Three generations of women in the kitchen, baking pies, drinking coffee, and chatting.
Play a Day: Family of Origin
A woman cleaning house. Woman: “Wash the dishes after dinner.” “Clean as you go while cooking.” “Put your water glass in the sink when you’re finished with it.” “Don’t leave your things in the middle of the floor.” “Fill the ice cube tray when it’s empty.” “Don’t eat in your room.” “Take your hair out […]
Review: Hunger
Every woman must learn to love herself in the midst of a world telling her all the reasons not to. Hunger, written and performed by Ebony Stewart, is the story of one woman’s journey toward that love. Through a mixture of poetry, storytelling, and music, Stewart speaks about the pain of growing up with a […]
Anxiety, Irritability, and History
Mental health issues are weird sometimes. We can only identify what we have names for, and it took someone else pointing it out to me for me to even realize that I have anxiety, and that anxiety was what was a big part of what was underneath all those feelings and experiences I lumped under the […]
Play a Day: Show and Tell
A banner hangs from the ceiling reading “show and tell.” A line of people form a queue to the microphone stage left. Each has an item. They speak in silent pantomime and take their turns explaining their object and its significance. One woman’s hands are empty. She takes hey turn at the mic in silence, […]
Play a Day: Mother
A woman stands in front of the card shelf at a store. A large sign overhead says, “Mother’s Day” with the date. The woman stares at the sappy Hallmark sentiments silently. A voice from off-stage recites an endless litany of negativity, criticism, guilt-tripping, emotional blackmail, and and unsolicited advice.
OUTsider: Connections, Conversations, and Family
One of my favorite aspects of art and performance is putting related pieces into conversation with one another, enriching the conversation surrounding a given topic. I’m so very happy with the way OUTsider Festival’s programming is facilitating those sorts of conversations, and I only wish I had the opportunity to participate more fully this year. […]
Tick Tock
I don’t have a maternal instinct. I hardly know how to talk to kids, let alone raise one. Besides that, I have a lot of things I want to do with my life, and children don’t factor into that.
In a lot of ways, having kids is still the default setting for women. But it shouldn’t be. The response to a woman saying she doesn’t want children shouldn’t be a wink and the word “yet.”
It just really gets under my skin. Having some straight, married woman tell me that I’ll probably decide I want children sometime in the next ten years.
‘Tis the Season
So, I’ve been kind of bummed lately, and it took me a while to figure out why. Usually, I love Christmas. It’s been my favorite holiday for as long as I can remember. But this year I haven’t been feeling it. It could be because this is the first year I haven’t gone “home” for […]
Eat. Pray. WTF?
This is a militant feminist rant. If that’s not your thing, consider yourself warned. I was at my aunt’s house for Thanksgiving this year, and they had recently purchased the movie Eat. Pray. Love. I was excited to watch it because I had missed it in the theatres, due to moving to Texas in the […]