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Liberation & the Literature of the Women’s Movement with Bess Wohl and Honor Moore
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Max Rudin and welcome to LOA live. Library of America is a nonprofit organization dedicated to publishing authoritative new volumes of great American writers and to keeping the multivocal democratic spirit of our literary tradition a vital part of the culture. A warm thanks to Library of America members and to all of you here tonight for supporting our work and these LOA Live programs. The best play I've seen this season, so says New York Magazine's Sarah Holdren about liberation, Bess Wall's funny, elegiac, inspiring and compassionate exploration of the women's liberation movement, the story of an Ohio consciousness raising group in the early 70s and a daughter who yearns to understand her mother's life and her own. It's at the James Earl Jones Theater on Broadway through February 1st to talk about this timely, urgent play, what impelled her to write it, its deep well of feeling and its connections to the women's movement's literary roots. It's our incredible good fortune to welcome Bess Wall here tonight in conversation with acclaimed poet and memoirist Honor Moore. Honor is co editor of the Library of America volume Women's Feminist Writings that Inspired a Revolution and still can, which gathers the personal and prophetic writings that help shape the movement that Bess Wall portrays with such compassion and understanding. A link to the book will be dropped in the chat, but with Bess's play, an honors book reclaim largely forgotten history, dispelling myths, half truths and cartoonish mischaracterizations while they bear witness to the vision and courage of of a pathbreaking generation of activists and writers and most important, pass the torch from that generation to the next. Tonight, two remarkable writers from those different generations discuss the living questions at the heart of Beth Wall's play. What did the movement mean to the women who were part of it and what is their legacy? What unfulfilled possibilities to be witnessed, reclaimed and passed on to those searching in a post backlash, post roe world for a better future. Bess Wall is a playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and actor whose plays include the Tony nominated Grand Horizons, Small Mouth Sounds, Cam, Siegfried and the musical Pretty Filthy. Her awards include multiple Outer Critics Circle Honors, the George Engel Comedy Playwriting Award from the Dramatist Guild, the Athena Award for her screenplay Virginia and the Sam Norkin Special Drama Desk Award. She joins us, I think, from Brooklyn. Honor Moore is an award winning poet, playwright and memoirist whose books include the Bishop's Daughter and most recently a A Memoir of an Abortion for Library of America. She has edited, in addition to Women's Liberation, selected Poems of Amy Lowell and Poems from the Women's Movement. Her first major work was A Memory Play about a young woman coming to terms with her mother's death. She joins us from New York City, where she teaches in the New School's MFA program. We welcome your questions and comments and invite you to share where you're share your name and where you're viewing from. The Q and A button is on your menu bar. Now please welcome Bess Wall and Honor Moore.
- [03:34]
B
Thank you, Max, very much. It's wonderful to be here and Bess, wonderful to be here with you. I first saw the play in his first work, Off Broadway production, and I sort of went on a lark. You can't imagine how many plays by women, often about consciousness raising groups, that I have seen over the last 50 years. And I was undone by it and going to see it again in a Broadway theater. I thought, you know, these plays, often when a play goes from a small venue to a large venue, it loses something. I feel that this play gains something. And the play begins with the autobiographical character speaking to the audience and sympathizing with their schlepping to the theater, et cetera. And then magically it turns become. It goes into another dimension. And what I want to say before I ask first section is there was a moment when I thought, oh my God, everyone in this theater, about a thousand people, 800 people are in this consciousness raising group. It was a kind of miracle of theater. And I just wondered if you ever imagined getting to that place. And also what inspired you to write the play. I mean, was there a moment that this play came into your head?
- [05:10]
C
What a great question. And it's such a joy to get to be here and talk to you. And so thank you and thank you for coming to my play. In spite of the fact that you had seen a lot of plays about consciousness raising group. Thank you for having me, Faith. I appreciate it. I love what you said about the audience becoming a sort of larger consciousness raising group because I think that was something that I don't know if I intended it on a conscious level, but I knew that the experience of going to the theater is hopefully an experience of consciousness raising. Hopefully you come out of the theater with some kind of awareness or understanding that you didn't have when you went in and you see your own life a little differently and maybe you see the world a little differently. And of course that was the intention of consciousness raising groups. So I love that there's this sort of meta thing happening where the theater itself becomes A group becomes a circle, and there is a sense of the audience and the actors talking to each other. There's no overt audience participation, but the audience, I think, is more present than often happens in the theater.
- [06:27]
B
I'm wondering, was there a moment when you imagined, you know, what made you think of writing this particular play?
