girl power

This was a weekend of culture for me. Saw 3 plays and a movie in 4 days... gave me lots to think about.

The movie was Crazy Heart, with Jeff Bridges. He did a great job as a down and out alcoholic musician, who used to be someone famous. The movie hit home a few times. There was one scene where Bridge's character Bad Blake get drunk in his filthy home and falls onto the bed to pass out, narrowly missing the night stand. A little over a year ago, my dad fell and cracked his head, passing out on his bed never to wake up again. So that was kinda hard to watch. The other aspect of the movie that struck me was Bad Blake wanting to do the right thing, but not being able to. The alcohol, the years spent disappointing himself and others, the embarrassment all get in the way. Trust me in that the movie wasn't as depressing as I make it sound - it just got me thinking about some serious types of shit.

Saturday night's play was Antigone, or I really wish you hadn't done that written by Anne Thibault. Sophocles' Greek tragedy is about a girl doomed by her family's curse and caught between the man's law and the laws of the gods. Anne took that basic story line and set in a future determined by the failure of the Cuban missile crisis. I must say I was skeptical, and even after the first half of the play I was making some leaps but by the end, I was truly entrapped and intrigued. The curse on the house of Oedipus was paralled by the "curse" of the Kennedys, with Rosemary Kennedy acting as the oracle (or Tiresisas the blind prophet in Sophocles' play). Add the all female cast into the mix, and the juxtaposition of tween girls playing Creon's "Little Miss" chorus and it provided a lot of food for thought.

When I've taught, I've used lots of retellings of classic stories in order to bring relevance to the themes and connect the classic ideas to modern life. Archibald Macleish's play J.B. provides interesting twists to the biblical tale of Job, and takes the audience into the story from various layered perspectives. Eugene O'Neill re-tells the Orestia, Agammemon's tragic return home to be murdered by his wife's lover, in a post-Civil War setting in the trilogy Mourning Becomes Elektra. In each of these, symbols and characters are created to bridge the distance between reader and teller, between time and place. These plays make me think about power and politics, about the relationships between the sexes and within families.

These themes led me right into the last production of the weekend: The Vagina Monologues. Talk about the relationships between the sexes and within families... The production was well done; I have so much admiration for actresses who can get up in front of an audience and let it all out. Like Antigone the night before, it's an emotional mix of heavy subject matter and laugh out loud funny. Like Antigone, I was left thinking about the strength of women, the wisdom of women, and the ways in which women are subjugated by the world of men - not always with deliberate intent by the men involved - but none the less, subjugated.

When I left The Vagina Monologues, I got to my car and just sat quietly for a little while. I didn't really feel like talking to anyone. Even now, I feel kind of quiet. Luckily for me the boy and his dad are off at a birthday party, so I can sit here on the porch swing, write my blog, sip my drink, listen to the wind and think about "stuff."

What kinds of stuff?? Everything from watching my former student talk about her coochie snorcher, to the ways society forces girls to act adult and sexual at an early age, to the ways some sacrifice their families for jobs or power, to my own experiences with all these issues - as a mom, wife, teacher and woman. These are the kind of thoughts that I keep deep inside and are only for me. These are the kinds of labels that make me laugh and break away from the hold of others. These are the kind of recognitions that give me peace, and give me power.