Feminist Theater: Politics and Art

THE FEMINIST movement has had an enormous impact in the last few years on the way women think and speak about themselves, and about men. Any philosophy that alters our perception of ourselves must inevitably alter the art we produce, and so in poetry, fiction, journalism and photography women have been exploring what it means to be female in today's society.

Only drama stands out as an exception to the general trend. Certainly there have been films that deal with women-- Rachel, Rachel, Persona and Cries and Whispers come to mind--and on Broadway, Doll's House and The Women were recently revived. But good female roles remain scarce and plays that deal with friendships between women are nonexistent. In contrast, male-male relationships have been glorified in over a dozen movies and plays in just the last five years.

Given this sorry state of affairs, the fact that a group like the Rhode Island Feminist Theatre even exists is cause for celebration. Unfortunately, RIFT's fourth and newest production, Persephone's Return, is not. Instead it is a well-intentioned failure that points out many of the problems likely to arise in any attempt to combine art and ideology.

THE PLAY IS a series of vignettes built around the myth of Demeter, the Earth goddess, and her daughter Persephone. According to the myth, Persephone is seized and abducted by Hades who takes her to his kingdom of the dead and makes her his wife and queen of the underworld. Demeter, upon learning of her daughter's fate, goes into a period of mourning so intense that it causes all green things to turn brown and die. Finally, to prevent the earth from dying, Zeus intervenes and orders Hades to restore Persephone to her mother. Hades does so, but only after making sure Persephone has eaten in the underworld, thus assuring that she return there for at least some portion of each year. During spring and summer mother and daughter are together and the earth is green during fall and winter mother and daughter are apart and the earth is brown and dead.

RIFT has chosen the Persephone myth as a symbol of the change from the matriarchy to the patriarchy that occurred in western prehistory. The natural bond between mother and daughter--between female and female--is forcibly broken. Woman, who possesses the womb and is therefore the source of life, is subjugated to man, whose power and symbol is death.

AROUND THIS central theme a series of sketches are built which show how modern society has evolved around the male power structure, and how women have been the victims of this structure. The sketches deal with menstruation, abortion and sex, demonstrating how women have been made to feel guilty about their bodies and their desires and how they are taught to feel that friendships with other women are expendable if they interfere with male-female relationships. Women are shown as victims of physical and mental aggression by males in situations that often strike a responsive chord and recall similar episodes in one's own life. The final sketches of the play show women trying to change the power structure and create a more humane system in which power is shared.

The main problem with Persephone's Return is that although the play presents a number of good ideas and some very effective individual scenes, the production in its entirety never makes a compelling artistic statement.

The decision to present the play as a series of improvised sketches rather than as one situation developed over the course of the performance, has made the play an abortive drama. Several of the scenes by themselves could be worked into full fledged plays, but as they are, characters remain two-dimensional and the hidden depths and nuances of female-female and male-female relationships remain unexplored.

THE FAULTS of Persephone's Return seem to be directly related to the way in which it was created. The play was collectively written by all the members of the group and while one person did act as director, there seems to have been no attempt to structure the play around her personal vision. RIFT is dedicated to living its philosophy as well as acting it on stage. The way in which the group creates its plays--through gradual improvisation of a central idea with all the members of the cast participating equally--reflects its desire to change the male-dominated hierarchical system of authority that is traditional in the theater.

The question which then arises is whether or not theater by committee can ever produce a consistent artistic vision that has emotional as well as intellectual authenticity. Persephone's Return is a fairly convincing argument that this is impossible. The characters and situations in the RIFT production never come alive; they remain abstract truths that need to be clothed in the flesh and blood of one person's experiences and convictions.

The existence of the Rhode Island Feminist Theater is a hopeful sign that women may yet find a dramatic voice through which they can express their identity and their conception of what society is and should be. That voice, however, remains undiscovered.