- [06:39]
C
I had wanted to write something about second wave feminism, women's liberation for a really long time. My mom worked at Ms. Magazine when I was a kid. And remember going there with her and sitting on the floor while she typed away on her typewriter and playing with the toys that she had in the little pail by her desk or going into the tot lot and playing with other kids who had been brought to work with their moms. And so I really had this very deep in my own consciousness of this is a story that I know it's been told, but it hadn't been told in the way that I wanted to tell it. And I felt like I had something to contribute. And I tried a lot of different versions. I tried a version that was much more overtly about a magazine in New York. I tried it from a lot of different angles. And I think when I unlocked that, it was also a story about a woman trying to understand her mother. You know, when I put something more, not 100% autobiographical, but more personal in the play, and when I realized that I wanted to shift in time between the present and the past and find a sort of frame, fluid way of going back and forth and put that time in conversation with today, that was what really unlocked the structure of it for me.
- [07:58]
B
Well, it's so interesting that you say that about structure, because back when I was often writing about Women's Theater for Ms. Actually, I came up with a few ideas about forms of women's plays. There was the form that was Groups of Women for Colored Girls was the most famous of those. But there were tons of them all over the country. Voices by Susan Griffin, one by Aisha Rahman that I saw in a truck in a Brooklyn park one summer. Groups of women, I call them gangs of women plays. And then there were plays in which one usually young woman would be in relationship to her life, and she would translate her life to the audience in a way that came out of her consciousness as a young woman in women's liberation. Although we didn't talk about that much because it wasn't really some. It didn't help in the theater.
- [09:02]
C
Not a selling point.
- [09:05]
B
And I wrote a play like that. The play about my mother's dying was that. And then there are mother daughter plays, Night Mother, although it's a little later than the period you're talking about, was one of those. But there were many mother daughter plays. So your play combines all three. And it. Which is extraordinary. And I was really sort of amazed by that. And I was amazed that sort of theatrical craft that I've been next to my entire life could suddenly, surprisingly deliver my experience to me. And then I thought, well, that's what Greek tragedy did. It was about changing how you felt. And when your central character comes up on the stage at the beginning and says, look where we are now. And then by the end, we're not there anymore, in a way, it's a kind of miracle. And maybe talk about, was there improvisation involved? How did you sort of invent the characters, give us a little sense of that?
- [10:26]
C
Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, I feel like you'll understand this. The character that was the trickiest for me to unlock was the narrator character.
- [10:36]
B
Right.
- [10:36]
C
As she had the most in common with me and so I could see her the least clearly. The other characters really came out of research, speaking with people who had lived through the time period, imagining, based on looking at primary sources and reading books about the time, you know, a ton of research, basically find sort of foundational underpinnings that I could then build characters from. And so it was a real combination of imagination and research and blending things together. When I tried to find the narrator character who has the most in common with me, I really felt stuck for a long time. You know, what does she want? Why is she on this journey? Why does she need to look back at her mother's life? What the engine that's powering her. And of course, it's personal and political, because I think she's asking this question of what happened or even what went wrong on both a personal level, wondering about her mother's life and wondering if her mother regretted the choices that she made. And then also wondering, as a society, what went wrong. And it took me a while, and it was mostly scripted, but we also found a lot with our incredible actor who plays that character, Susanna Flood, as we got into previews off Broadway and as the audience came, because she's talking to the audience so much, the conversation evolved as we started to sense what the audience needed to hear when they came into the theater.
- [12:11]
B
Yeah, well, it's sort of a. There are many kind of theatrical miracles in the play, little miracles. One is her. The way you first. You think she's someone from the theater coming to tell you to turn your cell phones off. And then suddenly she's character in the play. So that's one thing. Then the character of the one man in the play, it takes place in a gym. So he comes in to play basketball and then he, I don't know about spoiler alerts, but he does turn out to be someone's husband. And in fact, in the great shock of the father of the narrator. But it's very magical and, you know, you don't expect it. And then another theatrical thing that I thought was marvelous was the one character who's not part of the group, the woman, Joanne, is that her name? Who sort of wanders in to the gym to look for her son's backpack and then sort of volunteers to play the narrator's mother because the narrator feels a little weird. No, I am not gonna play a love scene with my father. And she says, oh, well, I'd love to be in the center of the story for a change. And she's a black woman. And that's a kind of mirror. That's that wonderful loosening of in the theater. And then finally, what we would call a coup d', etre, the naked scene, which is a total shock. And I wondered if you wanted to talk a little about that whole aspect of feminism which has to do with the body. And I thought that scene was sort of such a great shorthand to get that across. So I'm curious how that evolved.
