Editor’s note: The following is adapted from Bess Wohl’s acceptance speech at the Feminist Majority Foundation, (publisher of Ms.) Global Women’s Rights Awards on Nov. 18 in Los Angeles. FMF honored the team behind the Broadway smash hit Liberation: playwright Wohl, director Whitney White and Lisa Cronin Wohl, OG Ms. writer from the 1970s and mom to—and inspiration for—Bess. (Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen of The Contrarian and Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward were also honorees.) Head here for more of Ms.’ coverage of the event, or here for our Instagram highlights.
Thank you so much. On behalf of myself, my mom who wishes she could be here, everyone involved in Liberation, Whitney White, our glorious director, and our cast too, who I think are probably just taking off their wigs right now in New York City, if my time zone calculations are correct. Thank you for this beautiful honor. Jen Weiss-Wolf, thank you. I have to say one of the greatest joys of this process of making this play has been getting to know you and the groundbreaking work that you do, so thank you it means a lot.
I also want to say thank you to Ms. of course and the Feminist Majority Foundation for this honor, for recognizing not just me, my mom, Whitney, the cast and the play, but also the importance of the arts as a way to stand up to autocracy. And theater, in particular.
Theater is after all about dialogue. Theater is made up of dialogue. Autocracy is a monologue.
Theater is about community: We watch a play together. Autocracy seeks to isolate us.
Theater is about curiosity: A good play asks a question. Autocracy is not interested in questions, only in control.
So, thank you, because in honoring this play, you honor the role of dialogue, community and questions in creating social change.
It’s a particular thrill to be standing here right now because I have to be honest, the earliest reactions to my play on the page we’re not encouraging. My play has to do with feminism *gasp* and in particular it flashes back to a women’s consciousness-raising group in the 1970s.
One earlier reader told me the play would be a hard sell because, “There’s lots of women, they talk a lot…” In an early marketing reading someone asked, “Why would a man want to come see this play?” The first question I was asked.
And then of course there was much consternation about the 12-minute scene in the play in which the actors appear naked onstage in their consciousness-raising group sharing what they love and what they hate about their bodies. Apart from the shock of seeing nonsexualized women’s bodies on stage, many people wondered aloud what we would do when the actors got their periods. Spoiler, we worked it out. That’s the magic of theater.
So women’s stories, like women’s bodies, remain a challenge for people to wrap their heads around, and that is the work we have to do. That is the work we are doing, with the play.
I speak on behalf for myself and Whitney White, the play’s director, as the only women writer-director team on Broadway this entire season. We are tired of the lack of curiosity about women’s experience. We are tired of the idea that women’s stories are a hard sell—in fact we just extended our run. We are excited, as Jen said, to ruin way more than the workplace. We are interested in exploding the paradigm, the still entrenched idea that women are not equal human beings.
I wanted to share a small anecdote from my mom who really wishes she could be here with us tonight, and she asked me to read this, she sent me this little memory of her time at Ms.
“Bess started her involvement in Women’s Liberation when she was about 6 months old. I was working with my editor at Ms on an article and I couldn’t afford babysitting, so I brought my manuscript, a diaper bag and Bess to work. We were toiling away when Pat Carbine, who as many of you know was a founder and the publisher of Ms, said she wanted to borrow Bess. She carried Bess off to her office and proceeded to conduct a meeting with a circle of businessmen—in those days they were all men—with Bess perched on her lap.
“What was Pat thinking? It took me a while to realize Pat was saying something important. Ms. magazine would not be business as usual. Ms. would speak to the realities of women’s lives. I am proud to say that Bess behaved beautifully at her first business meeting. And she has been part of the revolution ever since.”
Of course, the arts cannot accomplish a revolution alone. We need the activists, the lawyers, the journalists, all of you in this room, including of course my spectacularly impressive fellow honorees: Skye Perryman, Norm Eisen and Jennifer Rubin. You all inspire me beyond words, and I am honored to be here in this theater, in this community, in this dialogue, in this revolution, with all of you. Thank you.
Olivia McCabe contributed to this piece.
