← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Revisiting the Women's Lib Movement in 'Liberation' Off-Broadway
00:32:50
The latest production from playwright Bess Wohl, "Liberation," blends the present and the past to examine the Women's Lib movement in the 1970s.
Loading summary
Transcript102 lines
- [00:00]
Sponsor
All of it is supported by BetterHelp online therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like. Therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online and sign up only takes a few minutes. Visit betterhelp.com allofittoday to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelph e lp.com all of it.
- [00:37]
WNYC Studios
Listener Support WNYC Studios.
- [00:50]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Hey, we've been reading all month and now it is time to discuss. This month's get lit with all of it book club is happening on Wednesday. I'll be in conversation with Imani Perry. She's the author of Black in How a Color Tells the Story of My People and she'll join us at 6pm at the New York Public Library. Plus, we have not one but two powerhouse special musical guests. Soul singer Bilal will be there and five time Grammy winning I know, right? And five time Grammy winning bassist Esperanza SpongeBob. Now this event has been sold out, but due to demand, the library has just released a few more tickets. So get yours right now by going to wnyc.org getlit if you already have tickets, doors open at 5:30pm on Wednesday. Get there early to make sure you get a seat. First come, first served. It's all happening this Wednesday, February 26th. Head to wnyc.org getlit for free tickets and you can also learn how to watch on the live stream. That's in the future. Now let's get this hour started with the powerful new play Liberation. A new play takes us to Ohio in 1970. We're in a gym and we watch as a women's consciousness raising meeting is taking place. It's nothing really formal. It was all set up by Lizzie, who's looking for women who want to change the way things are. I mean, in 1970 a woman couldn't get a credit card in her name or she could get fired for getting pregnant. There's Isadora, who thinks radicalism is the way to go. There's Susan, who lives in her car and wonders if the others will take her views seriously. And Lizzie, who we get to know quite well because she has dual roles. We see her in the 70s trying to keep this group together and we see her now breaking the fourth wall talking to us, the audience. Let's listen to an example from the beginning of the play. This is Lizzie, played by Susanna Flood.
- [02:51]
Susanna Flood
I'm going to mess around a little bit with Father Time, because, see, I'm here in the present with you. Hi. And I want to bring back some things that happened in the past. People, too. I think we all know how this kind of thing works. It's a memory play. And also, I should say, this play is about my mother. It's for my mother who recently. Well, she's no longer here. So this play is about her and her friends, her beautiful friends. And also this is important. A thing that they tried very hard to do. No, a thing that they did that they unquestionably did. So why does it feel somehow like it's all slipping away?
- [03:34]
Kristalyn Lloyd
And how do we get it back?
- [03:36]
Alison Stewart
One of her mother's friends is Celeste, a Radcliffe educated black graduate student played by Kristalyn Lloyd. Celeste has returned home to care for her sick mother, but she also has brought some secrets. The play is called Liberation. It's a New York Times critic pick. And the Rap says only a few weeks into the New Year and 2025 has already delivered its first great new play. It's produced by the Roundabout and it Roundabout and is running at the Laura pels Theater through March 30. Playwright Bess Wall is with me now. Hi, Bess.
- [04:05]
Kristalyn Lloyd
Hi.
- [04:06]
Alison Stewart
And I also have actor Susanna Flood, who plays Lizzie. Hi, Susanna.
- [04:09]
Susanna Flood
Hi.
- [04:10]
Alison Stewart
And Kristalyn Lloyd, who plays Celeste. Hi, Crystalin.
- [04:13]
WNYC Studios
What's up?
- [04:14]
Alison Stewart
All right, Susanna, you're the first actor we see on stage. The play begins, you come out, the lights are up. Is it starting? Is it not starting?
- [04:22]
WNYC Studios
Are you.
- [04:24]
Alison Stewart
What did you notice about how that entrance affects the audience as it settles in for the show?
