What I know and What I'm good at.

I went to University for Theatre. I concentrated in Performance. I am a feminist.

...why not combine the two?

The idea of starting (founding, I guess) a feminist theatre company is really exciting to me.

I decided to research some feminist theatre groups and these are the ones that I found:

1) Nightwood Theatre: this is Canada's oldest professional women's theatre company. It has over 3,000 members. According to the Canadian Theatre Enycyclopedia, feminism was not the original reason for starting the company but it became a significant factor when they became identified (and labelled) as such. Their mandate states that "We operate with a firm belief in women’s equality and use theatre to challenge stereotypes and social assumptions about gender, race and sexuality". Nightwood "forges creative alliances among women artists from diverse backgrounds in order to develop and produce innovative Canadian Theatre".

2) Theatre Experimental des Femmes: this company's activities included productions, workshops, festivals (of women's work) and seminars on women's history. Their work focused on social causes, the dominance of patriarchy in society and in culture, and liberationist philosophy.

3) Redlight Theatre: they believe "one of theatre's greatest historical contributions has been it's ability to comment on oppression and defy established rules". With their theatre, they wish "to rouse the masses to revolt against everyday violences-cum-accepted-norms".

4) Spiderwoman Theatre: their mission is to "provide exceptional theatre performance, training and education in an effort to address cultural, social and political issues in the Native American and women’s communities. They seek to entertain and challenge their audiences and bring communities of people together to examine the causes and effects of a wide variety of issues".

I wondered, what made a theatre company feminist? Is it feminist because the company is made up of all women or because the focus and content of their work is feminist (women's issues, sexism, racism, classism, violence, stereotypes, opression, etc.)?

I guess, since men can be feminists too and support the feminist movement and women's issues, that the answer is the latter.

But there IS something uber powerful about a company founded by women whose work is created, performed, designed, dramaturged, directed, stage managed (and all of the other positions associated with a theatre troupe) by women.

As they say, theatre imitates life. It holds the mirror up to nature. Maybe I am bias because I consider myself an artist and a performer and I have such a love, passion, and appreciation for the theatre...but I think that theatre is a great outlet for such sensitive and important topics.

I really want to do this. I would really love to combine my love of theatre with my new-found friend feminism.

Kelsy and I have come up with, what we think, is a clever and genius way to gauge people's thoughts on feminism and feminist issues and to turn it into somewhat performance art. Perhaps that will be where my journey begins...

Stay tuned!!!