REVIEWS Wallflower Order Shines at CCC

By Judith Eckelmeyer

The Wallflower Order's October 9th performance at the Metro Campus of Cuyahoga Community College encompassed a world of culture, past and present, and prismatically captured the lives, dreams, suffering and humor of women through motion, music and words. To call the five members of the Collective "dancers" would be to limit the range of their presentation, their art. "Enactors"-perhaps. "Artists"-certainly, and yet in a rough-hewn . fashion rather than the refined, silken evocation of the word. They spoke, intoned, sang, cried out as they writhed, leapt, contorted, soared—even bringing their messages in sign for the hearing impaired. Their medium was all of the environment: taped background music by a wide range of creators from Mozart through Sweet Honey In The Rock, costumes ranging from the simplest shirt and tights to wondrous many-colored scarves larger than they, and their own incredibly resilient, expressive and strong bodies.

Lest the latter be seen as a "by-the way compo-

nent, let me point out these moments: In "Immigration," the ensemble formed sea-shore waves and simultaneously allowed each member "disembark" from the ship which rode the waves to the new land. The motions of water and human passage over it were utterly convincing in the flow and timing of the women's bodies. In the second half of the program, the demanding solo in "Presente" was followed by a stunningly simple setting of the women in a "frozen" posture akin to the parade of figures around a Grecian urn, to begin "Hey Canto;" the soloist of "Presente," coming off stage only seconds before, also took this frozen posture, steady, breathing in great gasps through the first moments of rigorously controlled movement, but uncompromisingly firm in all her motions in the scene.

As for content and cause for these dances, there is no question that political and social commentary are the impelling force for the Wallflower Order. Their program is constructed from beginning to end around their outrage on behalf of oppressed peoples-the dispossessed Native Americans; the immigrant women who made up a huge part of the

A Survivor Speaks Out

By Valerie Renee Griffith

On Monday, November 15, Katherine Brady, author of the best-selling autobiographical novel Father's Days, spoke at Strosacker Auditorium on the Case Western Reserve campus. Father's Days is an account of Brady's ordeal as an incest victim from

Katherine Brady

the ages of 8 to 18. In it she tells of her struggle to overcome the trauma of incest and the need to expose incest as a crime.

Having seen Brady on the "Phil Donahue Show" in 1979, I was anxious to meet her, so I arranged for an interview. I was immediately impressed by how she seemed to have changed since her 1979 appearance. She did not exude the same rage I had seen.

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This Katherine Brady was alive with enthusiasm. Everything about her appearance, walk and manner suggested a new-found self-confidence. She was open and sharing, and soon I found myself sharing my own trauma as an incest victim-a part of my past I had previously disclosed to only two people. Her warmth and caring said "I've been there. I understand".

Brady explained that when she first started to deal with the effects of incest on her life, she was in three different support groups, seeing a therapist a couple of times a week, and taking assertiveness training-and karate lessons. "The only way that a victim is ever going to overcome the effects of the incest, she said, "is to get help, whether it be a therapist or getting involved in a support group. You have to be able to work all the anger and pain out of your system."

At the lecture, Brady started with a short exercise, instructing the audience to stand up, close their eyes, and remain silent for a couple of minutes. Afterward she asked some of us how it felt. All admitted feeling discomfort. "You started to feel uncomfortable after two to three minutes," Brady said. "I lived in that type of isolation for 27 years of my life". I knew full well that sense of isolation-the silence that results from the horror and anger an incest victim experiences and the guilt and fear that it could happen again.

Brady used similar techniques throughout her lecture to "link minds" with the audience. She gave all the statistics a "professional" social worker or clinical psychologist would, but with a difference: she was a victim, a voice screaming out against the abuses and inadequacies of relationships in our socie-

ty.

To ease the tension in the emotionally-charged room, Brady occasionally turned to humor, for example by remarking that Phyllis Schlafly believes incest to be a problem of the 1950's. "Of course you have to realize," she quipped, "that the last movie this woman went to was The Sound of Music.' Describing the effects of incest, Brady explained

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working force in the pitifully inhuman conditions in America's factories, and their roles informing labor unions for their own survival; today's American women who, shaped by many cultural factors, learn to adapt beyond traditional roles to selfhood; the women, children and men of third-world countries who struggle against organized forces that not only curtail physical and social freedoms but even sap the strength of the spirit and imagination.

Their final number, "Mariposa," combined Latin American folk myth with political overtones, the felled guerilla women who return as butterflies, and an ancient traditional symbol of the soul, the feminine "Psyche," as butterfly, suggesting a transformational immortality for women, rocking, giving birth to themselves from the cocoon. Theirs was an impressive message, full of freeing candor and sometimes brash and aggressive defiance, and always reminding of the often untapped rich • resources of women.

Problems in the production were negligible. If Susie Millman's "American Myth" could be shortened and honed, or given a lighter tone of humor, the impact would be stronger. Some important spoken phrases in "New World" got lost and, I suspect, would have added immensely to the strength of the visual image of a hypocritical social caste system. On the other hand, the collectively signed "Defiance" (Dorothy Miles) was percussive and vibrant, interestingly contrapuntal, and unequivocally ada-

mant.

Oven Productions is to be congratulated on securing the Wallflower Order for an appearance in

Cleveland.

Making Light

By Linda Homuth

A cold, rainy fall evening heralded the debut of comedienne Kate Clinton at Kent State University's Bowman Hall on Saturday, October 16th. The inclement weather, however, did not dampen the enthusiasm of the modest crowd who attended. Clinton's appearance in Kent, sponsored by Tenth Muse Productions, represented her first stop on a tour of fifteen cities across the United States.

Kate Clinton, who credits or discredits Syracuse, New York as her birthplace, dominated the simply dressed stage. The stark lighting, although creating an intimate ambience, was inadequate to capture the comedienne's subtle facial expressions and resulted in an abnormal focus on intermingling wall shadows.

The energy level was high as Kate began her journey into the world of feminist humor. With a degree of pride in her voice, Clinton informed the audience that she takes all her material from real life experience. Then for approximately ninety minutes, the former English teacher shared that experience, covering topics ranging from stories about tampon insertion to programming ideas for a feminist television

network.

A large chunk of Clinton's humor draws from her staunch Catholic upbringing so much so, in fact, that it makes onc wonder if the lack of formal religious instruction automatically disqualifies one from pursuing a career in comedy. Unfortunately, she succumbed to an overuse of anatomical humor of the lower torso. With a plethora of interesting topics

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