- [04:31]
Susanna Flood
Well, a lot of people don't know that the show is starting. And there have been people who've vocalized that confusion in different ways throughout. But it's the second time where I've been in a theatrical moment where the lights are up on the audience, and they do. And I do think that that causes them to feel a part of the moment, to braid the present, the actual present moment in which the audience is seeing the show into the context of the show. And I think that that gives them permission to relate to it, to internalize it from the go. Even yesterday, there was a woman. You know, I get to this part. It's just a little bit of exposition about being that we're in Ohio and there was a woman who In. And at this point, the laser kind of changes. Just like, woo hoo. You know, she's like this. Whoever is. This person is like in Ohio, from Ohio. And they're feeling some pride. So it does. It sets up a conversational mode. And I think that that survives. I mean, I'd be curious how you guys feel, but, like, I think that that means that when we get to the later revelation revelations in the play, people feel that they can talk back to the play throughout. When we talk about McGovern, when we talk about Nixon, when we talk about even the no fault divorce law, especially. People who live through that era then feel that they can express even words, language out loud in the theater, which is a tradition that doesn't really belong to the theater, but could and should.
- [06:04]
Alison Stewart
Chris Lynn, do you and the other actors watch backstage to get a vibe on the audience?
- [06:08]
WNYC Studios
Absolutely.
- [06:10]
Susanna Flood
I didn't know that.
- [06:11]
WNYC Studios
Absolutely. We watch you on the monitor. We try to listen for what they're saying. Who might be the person who's taking this opportunity to talk to you?
- [06:21]
Susanna Flood
Yes.
- [06:22]
WNYC Studios
But it's always. It's always really fun for you to start out. You do such a great job.
- [06:27]
Alison Stewart
Thank you.
- [06:28]
WNYC Studios
You're welcome.
- [06:29]
Susanna Flood
Well, Kristalyn's the first person who comes on when the women start coming on. Crystal is the first person who walks on. And I always feel like, phew. Yeah.
- [06:39]
Alison Stewart
Did you always start the play that way with the. With Lizzie speaking?
- [06:44]
Kristalyn Lloyd
I did, to a degree. I mean, I've. I've written like 25 versions of this play and drafts of this play with other titles and other approaches. But actually having the play start with Lizzie speaking was the thing that cracked it open for me. Having someone in the present come in and say, like, here I am with you and we're gonna do this together and bringing the audience in that way, and it sort of allows us also to look at the past in relation to the moment we're in now. You know, Lizzie's not me. She's. She's not an autobiographical play by any means, but Lizzie does stand in for a person trying to make a play for the audience and with the audience and ask big questions together. I really. I wanted this to feel as much like a happening as like a play, sort of like a thing in real time that we're making and discovering with the audience.
- [07:32]
Alison Stewart
How does it feel to play the dual roles, Susanna?
- [07:36]
Susanna Flood
It's. I mean, I actually don't experience them as different, to tell you the truth. Like, I experience the questions of the play and the dilemma of Lizzie the mom and Lizzie the daughter as a comparable dilemma. And, in fact, there used to be this. There's a section at the end of Act 1 where the character Susan talks about the idea of artificial wombs. And we sort of get into a debate. And it used to be that all of that. That entire conversation belonged just between her and Lizzie the daughter, the narrator that you meet at the beginning of the play. And in rehearsal, we discovered it was better, actually, to keep the first half of that scene in the past so that all of the women, you know, could be talking about that together. And so, especially as we've gone on that. This debate about what does it mean to have a child and to be a woman in the world, and not just a woman in the world doing a job, but. And getting paid for it, but. But having a vocation, by which I mean something that you think you're put on the earth to do, that you love, that is a craft you are going to practice over your whole life. You can probably relate to that, Allison. Like that. That.
- [08:51]
Kristalyn Lloyd
That.
- [08:52]
Susanna Flood
That is a tension inside of a person. And how do you balance those things? And I feel that debate starting for Lizzie the mom, and it just, over the course of the scene, just spills over into the present version of. By which I just mean Susanna myself. This is the question that is on my mind all the time now. So I don't actually experience them as that. It doesn't feel like a dual role. It feels like one continuous role.
- [09:23]
Alison Stewart
Celeste, you play. Excuse me, Crystal. And you play Celeste. This Radcliffe grad comes into the. The gym, a boy's gym, we should mention. She's been. She's come to Ohio to care for her sick mother.