- [14:10]
C
Yeah, that scene, I, I had read accounts of consciousness raising groups where they did meet in the nude in the 70s. Not everybody, obviously. Yeah, no, you know, it's interesting. Some people come and say, well, gosh, I never did anything like that. But then some people that I spoke with said they had. And I read an article in Miz about it was called understanding rap groups or making your own rap groups by Leti Pogrebin, where she talks about meeting in the nude with her consciousness raising group. So I, I, I really was interested in this phenomenon. And, and I felt that the fact that a lot of women that I interviewed when I was writing the play were still talking about it meant that it had been really important to them. And so I wanted to find a way to put it in the play. I also was interested in putting women's bodies on stage in a way that wasn't sexualized, objectified, grat, titillating. I wanted them to retain their subjectivity while naked on stage. I was wondering if that was possible. And it's, and it's difficult. And, and so I, I wrote the scene And I thought, I don't know if this is going to work or not. And I think I. I had a fear that the scene would be so talked about that it would sort of flatten the rest of the play like that the play would become that scene scene. That play with that nude scene. Thankfully, it did not, I think, because it's integrated into the story of the play and the story of the characters. And it, to me, feels, in a way, like the heart of the play. And I think it went in rehearsals from being the hardest thing to attempt because we wanted to be very careful to make everyone sure felt. Make sure everyone felt comfortable. We had an intimacy coordinator. We had meetings.
- [16:00]
B
We.
- [16:00]
C
We went very slowly. But now, in a way, I think it's the easiest scene in the play because the actors are able to be so present and truthful, and it's undeniable what's happening on stage. And I think they went from fearing it the most to loving it the most, actually. And they're brilliant in it. They're really brilliant.
- [16:22]
B
Well, I saw a change between the Off Broadway version and. And the Broadway version. I saw exactly what you're describing. The hardest to the easiest. What I thought it was about was all that part of the kind of looking at one's vagina through the speculum. The kind of opening up, as it were, of. I never did that either, but it felt like it stood in for that. It stood in for our bodies, ourselves. It did a lot of heavy lifting in the story and was also charming and funny.
- [17:02]
C
Yeah.
- [17:03]
B
Yeah. The promo for this event talks about, well, what do we hope for in the future? Where are we now? And one of the most powerful moments. Well, scenes in the play is when the daughter is feeling. Believing the sort of propaganda that the women's movement didn't accomplish anything and that everything the women's movement did accomplish is now gone. And it's. You get to. You get the mother who by now has died. I mean, by the present, the remembered present of the. You know, the present has died. And so she comes back and you have that scene, and it's a kind of exploration of that very question. So maybe you could talk a little about how that evolved as becoming the end of the play. Because it's quite risky, but could have just really. But it doesn't.
- [18:11]
C
I know.
- [18:11]
B
It's.
- [18:12]
C
I mean, the whole play felt risky, honestly, you know, So I don't think it stood out to me as more risky than doing a play about this time period putting, as you said, naked women on stage. Putting. Doing a play with seven women in it and creating a world in which everyone cared about each of them equally. All of those things felt complicated and risky. But I think the end really evolved out of this language that I developed over the course of the play where one character can be played by multiple actors. You know, the play starts with the narrator saying, okay, I'm gonna play my mom now, and jumps into her mother's life, which is both a theatrical moment, but also, for me, a sort of riff on the joke of, what if I become my mom? Do you know what I mean? Are we becoming our mothers? And so she literalizes that by becoming her mother. And then as the play goes on, different actors play that mother character. So by the end, when she's played as a ghost, really coming back after her death to have one more moment with her daughter, it's sort of been set up in the theatrical language of the play, which I think helps the audience go with it. And I felt that. I felt that the play. It's sort of hard to describe because there's so many levels that the play's operating on. But one other structural device of the play is the daughter narrator character interviewing all of these women past. And so I also felt, since I had set up this language of these interviews sporadically coming through the. The final interview, the most important interview, to talk to the person who she really misses and wants to talk to more than anyone.
- [20:01]
B
Anyone. Yeah.
- [20:02]
C
And she says in that scene, you know, maybe this whole thing was just because I wanted to see so that there's this sort of emotional need underpinning all of the political questions. And I think that was a really important element of the play. That is the reason that that scene can work well.
- [20:20]
B
It also works wonderfully to have the Margie character, who is the one who's the least quote, unquote, liberated at the beginning of the play, be that mother. Because you sort of believe her journey. So she has kind of the authority to say to the daughter, no, your mother went a great distance. And she was. You know, she made good choices in her own behalf. You know, I thought that was powerful.
- [20:54]
C
Yeah. And that what you think that your mother wanted might not be what she wanted. You know, we have these visions of what our mother's lives should or shouldn't have been, but often they don't necessarily have to do with what our mothers actually wanted for themselves or. Or, who knows? So to me, deep, the sort of root of that fantasy is. Is what if you could ask your mom, did she regret these choices. Would she have done it differently? And of course, there are also unanswerable questions, because who knows? But it's. It's. The opportunity to ask them is really what the play is embodying.
