Women of all shapes, colors, creeds and sexuality are tackling issues closest to their hearts and minds, and putting it all center stage at the Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival (PWTF) this weekend.
Founded by Polly Edelstein and Christine Petrini with new artistic and managing directors Glynnis Nadelbaum and Autumn Blalock, the PWTF has rededicated itself to new boundary-busting visions of playwriting with its 2023 festival, ‘Folkslore: Breaking the Binary.’
“In its ninth year, the Philly Women’s Theater Festival is, in a way, rededicating ourselves to our mission in a radical way by not only showcasing works by women and nonbinary artists, but questioning and dismantling the narratives that our patriarchal society confines womanhood to, as well as even the ways in which we tell these stories,” said Nadelbaum. “We are celebrating the playful, colorful and beautiful gender spectrum of our world! The selected plays rewrite historical narratives from a new perspective, examine societal pressures, tackle current events, and challenge our views on gender and womanhood.”
For first time producing playwright Liv Shoup, her theater piece, ‘Skinny Legend’, breaks the binary handsomely, and on her terms. “My play is breaking an appearance binary, a body-politics binary,” said Shoup, noting that too often in theater, diversity only exists if the world outside finds the people attractive. “I’m breaking a fat vs. skinny binary here. It is a perspective you rarely hear about.”
‘SCRIBE’, or ‘The Sisters Milton’, or ‘Elegy for the Unwritten’ by Philadelphia playwright L M Feldman looks at 17th Century multi-culturalism that never made it into the historical canon. How that fits into the PWTF’s rubric of binary breaking comes down to Feldman’s players, one “gender non-conforming character, possibly trans,” and “two probably queer and closeted characters” at a time in history when queerness wasn’t essayed in such grandiloquent manner.
“I’m a queer playwright who plays with space and time and asks questions regarding who is marginalized and what it means to exist outside of a mainstream… people who were footnotes at best.”
Telling stories about those colored outside of any margins also happens to be part and parcel of what Philly playwright Tyler Rocio Ecoña does best. In her topical PWTF play, ‘Unfair Advantage’, the first trans girl on a woman’s collegiate swim team expects backlash, but instead gets ever-changing participation guidelines that only impact other participants when the new rules backfire.
“This story about women in athletics definitely breaks the binary and shows us trans truths in a way that really isn’t shown on mainstream stages,” said Ecoña. “The main character is trans and the play’s antagonist goes on a media rampage saying transphobic things only to face tension at home within her own family… all definitely inspired by true events.”
While the playwrights that Metro spoke with do not know each other or have witnessed each other’s works, the Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival might just be the place to break down walls beyond binaries.
“I’m so excited to see everybody’s plays, and there is a vulnerability to seeing and hearing playwrights’ readings that we all surely feel,” said Shoup. “I was, at first, scared to reach out to actors and other people involved, but Glynnis has made me feel comfortable with the process… and it’s nice to see that we are all doing this thing together. I’m feeling so much connection, now. It’s not sisterhood because we don’t all identify as women, but rather sibling-hood I am feeling.”
The Philadelphia Women’s Theatre Festival takes place Aug. 3 to 6 at Arden Hamilton Family Arts Center, 62 N. 2nd St., on the Arden Theater campus. For information and a complete schedule, visit phillywomenstheatrefest.org