- [09:35]
WNYC Studios
Yes.
- [09:35]
Alison Stewart
Why do you think she shows up to this group?
- [09:38]
WNYC Studios
I think she's at her wit's end. She. She. She, you know, implies that she has five other people, four other people who could be taking care of her mother. But it has fallen on her. And I don't imagine that she's at the top of the birthing order or at the bottom of the. I think, you know, watching my grandmother slowly go from Alzheimer's and what a long journey that was, and having an aunt who was the caregiver and how grief can just. It sucks life out of you. So I think she's at a point where she's like, I need something to keep me going. I need some remnant of my New York life and myself, who I discovered in New York after leaving Ohio. I need that here or she's gonna drown. You Know, if someone had asked me to. My parents needed me to go back to Texas right now for a long period of time to take care of them. I. I can. I can understand why Celeste gets to the point where she's like, I don't care that they're all white women. I am going to this group. I need to find my people. And it may not be like skin folk. It might be, you know, on another level.
- [10:47]
Alison Stewart
So how does she feel that she's in a group of white people?
- [10:50]
WNYC Studios
Oh, othered. I mean, from the beginning. And I think there, you know, you'll see throughout the show, there's another black character that shows up, and you get to see the tension between what Celeste is trying to hold on to, but what she's. The freedom that she's finding in this group and the strength and the confidence that she's finding with fighting these things. And, you know, a lot of people after the Civil rights movement, it got so quiet. Everyone was so tired. Everyone was burnt out. Our leaders had been assassinated. So around the 70s, you notice, like, the Black Panther Party starts doing more stuff involving, like, community, because the fight had just drained everything out of them. So I think there is a rejuvenation with being in this group for her, while also a conflict of race and conversation in that social aspect.
- [11:40]
Alison Stewart
Bess, you said this is an autobiographical play, but there are some. Some tokens to your. Your past. Your mom worked for Ms. Magazine. What specifics did you pull from your mom or the women she grew up with that you used in the play?
- [11:56]
Kristalyn Lloyd
Yeah, when I was a child, my mom worked at ms, so I sort of looked up to all of her friends and to her. I really idolized them. And I saw them as these sort of incredible, larger than life women who were engaged in this really important fight. And I think, you know, that kind of sense of possibility and of activism that I learned from them was something I really wanted to represent. I think, you know, thankfully, my mother is still with us, unlike the mother character in this play, which I'm so grateful for. And there's a conversation in the play that the narrator of the play never got to have with her mother that she has toward the end of the play. And that was a conversation that I actually was able to call at my mother and have with her, and then I put that conversation into the play. So it was just incredibly meaningful for me, through the act of writing this play, to have the conversations I wanted to have with my mother and to sort of ask the question of, like, can we see Our mothers as people beyond the function they have in their. In our lives. You know, can we see our mothers as full human beings? That's a conversation that the play is really in dialogue with and that forms the heart of this piece for me and is a very personal conversation between me and my mother.
- [13:14]
Alison Stewart
Are there any women in your life that remind you of the women that you're playing in the 70s?
- [13:20]
Susanna Flood
Oh, you know, I had a. Well, I keep on my dressing room table a picture of my. This woman who was like a grandmother to me. She was actually my. This is weird, but this is gonna. In the words of the play, this is a little bit weird. I've never said this to anyone, but it's true. This is true. My mom's first mother in law was like a grandmother to me growing up. And she, and she and my grandmother are both captured in this photo. And neither of them are here anymore, but they both sort of like lived through this era and had very different responses to it. My actual biological grandma was living in the Upper peninsula of Michigan and didn't, didn't. The movement didn't touch her up there. And my surrogate grandmother did sort of like exit her. She reformed her life after her children, you know, were teenagers. And they both are responsible in different ways for me feeling like I could be an actor. So I guess, like, I feel, I sort of dedicate it to them though, and I hold them in my mind and I. And to this question about like, conversations never had. I do wish that I could. You know, I remember like my, my, my. My mom's siblings are spread out over kind of a wide range. And the eldest, who was really close to my grandma, once told me this story that was told to her by one of my grandmother's friends who said that I think if Lillian had had been able to choose her life, basically she would have done something more like what Susanna was doing, which, you know, my grandma, she never got to. We lived in different places, you know, and so I guess, like, I, I find their, the fact of their historical presence to be an organizing principle.