- [21:33]
B
And also, I felt when I wrote a play with my mother, dead mother, in it, that I did get to have her again. And, you know, I know mine was more. We didn't have memoir then, but my play was more of a memoir than yours. Yours sort of is the form is memory, but, you know, you've changed various things, but. So that was interesting to me. And the other thing was that she gives her daughter absolution, as it were. She says, you know, you're doing fine. I'm okay. You know, Meanwhile, everyone in the audience can hardly see what's going on in.
- [22:17]
C
The stage because they're crying so hard.
- [22:18]
B
But. And that's another thing I wanted to ask you about. It must be extraordinary to have a play actually achieve what in your wildest dreams you hoped it would. And I'm just wondering if you imagine that this could happen. I mean, it's really extraordinary what. How it's doing and that. I mean, everybody is talking about it, you know, I'm not used to going through my ordinary life and having people talk about some feminist thing that. So I talk a little about the experience of having the play on Broadway and having the play become such a big event.
- [23:04]
C
And it's really gone beyond. I mean, you said in my wildest dreams. And it's like, this is even beyond my wildest dreams, I think, really, in terms of what it. In terms of the way it connects with people, with audiences. You know, it's interesting, that whole end of the play, when we did it in rehearsal, we could barely get to the end of the play. Cause everyone was just falling apart in a good way, you know, but just. It was so intense and emotional, especially the first time we rehearsed it on our feet. So I knew that there was something even in that rehearsal room that was emerging that was really, at least affecting all of us. And you never know. Well, are the things that are affecting me and the creative team going to get over the footlights, so to speak, and reach the audience? You just don't know. I've definitely worked on plays where we had an amazing show in the rehearsal room, and it never fully translated to the theater, so. So I just feel really grateful that that has happened and that people are. I feel that, in a way, we have been able to welcome people into the experience that we were all Having in the rehearsal room and share it with them. And then honestly, I was having. When I was writing it, because I cried a lot of tears at my desk while I was writing it. We should say it's also funny. It's not just.
- [24:36]
B
Yes, I wanted to bring that up. I mean, and that's what, you know, when I tell people about that time and I say, well, consciousness raising group. And everybody thinks that that's a big depressing thing. And one of the things that you get is you get all the feminist jokes. I mean, those are jokes, the characters are very funny, and they're not funny because you turned it into the experience, into a Broadway play. They're funny because it's the kind of oy vey feminist humor really. You know, Margie's speech about the dishes. You know, everybody's been there. I mean, so many women in the audience have been there. And, you know, and that's part of the comedy is the recognition. These are laughs of recognition.
- [25:30]
C
Yeah. That was important to me because I've seen, and I'm sure you've seen much more even than I've seen feminism depicted as a joke. These silly, angry, bra burning, whatever the cliche is. And then I've also seen it depicted as just not fun at all, really. Like just a struggle. And I wanted to find a way to represent that time and those women and that. That spirit of activism in a way that felt funny, as you said, because we recognize ourselves and we recognize what they're going through and that the laughs are deeper than just a send up. I really didn't want it to just be a joke, but I wanted it to be very funny because I think they were very funny and are funny. Right. And I also thought a lot, and we talked a lot in rehearsal about how a sense of fun and chemistry, like deep fun, can actually power activism.
- [26:27]
B
That.
- [26:29]
C
That is part of what gave them the energy to keep coming back and back and back and that if it's not fun, you stop showing up and then nothing gets done. So. So it was interesting when Gloria Steinem came to the show Off Broadway, everyone said, you know, thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you've done. And she just kept saying it was fun, it was fun, you know, And I thought, oh, people miss that. I think a lot, that it was actually fun. Yeah.
- [26:56]
B
And I knew Anselma d', Alolio, who. It's, I think that the Isadora character feels inspired by and also the character of Dora. Those women, there are so many of those women, those achingly coming out. Women who turn into the toughest feminists of all and all the complications. But what you manage to get through is a kind of love between the women. Like, when is it Susan, who's the blonde?
- [27:33]
C
Is the young blonde? Is Dora. Dora.
- [27:36]
B
Oh, yeah, there's two Doras. When everybody gathers around her, when she thinks she's losing her job. And there are other things that happen, and that's so real that kind of thing actually happened. And to have. For me to have sort of something that. That I was involved with, depicted is extraordinary. I wondered, and I mean, I was saying that in the promo for Library of America, wanted us to talk about change and what's going on now. And I went on the road with my memoir about my pre Roe abortion, which is really about a young woman coming of age into a self. It took place before I was involved in women's liberation. But as I traveled, seemed like every woman in America, including a Lyft driver, had had an abortion and wanted to talk about how it had affected her life. And I wondered. I wondered if people. I don't know whether you've had talkbacks or whether you've just had conversations. I wonder if this is operating as political theater in the sense of changing people's minds. I wonder if there have been any experiences of those kinds of conversations.
