Consciousness Raising With The New Play ‘Liberation’

Before it was a standalone publication, Ms. Magazine made its debut as a special insert in the December, 1971 issue of New York Magazine. In her essay, Sisterhood, Gloria Steinem wrote about the powerful bond women have, especially when joining forces as feminists. This test issue sold out its 300,000 copies in a matter of days.

“If it weren’t for the women’s movement, I might still be dissembling away. But the ideas of this great sea-change in women’s view of ourselves are contagious and irresistible,” wrote Steinem in Sisterhood. “They hit women like a revelation, as if we had left a small dark room and walked into the sun.”

At the time when Steinem’s essay was published women could be fired for being pregnant. They couldn’t sue an employer for sexual harassment. They needed a male to co-sign a loan and could only get a credit card in their husband’s name.

Growing up playwright Bess Wohl had a front row seat to the second-wave feminist movement. For part of her childhood her mother was a writer at Ms. Magazine. As a four-year-old she marched in parades and attended protests.

“I grew up immersed in the issues they were grappling with, and deeply inspired by other women who worked at Ms.,” says the prolific Wohl, whose funny and thought-provoking plays have been performed on Broadway, (Grand Horizons), off-Broadway (Make Believe, Small Mouth Sounds) and around the world. She is also a filmmaker who made her feature film debut with Baby Ruby and wrote for the series, Extrapolations.

Her intrigue continued to deepen over time. “As I grew up and became a wife and mother, I found myself wondering about my own mother’s radical past,” says Wohl. And while she didn’t want to write an expressly autobiographical piece, she felt the pull to explore how grass-roots feminism was championed in local consciousness-raising (or CR) groups. In those intimate gatherings, which were so key to the feminist movement, women shared stories about the struggle of living in a world so skewed towards the patriarchy. There was power in the sharing.

Liberation, Wohl’s newest play, a Roundabout Theatre Company production, takes place in a 1970s CR group in a suburban Ohio town. Lizzie, the organizer, who posted signs announcing the group, which meets in the basement basketball court in a rec center, insists she is not the leader. The eclectic mix of women, who range in age, social and marital status, are different in every way. But their passion for change deeply bonds them. Liberation also time travels as Lizzy’s daughter tries to better understand her mother and her choices.

Directed by Whitney White, Liberation manages to be both funny and deeply poignant. Currently at the Laura Pels Theatre, the play features a powerful ensemble including Betsy Aidem, Audrey Corsa, Kayla Davion, Susannah Flood, Kristolyn Lloyd, Irene Sofia Lucio, Charlie Thurston and Adina Verson.

In birthing Liberation, Wohl turned to her real-life mother who played an essential role in the show’s creation. She found her mother’s contributions to be enlightening in myriad ways. “Making the play was a way of having important conversations with her and getting to know her more fully,” she says. “Part of what the play is interrogating is whether we can ever know our parents beyond the role they play in our lives. And that is certainly something that I was profoundly grateful to be able to find with my own mother as I worked on Liberation.”

Wohl hopes that Liberation will inspire people to think about their own connections with their parents or children, and how to be more present and honest in these important relationships, that are so essential in our foundation. She also hopes that the play inspires people, who don’t know much about 1970s activism, to be a bit more curious about it.

“I hope that it resonates with people who lived through the era and makes them feel seen,” she says. “And for those who feel concerned or even frightened by the current state of our world, I hope it gives them a place to come into community with others and maybe even feel hopeful.”

Jeryl Brunner: Why is it important to tell this story now?

Bess Wohl: When I wrote this play and even when it was programmed at The Roundabout, of course I had no idea what would be happening in the world when the play met audiences. We have lived through a time of great change even during our brief rehearsal period. We were in rehearsal on the day of the inauguration.

That said, I think this is a time when many people are wondering how to find a voice or play a part in the direction of our country. And how much self-determination they can have in the landscape of their own lives. This play doesn’t answer those questions exactly, but it creates a space in which to investigate them and perhaps proposes a path forward.

Brunner: What did your mother tell you about her CR (or consciousness raising) meetings?

Wohl: I actually spoke with many women who had been in CR groups back in the 1970’s as I was creating this piece. A lot of them were still in touch with one another even today, and had vivid memories of life-changing moments of awakening in the groups, achieved by sharing stories and truths from their own lives with other women.

I also did research and read first-hand accounts of CR groups and was inspired by what the women in them did—from finding the courage to share some of their most closely-guarded secrets and thus learning that they were not alone in their experiences, to meeting in the nude and sharing their feelings about their own bodies.

Brunner: How do you see the feminist movement today versus back then?

Wohl: I am definitely not a historian or an expert in political movements, but I can say it has been heartening to see women make leaps forward throughout my own lifetime as our understanding of not just women’s rights, but also human rights, continues to evolve. I hope that we can continue to build a world in which we can treat all people as “human, levelly human,” as the character Celeste, played by Kristolyn Lloyd, says in the play.

Brunner: You began your career as a performer and then became a playwright/writer. What inspired you to make the change?

Wohl: I attended the Yale School of Drama as an acting student, but while I was there I began to write plays for my classmates and put them on in the student-run Yale Cabaret. I find that my acting background is incredibly helpful in creating characters and writing scenes that feel playable to me. One of my gut-checks when I’m writing is whether the role I’m creating is one that I would be able to access as an actor, even if it’s not at all aligned with my own identity.

I think my acting background allows me to work from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. It also has given me great respect for what actors contribute to the process of making a play, and has helped me be very attuned to their feedback on the work, which is often profoundly valuable to the creation of the piece.

Brunner: Rejection is part of any creative endeavor. When you experience rejection, how do you find a way to keep writing, keep creating?

Wohl: The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron talks about how any warrior must be a little bit “broken-hearted.” I find this to be true about writing as well. It helps to write from a tender, slightly broken-hearted place. Not that you always have to be miserable when you’re writing, but you do have to be in touch with your own vulnerability and broken-heartedness (or at least I do) in order to make your best work. So, when I experience difficulties, which are absolutely inevitable, I try to weave that broken-heartedness into my work and see it as a source of creativity and strength. It’s a profoundly connected place to inhabit, because it’s something we all share and cannot avoid.

Brunner: Why do you love working with Roundabout Theatre Company?

Wohl: I am so grateful to Roundabout for taking a risk on this ambitious world-premiere. There are always rocky moments along the way as a brand new play is coming together, and Roundabout never wavered in their trust in the process and their belief in the project. It was Roundabout, along with Whitney White, our brilliant director, our glorious team of designers, our beautiful company of actors, that helped me find the soul of this piece that I am so grateful to now have the opportunity to share with audiences.