- [15:22]
Alison Stewart
How about for you, Kristalyn, is there someone in your life?
- [15:25]
WNYC Studios
Yes. I mean, there are two people that I constantly conjure when I'm in the show. They're both alive, which is beautiful. One of them is my dad's mother who raised her five kids on her own because my grandfather died when I think my dad was like, so, you know, she never remarried after that and she's 95 now and her mind is still there, you know, but the movement never touched her. When I talked to my mother about the movement, it never touched Beaumont, Texas and never touched Freeport, Texas. So my grandmother, we have very different political and religious beliefs. She's very Christian and I am not. And so a lot of her views aren't feminist. But watching her spend her, from what I know, her entire existence to me without a husband was pivotal. I did not have a lot of role models growing up in Texas of women who didn't get married and didn't have kids before the age of 25. Like, I was in 13 weddings by the time I was 27.
- [16:29]
Susanna Flood
Oh my God.
- [16:29]
WNYC Studios
13? Yes. And the youngest was an 18 year old friend of mine who got married right out of high school. So I didn't have a lot of examples except for my grandmother, who didn't have a husband and my theater teacher in high school. She. Her name is Allison Frost and she was probably one of the first feminists I ever encountered. And I remember one of the biggest things that stuck out to me when I first met her was when I asked her about doing Grease at the school and she like cussed Grease out up and down. I was like, I am never doing that effing play. She was like, has nothing good to help women out? And I was like, what? Oh, oh my gosh. Wait, what? And it really clicked this thing in me. And she cast me as Hamlet my senior year, which was another big thing to do. You know, it was a very feminist move of hers and she inspired me to continue acting on a much more specific and intentional level. So everything that I try to do after, you know, once I got to New York, I do very specific plays. I choose, I choose my projects. And I, you know, this one was, was perfect, perfect timing. And I think that those two women have, it's, it's the reason I'm still going. My grandmother has never seen anything I've done on stage. She saw me in a soap opera because I was on one for three years and for her that was like, she made it. My granddaughter has made it. I was literally on my way to rehearsal for 1776, a Broadway show I was leading, and she's on the phone with me and she's like, so when are you gonna choose your second career? I said, what? She said, you know, something that you. I said, well, what do you think I should do? You seem to know me so well. She said, well, what about a teacher or a secretary? And I was like, girl, woo, we gotta get you up to New York. We gotta just so you can see that there is a career to be had for a black woman who has no kids and no husband. It scares my grandmother to death.
- [18:30]
Susanna Flood
So when you play Hamlet, right? She's coming.
- [18:33]
WNYC Studios
She's coming.
- [18:33]
Susanna Flood
Yeah. What soap opera?
- [18:35]
Alison Stewart
Come on now.
- [18:36]
WNYC Studios
Bold and the Beautiful, baby.
- [18:37]
Alison Stewart
See, that's for grandma.
- [18:39]
WNYC Studios
Bold and the Beautiful did it for you, girl.
- [18:42]
Alison Stewart
We're speaking with playwright Bess Wall and actors Susanna Flood and Kristin Lloyd about their new play Liberation. We'll have more after a quick break. This is all.
- [18:49]
Sponsor
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
- [19:11]
Susanna Flood
At 24, I lost my narrative, or rather, it was stolen from me. And the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives, callous jokes, and politics. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours. Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. Listen to Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky wherever you get your podcasts. Love it.
- [19:49]
Alison Stewart
You are listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We're speaking with playwright Bess Wall and actress Susanna Flood and Kristalyn Lloyd about their new play Liberation, which takes place in the 1970s as a group of women come together to become activists in the civil rights in the women's rights movement. It's running at the Roundabout, Laura pell's Theater, through March 30th. All right, these women are all coming to this meeting. Bess, why do you think they keep coming back to this meeting?