- [28:58]
C
It's a great question because I think the relationship between theater and politics is so. It's so interesting to me because I never wanted to make a show that felt like I was preaching or telling people what to do. I feel like audiences really retreat when you start to try to tell them what to think, as you know. But you can open a door and offer something where it's an invitation to maybe see the world a little bit differently or think differently about their own life. I think this show does that for people on a personal level. First of all, it often creates in people a desire to call their mom or talk to their mom or talk about their mom or come back to the show a second time with their mom or their child or not child, but, you know, adult child. So it. It. I think it opens people up to have conversations on a personal level that they might not have had on a political level. I think in New York, a lot of the people who come honestly are already pretty interested in women's equality, I would hope, you know, so it's not. I think this play might be very different to do it in other parts of the country. Not to assume anything, but. But I do feel like it reminds people of A time when regular people came together in community and created change. And I think that's the thing that we need to be reminded of, that it is possible that you can do it and that meeting in person actually is meaningful and valuable. That through that community, great change can happen. Because I think, goes without saying, we're living in very isolated times and in very despairing times. So I think it rekindles a little bit of hope in people without necessarily telling them exactly what to do with that feeling of hope.
- [30:49]
B
Yeah, well, that's. I mean, I find myself wanting to see it again. I mean, I've seen it three times now. I want to see it again. You know, it's a kind of. It's like a tonic. It's like a tonic. And I think that's what theater historically has been, which is wonderful that you've accomplished that with this material. I was noticing more in the Broadway than in the Off Broadway that there were men in the audience and there were men who were loving it and laughing at the jokes and cheering and jumping up to do the standing ovation before anybody else. And that made me. You know, that was sort of interesting. And also the character, the one male character in the play. I wondered if you could talk about how he came into being. I don't imagine he existed as you started to think about the play. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
- [31:50]
C
No, you're absolutely right. I did not know that he was going to show up. He was a surprise to me, and he's a surprise to the audience. And I think he's a disruptor, you know, of this. The whole first act exists as this talking circle between women, and we start to learn about their lives and learn about their relationships. And then suddenly a man walks in and sort of shatters that vibe. And I think it felt important to bring him into the play. And I have to say, when I write, the moments I love the most when I'm writing or when I surprise myself or when the work surprises, that was really one of those moments. He showed up, and what was so interesting was, here are these women. I had put them on a basketball court, as you said, because that's the only place that they can find that they can meet. And they're in the basement of a rec center at a basketball court. And they have no intention of playing basketball. The space is not designed for them in any way at the time. And then this man comes in and picks up a basketball and fits into the space perfectly. Exactly. Starts shooting around. And so it's also Showing a sense of. Of the way that he is comfortable in his environment and that the world was designed to support and facilitate his needs. I was sort of making that. That point with him coming in as well.
- [33:17]
B
And I remember from back in the day, there were some women who had very strong marriages, and they had these really difficult struggles with their husbands, like Margie in the play does. And what some of these men began to show, they would show up at the benefits and the this and the that and march in the marches and so on. And I really. I remember being completely shocked when he walked in. But again, it's very theatrical. You know, you must have thought, oh, goody. You know, this is just such a great moment that's gonna happen. And then he becomes sort of integrated into the story. And then. Was it a surprise? When did you know when he came in that he was gonna turn out to be her father or not?
- [34:14]
C
I knew pretty quickly when he entered who he was gonna be. Because I was interested in this question that she was asking of why did my mother, to a certain degree, give up her radical origins? Or why did she pursue a traditional life of wife and mother when she started as a more radical feminist? How did that happen? And so I was interested in how, in a way, he becomes one half of that equation. You know, he becomes the other choice. The paths diverge for her. And I was interested in a larger conversation between love and freedom, whether it's possible to have both, which is something that I think about in my own life all the time. You know, I have children. I'm married. I'm also an artist. Like, those things don't go together.
- [35:08]
B
Right.
- [35:10]
C
Her trying to navigate that was really interesting to me. And just seeing a woman caught between these different forces and trying to figure out how to have an autonomous identity within. Within all of that, and. And wondering if the women in the group have her best interest at heart. You know, at one point she says, well, do I just do what you all want me to? Like, how do I find autonomy? How do I find that as a woman in the world? That is really one of the huge questions of the play.
