Thursday, November 20, 2008
The One Thing I Left Out
The one important thing I left out of that travelog in the last blog entry: there was an astonishingly gifted group of young actresses in that Festival I got lost on the way to, and the singular reason I'm glad i found my way: the girls from William Campbell High School did an amazing 30-minute version of Eve Ensler's THE GOOD BODY...and I am telling you , it made me weep with joy, it was so good.
(Of course, I could have been weeping because it was one of the rare moments in the day when I was not rushing to the Ladies Room to throw up...but no, I believe the goodness of the work these girls were doing made me weep with the recognition and relief that only wonderful live theater can make you feel...it was superb!)
Directed by the school Drama Teacher , Nannette Haga, who is to be commended for what she had led these young women to understand and achieve on the stage, this was a group of, oh, I'd say 12 girls , of color, strong-voiced, thoroughly focused and passionate about the language of the play....I mean these actresses ROCKED the stage and the audience went wild! THE GOOD BODY is an important play about women and how today's society treats women and their bodies....it is definitely a feminist piece , which of course, puts me right in their corner from the get-go...but the youngsters filled the play's promise with style, joy, anger, cleverness , refreshingly honest sexuality, energetic physicality...the whole ball of wax (as my mother used to say) !!! I was so moved! SO happy, even if sick to my stomach (no fault of theirs...if anything THE GOOD BODY actually brought me relief).
So: I honor the work these actresses and their brave director did on that High School stage last Saturday. Brava!
More to write....always more to write..
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