- [20:17]
Kristalyn Lloyd
Mm, it's a great question. I think it's really the friendships. You know, I didn't realize I was writing about this when I started, but we really discovered in rehearsal how much this play is about friendship between women, which is something that I know I personally crave so much and hold so dearly. And I think they start to become the only people they can tell certain things to, you know, And I think there's a sort of loneliness that's being soothed by the group and a feeling of solidarity that's being created by the group that keeps them coming back. And then I think the play also delves into, like, the complications between women and their friendships. Like, what are they not telling each other? What things can they not get beyond, no matter how hard they Try. But ultimately, like, to me, this story is so much about, like, the sort of sacred nature of female friendship.
- [21:14]
Alison Stewart
Susanna. At first, Lizzie's like, she's sort of trying to control the group. She doesn't want to be a quote unquote leader. But yeah, yeah, as the play goes on, the women in the room sort of try to poke some holes in her feminist values. Does she really have them?
- [21:29]
Susanna Flood
Yeah.
- [21:30]
Alison Stewart
What would you say are Lizzie's biggest faults and what are her weaknesses?
- [21:35]
Susanna Flood
Well, I mean, Lizzie is afraid. She is afraid, and I think she's afraid to risk. To risk failure, and she's also afraid to risk, you know, rejection. Like, you know, she doesn't want to go out on this strike. She's. She's afraid of sort of, you know, she. She's ambitious, but also scared to really claim that fully for herself. And so it's kind of. She's a little bit trapped by these contradictions. And also, I mean, she has a lot to learn from Celeste and Joanne and the non white. I mean, those are the only two non white characters in the play. But she has. She has a lot to learn about a perspective that isn't her. Her own, the one of her own white body walking through the world. So I think those are. Those are like, those are the. The big ones. I think. I think what is redeeming for Lizzie is that she truly believes that the. That the group is important and revolutionary, that. That the act of coming together and speaking these words to each other is not just, we talked about this in rehearsal, but is not just an emotionally cathartic or personally venting, an act of personal venting. It's not the same thing as going to your therapist. It is sharing experiences that you thought were your fault. And you realize they belong to a lot of people who share this one gender identity. And you realize, and I mean, this is true. You know, you go back and look at any of the research material that we looked at, like the rallying cry of the movement was, this will be redundant for maybe some of the listeners. But the personal is political and that's what that means to me. And I feel like we're able to locate that in the language of the play, basically, that in reporting these personal experiences, experiences to each other, you discover that you are not alone and that it wasn't your fault, that it is the fault of the world, basically. And so that gives you, A, other people to stand with, so it's not so scary. But B, it also gives you the realization that there is something real in the world that is that you can challenge.
- [24:07]
Alison Stewart
There's a great clip we have from the play. We're going to play it. It's from Liberation. It's Dora, and she's telling them about something crazy that happen that she did at work. Let's take a listen.
- [24:19]
WNYC Studios
But I say to him, I say to Mr. Masterson, and I say it in a very nice voice. I say, hmm, I don't really get it. I work a lot harder than Ray. Ray is always, always over budget. I get him back on budget. Half of Ray's clients just come to me because they don't want to deal with Ray. And he just kind of shrugs. Sorry, Dolly. Sorry, Dolly. And then I just. I don't know, I guess my mind went blank because then I just said, the only thing that Ray has that I don't is a penis.
- [24:47]
Susanna Flood
What? I know.
- [24:48]
Alison Stewart
I know.
- [24:48]
WNYC Studios
I just said it. I really did it.
- [24:49]
Alison Stewart
Said it. I said, the only thing that Ray has that I don't is a penis.
- [24:53]
WNYC Studios
The only thing that Ray has that I don't is a penis.
- [25:01]
Alison Stewart
It's getting laughs in the studio. What's making you laugh, Kristalyn?
- [25:07]
WNYC Studios
Because I remember one performance where you had made that first cut, that big cut that got us this draft. I didn't read it. So when we got to the part where she says the P. Like, the gasp for me is real.