- [35:40]
B
Well, it's interesting that you say that. As you were talking, I was thinking that that business of the work, children split. We were sort of at the beginning of our careers. So if we were married was like, actually, I'm really going to try to also be a writer. But what you are now talking about, this idea of autonomy, this idea of love and freedom, those are more sort of contemporary issues that women have now because so many of us do things, you know, we're not like Dora in a job. We're, you know, we're sort of makers and creative creators on our own, creators of our own companies, creator writers, artists. And, you know, how. And I see it with my students, you know, how do I do both? And while I always saw it as, you know, I didn't have, of course I had eight brothers and sisters, so there were other reasons I didn't have children, but I decided not to do both. But I was sort of, I don't, you know, and there's a generation of us who are like that. But then there are many, many women who did both and have my generation and then of your generation, the struggle is still there. And I think it's so interesting that you brought that into the present.
- [37:14]
C
Yeah. And it was operating in our process in a lot of different ways, because not only was it part of the content of the play, but a large number of the actresses in the play had small children while they were trying to do the play. So, I mean, two year olds, you know, one year olds. We had a breast pump backstage at the Roundabout Theater. And people were pumping backstage right before they went on. And during rehearsal, people would watch each other's baby monitors to, you know, see what was happening on the nanny cam or whatever, you know, and there was a very real sense, I think, from the performers that they were living that, that challenge or that question every day that they came to rehearsal and left their kids behind. So it was very present, this conversation. It's, as you said, it's evolved, but it's still, I think, really looms large for a lot of people who are trying to balance parenthood of any kind with other aspirations.
- [38:19]
B
And what you get at in the play, particularly in the mother daughter conversation, but throughout you get. It's really about a divided soul. I mean, what you're talking about in the, what the women are involved in in the play is renovating, rejuvenating, remaking what a woman's soul is involved in. So what you're talking about now, it's a real split. Cause you don't stop being a soul filled mother because you're also a soul filled artist. You have to somehow do them both at the same time or however you work that out. And it's. So that is one of the, you know, the play, you know, sort of begins in the now when Susanna comes out and starts talking to us about what we've done to get there and what Times Square is like to walk through, and then we're sort of. By the way, is that any of that improvised, what she talks about?
- [39:24]
C
But, yeah, no, it's all scripted. But she's such a spectacular actor that it feels like she's just coming up with it in the moment. But it's scripted. She's just so gifted.
- [39:36]
B
Yeah, well, and then there's the other thing. She then pulls us into this magical space of memory. The past or a new or the beginnings of a new world. And it's really. It's. Everybody has to go to it. That's what I say. I never walk around and I say, no, go anyway. There's Matt.
- [40:00]
A
Maybe that's. I feel like I should be carrying a basketball.
- [40:04]
C
Oh, the man just entered the conversation.
- [40:09]
A
Anybody that felt like a good place to turn to some of the questions. Thank you for this amazing conversation. It felt like a good place to turn to some of the questions from people. Some of them are short answers. Ones are probably longer, but Christina Baptista from Greenwich, Connecticut, is asking about changes between the Off Broadway and the Broadway versions. And were there any responses to the Off Broadway production from audiences, performers, you. That led to changes between that and the Broadway production? And could you talk about that and how you felt about those changes?
- [40:45]
C
Yeah, there were small changes. And I'm really glad to hear Honor say that it felt like it brightened and lifted and got better on Broadway, because I do think it's true that a lot of times the opposite can happen just because of the larger theater or the sort of pressures of Broadway. But I had a little list in my mind the entire time that we were performing at Roundabout of things that I wanted to address if I ever got more time to work on the play. It's to time such a short rehearsal process. Off Broadway, it's three weeks. You're discovering the play for the first time. We were making huge changes in the text every night, even during previews, just experimenting. So it was less based on audience response and more based on my own places where I just wasn't satisfied yet. And then the other thing that happened, I think that was a big change between Off Broadway and Broadway was that the actors just had more time with their roles. They did a ton of research over the summer. They went really deep. They read all kinds of. All kinds of books, including women's liberation feminist writings that Inspired A Revolution and still can, and Clara Bingham's book the Movement, and, you know, all kinds of books with primary sources in them to deepen their understanding, because a lot of them got cast right before we did the show at the Roundabout and just simply didn't have time to really fully go as deep as they wanted to. So I think that deepened the performances a lot. That and just the time of living with their characters just created these just incredible, incredible performances. I can't say enough about this ensemble and the time together. They just trust each other so much more now, and they're just. They're working like a great basketball team.
- [42:32]
A
In a way that's good just by just.
- [42:36]
B
There's one edition. The blackboard.
- [42:39]
C
Yes, yes, the blackboard. The blackboard. That was another place where we were never quite satisfied. There's a moment when a blackboard comes downstage into the group and a character. It's a kind of groovy, almost surreal moment of teaching the other members of the group about artificial wombs. And we just never felt like we quite cracked, that we knew that we wanted to do something different in that section of the play, and we didn't quite know. So that was something that we found in rehearsal for the Broadway version, that it was just a really fun, bizarre, theatrical moment that, again, we never knew if it was going to work before we did it in performances, and we ended up really loving it and keeping it.
