsal room. This idea of closure and separation is sorely needed in a profession where, historically, those lines have been so severely blurred.
An intimacy director assists in implementing all of these tools in a rehearsal room so that by the time of the performance there is a safe and effective standard already in place. They are not there to be anyone’s therapist. An actor must first personally deal with their own triggers and traumas before they enter the rehearsal room to work. An intimacy director’s role is simply to help create an environment in which no further trauma will be inflicted. No actor should have to put themself in a position that risks their personal health for the sake of a project. No one questions the necessity of physical safety; why shouldn’t mental and emotional safety be regarded the same?
References:
Eileen's Fundraiser
Hi everyone!! I'm currently fundraising money for the Walk to End Alzheimer's Foundation, which works towards fundraising money towards finding a cure for this severe disease. This cause means A LOT to me as it has been affecting my family for years now, so any contribution you are able to make would truly mean the world!
My personal goal for now is to raise $500 by Saturday, but I personally would love to raise even $1,000! Please donate whatever you can, and share as well; it is all greatly appreciated. More details are under my Instagram highlights, and you can either donate by Venmo-ing me @eileenht___, on my Facebook Fundraiser page, or on my personalized Walk to End Alzheimer's Fundraiser page dedicated to my grandpa (Yei Yei means grandpa in Mandarin ): http://act.alz.org/goto/ForYeiYei
Thanks y'all!
Commentaires