- [25:25]
Susanna Flood
Yeah, I know that gasp. The gasp in the recording is very recognizably crystalline. And it's a thrill waiting for it to hear it every night.
- [25:35]
Kristalyn Lloyd
Oh, my God.
- [25:36]
WNYC Studios
It took me when I was like, oh, my God, it was. It tickles me. Yeah, it tickles me.
- [25:41]
Alison Stewart
So where does Celeste fall on the feminism range? Does she. Is she a radical or does she believe in slow doing it slow motion? What does she think?
- [25:51]
WNYC Studios
I think she believes in putting in the work and taking the risk. And, you know, the sacrifice is necessary, which is where her and Lizzie kind of differ. Like, I think, because black women know that the sacrifice is necessary, it's not as scary. And we. I think because of the way privilege is set up and race, that we just are, like, we have less to lose. Like, you know, And I think she struggles with it when it comes to her sexuality, which I can completely understand as someone who came out when she was, like, 36, as bisexual. Holding on to that is such an identity. So I think that's the one place where she hadn't examined and hadn't really gone into depth with herself. And we see the results of that in the show.
- [26:41]
Alison Stewart
I know you've had after show meetups with the audience for audience questions. Bess, what kind of questions do people have? What are they interested in knowing about the play?
- [26:51]
Kristalyn Lloyd
Oh, people always surprise me with their questions. As much as I think I know. I mean, people. A lot of people want to know about the process of making it because the work that's happening on stage with this cast is so brave. And so it just. They're really like, ripping their hearts out for you every night. And how we could have gotten to that point with the trust, with each other and in the work, I would say, is the thing that people often want to know about. Like, what process did you go through to create an environment where people felt safe having these conversations and going to these incredibly raw emotional places? And it's really a credit to our director, Whitney White, who is just extraordinary. She's a son. She's good. She's a good one. She really is just like, you know, absolutely a visionary. And she created this environment of safety and trust in the room. And then to our amazing company of actors who also trusted each other to go to these places that, frankly, I haven't seen on very many stages. It's really, to me, that's part of what's radical and revolutionary about this play.
- [27:57]
Alison Stewart
Part of it is that for at least one part of the play, the cast is nude. Was that always part of your script?
- [28:03]
Kristalyn Lloyd
It was, it was. I knew that I had to go there in the play in part because when I researched real consciousness raising groups and, you know, they called them rap groups in the 70s, it was one of the things they did. And it was something that a lot of women from that era who I spoke with were really, really proud of and really, really felt like an important part of their process. And in a play that's so much about intimacy and about trust, it felt like a very natural expression of that trust. And we worked with an incredible intim named Kelsey Rainwater, who was, like, very careful about making sure that everyone's boundaries were respected. But it was a sort of important and very brave part of the process for everybody. And I feel like in some ways it's the heart of the play.
- [28:54]
Alison Stewart
Was this your first time being nude, either of you?
- [28:56]
Susanna Flood
No, unfortunately. But it's definitely the best time. Yeah, my parents were acting teachers. They always said that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Family, Family Guild. But my dad always said that acting is controlled humiliation, which gave me a. Yeah, I think. But honestly, it's not. I don't feel that this part of the Play Kristalyn. You jump in here is actually the scariest part of the play.
- [29:30]
WNYC Studios
No, the scariest part is different for everyone. Yeah, and that's not my scariest part. This isn't my first time being nude. I did it for a Dominique Morisseau play called Confederates at the Signature a couple years ago. I showed my breasts, and it was a very political form. And when I saw this in this script, I was like, okay, baby, let's do it. Let's do it. My parents are not actors. They are electrical engineer and a math teacher. So, yeah, well, it was funny because.
- [30:02]
Alison Stewart
When you go in, you give your phone away. This is no reason not to go over the show. Very easy, but it was funny. My friend saw the show twice, and he said, the first time when you come on stage, someone was giving you.
- [30:13]
Susanna Flood
A whole lot of hat.
- [30:14]
Alison Stewart
They were there. They were about giving away their giving away.
- [30:17]
Susanna Flood
Yes, yes. She threatened to sue.