- [43:26]
A
A sort of related question, and you both talked about this a little bit, but Paula Krebs is, you know, points to the balance in the play between, you know, comedy and emotional intensity and historical faithfulness, like those three things together. And I guess the question is, how hard was it to strike that balance? And did you feel along the way, things pulling in one direction and you had to pull it back in the other? How did you get those elements so beautifully in balance?
- [43:55]
C
It's a great question. The relationship between comedy and drama, or, you know, the more painful parts of the play, is something that I'm always calibrating. I tend to love to make an audience laugh. It's just a delightful feeling. As a writer, it's one of the only moments where you can really see that people are with you and paying attention. If it's quiet in the theater, sometimes you don't entirely know, but if you get that laugh, you know that they're together and they're with you. So I always have some humor in my work, but I'm also always very careful. And this is also the director and the actors to calibrate so that the humor doesn't totally run away with it. Because if it's just laugh, laugh, laugh all the time, people will stop actually listening to the other things you're trying to say and the other things you're trying to do, that's my experience. So a lot of that was also calibrated by our director, Whitney White, who is a fabulous director and found moments to stop and put the brakes on the laughs, even from the first scene, so that people would also understand, okay, this is funny, but you need to also be paying attention to what we're saying. And there's a lot of pain and a lot of frustration, a lot of vulnerability in this play to pay attention to as well. And then in terms of the historical faithfulness, I didn't want to create a history lesson, and I didn't want to put anything in that would bump people in terms of, oh, that never happened, or that would take people out. But at the same time, I really wanted to let my imagination and my sense of drama take precedent over trying to do something that was perfectly historically accurate. So that was a balancing act as well. And there's a line at the end of the play where the mother character says to the daughter who's been narrating the play, you've gotten most of this wrong. And that line was a very liberating line for me, because, of course, how could I get it right? I wasn't there. I didn't see everything. It's not a documentary. It's an impression. It's a dramatization. It's a fictional work of imagination. And acknowledging that felt honest and freeing.
- [46:07]
B
I just want to say one thing. I always get very angry when things are wrong. Nothing was wrong in it. I mean, it might have been imagined, but it was imagined by a consciousness that understood where she was coming from in terms of the actual history of the moment.
- [46:30]
A
Yeah, well, I definitely want to follow up on that, but before that, I have to attend to the fact that you've been so persuasive that everybody now on this program wants to see the play. But some people are in New Mexico and in Tucson, and they're asking two questions. One is, are there plans for the play to travel so that maybe they have a chance to see it if they can't get to New York? And then a related question. Is the script going to be published and be available for people to read it if they can't actually see the play?
- [46:59]
C
So, yes, to both of those things. We're actually. It's not announced publicly, but it will hopefully, fingers crossed, be playing in regional theaters next season around the country. So hopefully coming to a theater near you or near ish. And then if not, there will be a Published script also. I'm working on that now, getting it ready for publication. And that'll be available as well.
- [47:26]
A
Right.
- [47:26]
B
So done by a million theaters forever, this film.
- [47:30]
A
Yeah, you have. There are people who are waiting to see it. Some of them are from Indianapolis and Tucson and Santa Fe. Several people ask, oh, this is from Linda Perkins in Pasadena. She says, can you talk about the black woman character? Did she really exist? Which I think, is she based on a person or people? And what in your mind, what draws her to the group? And I guess if you could just talk about. I mean, the whole. I mean, Honor already asked you about this to some degree, but it's just interesting. Also, when that character enters the play, there's also. The audience feels like the fourth wall being pushed at or even broken through to some extent. And there's. It feels a little bit different from. Not from all other parts of the play because, of course, the narrator does that too, but just all other parts of the play. So maybe if you could just talk about that and how that all came to.
- [48:20]
B
Well, of course, there are two black women in the play. One who's in the group and one who's.
- [48:25]
A
Yes, this is a question I think is. Well, actually, I could be wrong. I assumed the question was about the woman looking for Herzlan's backpack, but maybe you could address the question about race and the movement and the play altogether.
