“This play should not be well behaved,” Alice Birch writes in the notes for her play Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. One of the most powerful things about Birch’s play is the language and form and how it misbehaves – it violates the expectations for how a play looks on the page and how it’s written, how dialogue works and how a plot is structured. Frank Theatre is currently staging this gem at Gremlin Theatre’s new space in St Paul and I couldn’t have hoped for a better company to tackle this piece.
With a powerful ensemble of Charla Marie Bailey, Joy Dolo, Jane Froiland, Emily Grodzik, Grand Henderson, and Gabriel Murphy, this play certain misbehaves. This play grapples with the difficult and often contradictory ideas throughout the waves of feminism, from refusing to marry, to starvation as protest, to “my choice.” I would have love to have been a fly on the wall during rehearsal to see how lines were split among the actors, who was going to be in each scene, and how the lines interact with each other. For those of you have never seen the script, Birch breaks away from the conventions of typical playwriting and doesn’t often note what character is saying what line (in fact, only in one specific scene are certain characters given names).
What I love best is how this play deals with layers of feminism – pointing out how large the issue really is and how often we get pushed into dealing with smaller issues. It reminds me of an episode of the Savage Love podcast that Leslie Vincent initially told me about – guest performer Rachel Lark sings a song about freeing the nipple but decides that it’s too nuanced an issue after the election of 45. She instead sings a song repeating “women are people” because that’s where we are. Another podcast I listen to (called Nancy) remarked recently that sexism has changed – it’s become more sinister and harmful in a way. It’s somehow hard to point out the workings of the patriarchy when it’s learned to hide itself – or even when it’s so clearly blatant (looking at you, Harvey Weinstein and 45) that it surrounds itself in power so that it can’t be taken down.
This show also struggles with the ways in which women take each other down and perpetuate the patriarchy themselves, how they have been taught to harm each other in ideas of resistance, how “my choice” is a complicated idea, and that men too are affected by the patriarchy that confines the idea of what a body is supposed to look and act like. It’s not often that a show this refreshing and bold comes along and I’m so glad that Frank is doing it. It’s exactly what we need right now to give us perspective and the drive to keep resisting.
Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. is written by Alice Birch and directed by Wendy Knox. It is playing now through October 22 at the new Gremlin space in St Paul. Ticket and show information can be found on Frank Theatre’s website.
Gina Musto 