- [30:19]
WNYC Studios
To sue. To sue.
- [30:20]
Susanna Flood
She threatened to sue. She threatened to sue. You know, I just. We got to give a shout out, shout out to our incredible lighting designer chassis, who was. We were early in the process. And so all the designers were still watching the show, and Cha. At that moment, lifted completely out of their stage. They were really ready to rush the stage or do anything that was gonna help protect all of us in that moment. But, yeah. Yep, people have feelings about.
- [30:51]
Alison Stewart
They have their feelings about their phones.
- [30:53]
Susanna Flood
About their phones.
- [30:54]
Kristalyn Lloyd
Yes. But it's the 1970s. The play sat in the 1970s. So I kind of felt like this is immersive theater. You know, it's actually incredible to see people have conversations with each other before the play begin.
- [31:06]
Susanna Flood
I honestly think it's one of the reasons people are enjoying coming to the show. Honestly, I don't. I just, like, if we could all be. Have. Have moments where we are forced to get rid of that for a while, we might find that we enjoy those moments hugely.
- [31:21]
Alison Stewart
Crystal, what do you hope people, after they see the play, go have coffee, go have a drink? What do you hope they have conversations.
- [31:27]
WNYC Studios
About who they are? I hope they're having conversations about who they are. I hope they're having conversations about what they believe and how they want to carry that into their everyday life. You know, I've invited my mother and her sisters and all of my female cousins, because I'm like, we need to have more conversations about this as women. My. My female cousins are also a lot more liberal than the moms we grew up with, so I'm hoping that that is what it inspires. And Men and women.
- [32:01]
Alison Stewart
How about for you, Bess?
- [32:03]
Kristalyn Lloyd
I agree with Kristalyn. I mean, I hope that people sort of find the courage to have a deeper level of intimacy in the conversations that they do have as well. You know, so much of this play is about like, how true can you be to yourself and how truthful can you be in your relationships and can you have the conversations that matter before it's too late, before it's too late on a personal level with the people you love and before it's too late for us as a society. You know, the time is now for us to be talking about these things and you can't wait. So I hope that it lights a fire under people to do that kind of deep work.
- [32:41]
Alison Stewart
Any thoughts? Susanna, your last.
- [32:43]
Susanna Flood
Well, I guess the thing for me is about the heroism of my journey through the play has a lot to do with children and mothers. And I guess when I became a mom, I was astounded by what I had taken for granted in my friends who had been mothers. You know, I had taken about what they were accomplishing just on a daily level, getting through the world. And I think that there is a level of heroism in that. I'm not talking about a sentimental version of that word. I'm talking about an actual chivalric going out into the world and doing something concrete. I think that that is. Is underestimated as an action. And I want more claiming of the power of that in our political leaders. I want nobody to feel emasculated by owning that. I want that to be claimed as a real positive forward footed value. So that's, that's what I not to think of motherhood as a kind of passive inside the home thing, but the, the, the actual her heroism of it because I think that that is a paradigm shift that would lead to a lot in the world.
- [34:10]
Alison Stewart
Liberation can be seen at the Laura pell's Theater through March 30. My guests have been Bess Wall, Susanna Flood and Kristalyn Lloyd. Thanks for coming to the studio.
- [34:18]
Susanna Flood
Thank you so much for having us.
- [34:19]
WNYC Studios
Thanks for having us.
- [34:24]
Susanna Flood
I know I'm not alone when I say adulting can be overwhelming. And what we all could use is a drink. That's where Apple and Eve juice comes in as the rul juice box. They've been making juice joyful for 50 years with refreshing juice blends bursting with bold flavor. One sip sends you right back to childhood. So when the grind dulls your shine, remember to kid yourself. Apple and Eve has delicious juices for at home and on the Go Shop Today.
- [34:53]
Sponsor
NYC now delivers breaking news, top headlines and in depth coverage from WNYC and Gothamist every morning, midday and evening. Listening by sponsoring our programming, you'll reach a community of passionate listeners in an uncluttered audio experience. Visit sponsorship.wnyc.org to learn more.