- [48:38]
C
Yeah, of course. It's a big part of the conversation around the movement, and it was something that I felt was really important to include in the play and try to think about in the context of the story that I was trying to tell. The woman in the group who's there from the first scene, whose name is Celeste, was actually inspired by a feminist named Celestine Warehouse, who has passed away, unfortunately, but who. A bunch of the women that I interviewed talked about. And so I was interested in who she was, what she was thinking. She wrote a book called Woman Power, which is actually the book that we use as a prop on stage when we're talking about her book, Celeste's book. So while it's, again, not an actual representation of that person, it's inspired by, loosely, her and her work, and also inspired by other women that I met and knew and conversations that we had in the workshops about this character. She's come back to Ohio because her mother is sick and she's taking care of her mother, and she's sort of trapped alone in Ohio and looking for like minded people, and the only people she can find are these women in this consciousness raising group, and also her character is an opportunity to look at not only race, but also caregiving. You know, she's taking care of her mother. It's another mother daughter relationship, actually, and another person who feels circumscribed by their role as a caregiver, which is something that I think a lot of women relate to. So she's. But she's bought in. She wants to be in the group. And then there's another. There's another woman who comes looking for her backpack. Another black woman who is not interested in what the group is doing. And so it was a way of looking at different perspectives on feminism, especially from the point of view of black women and what their role was in the women's liberation movement and how complicated it was to either participate or reject it. Both. I wanted to sort of look at both ways of thinking about feminism from their perspective.
- [50:49]
B
Yeah, I wondered just, you know, a craft thing about writing African American characters as a white woman. And I know the director is African American. I wondered how. What participation the actors had in helping craft their characters. In rehearsal.
- [51:11]
C
Yeah, it was a very collaborative room. Whitney White, the director, again, was a huge part of understanding who these women might be, why they might be in the room, what they might be looking for. And then the actors who played them, Crystalline Lloyd and Kayla Davion, both incredible, incredible actors who also had a big role in making sure that everything felt like it lined up with their experiences and that it felt authentic to them. That was really important to me. And then I would say, even beyond Whitney, Kayla and Kristalyn, our whole team really participated in the storytelling on every level. Queen Jean, our costume designer, who is a black trans woman, real activist and advocate in her own right. Chassi, our lighting designer, who's the first Filipina lighting center on Broadway. It was a very diverse team, and everyone talked in the room. Everyone had things to say. That's the thing. It's funny you said, like, the audience was a consciousness raising group, but I would also say our artistic team is a consciousness raising group. Our actors were a consciousness raising group. And we all spoke up and we all contributed, and everyone's voice was really important. And I think that also allowed me to tell this story.
- [52:28]
A
Thank you. Well, I think we have time for one more question. And Thomas Cassidy asks or says this book and this discussion and the play will touch a lot of young people who weren't there. What is one thing? And this is really a question for both of you. What is one thing you hope they'll take away and pass on to other people.
- [52:53]
C
Should I start on? Yeah, I One great surprise of this process has been how many young people have come to the play. Honor mentioned the men, and that's a huge part of it. But also the young people who didn't live through this period and for whom a lot of what's talked about in this play is new information, really new information, which is surprising and great that they're getting this information now. I've been really heartened by that, to be honest, to see how much they care and how much they want to be in this conversation and how deeply it hits them. And I would say in terms of the thing that they want to, that I would love for them to take away, it is that sense that regular people can change the world and that gathering in community is meaningful and powerful.
- [53:42]
A
Beautifully said.
- [53:43]
B
Beautifully said. I'm not going to add to it except to say that I'm so tired of feminism being thought of as an opinion. And I love that. It's, again, a deep conversation and I'm sure people do talk about the plays they've seen. So it is a conversation and so it is. Theater changing the world. Yeah.
- [54:10]
A
Thank you both so much. You've been listening to Bess Wall discuss her acclaimed play Liberation at the James Earl Jones Theater through February 1st with Honor Moore, editor of the Library of America collection Women's Liberation Feminist Writings that Inspired a Revolution and Still Can. Tonight's program concludes the 2025 season of LOA Live. It has truly been a tremendous pleasure to spend these hours with all of you. Please watch the website for news about 2026 LOA Live programs, including programs on John Guare's plays, powerful writings from the era of Jim Crow, and several programs marking the 250th anniversary of 1776, including a deep dive into the language and ideas of the Declaration of Independence and an exploration of stories by Irving Daniel Hawthorne and others wrestling with the meaning of the American Revolution. Plus George Templeton Strong Civil War Diaries, Elmore Leonard's centenary and more. In February, Adam Gopnik returns with a new online course on Philip Roth and John their literary achievements and parallel lives and careers. If you missed Adam's course last fall on American Writers in Paris, you will not want to miss this one. Details and links to register for LOA programs and courses can be found on our website, LOA.org where you'll also find information about all the LOA volumes mentioned tonight and links to purchase them and other volumes of great American writers. LOA LIVE is made possible with support from Library of America members and viewers. We're grateful to everyone here tonight for joining us. If you're not already a Library of America member, please consider joining. Members receive special discounts, including discounts on courses, invitations to exclusive events and other benefits, while supporting Library of America's nonprofit mission. You can learn more at loa.org membership thanks so much again to Best Wall and Honor Moore for a really deep and insightful and entertaining conversation tonight. Thank you both, and thank you all for coming and have a great evening.
- [56:17]
C
Thank you.