20 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE APRIL 18, 1997

EVENINGS OUT

How the 1970s changed the lives of five woman, as one

Cleveland-If you didn't know that Martha Bocsing was talking about her onewoman touring show, you might think she was suffering from multiple personality disorder. As she talks about feminism and the women's movement of the 1970s, she occasionally slips into one of the five characters of her show, These Are My Sisters.

"These five women are really wonderful women. I just like them so much, I like being on stage with them," said Boesing. "I realize that the feeling inside is that they're not me, that I really am talking about other people and how proud I am to present them."

During a discussion with Boesing about different types of activism, I suddenly found myself on the phone with her character Naomi, a Jewish academic.

"Intellectual labor's as much a part of the movement as marching in the street," Naomi told me. "It gives a voice, it gives a vision, it all goes back to Marx."

I also met two strong lesbian characters from the show.

"Perry is the strongest voice, she's the old bar dyke," said Boesing, “and she just fights fiercely for recognition of the work of lesbians at that time.”

At one point in the show, Perry gets into an argument with Char, a suburban housewife who headed up the battered women's shelter. Char insists that lesbians weren't very involved in the women's movement.

"It has been characterized that way now: white, middle class, straight," Boesing said, "but in fact it was the lesbians who were leading the bandwagon completely."

Perry hotly contests anyone who doesn't give credit where credit is due, saying "We were there fighting for your rights. Don't disappear us now.'

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The character Jane calls herself a "granola dyke." She is "one of the women in the '70s

•Laura Jordan jody Madaras

Martha Boesing

RED HEN PRODUCTIONS

who used to be heterosexual who came out as a lesbian in the '70s with her feminism,” said Boesing. "That's the old hippie, who kind of goes where the wind blows."

Boesing herself has been around the block a few times. A lifelong political activist, Boesing has been a part of the 1960s peace movement, the 1970s women's movement, the 1980s anti-corporation movement, and now she's fighting for ecological awareness. She marched on Washington in 1963 and heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. She served jail time for trespassing on the property of Honeywell, a major defense contractor. She's had relationships with both women and men.

Boesing has spent a lot of her life in activist theater. She is probably best known for founding the country's longest running professional women's theater, At the Foot of the Mountain, in Minneapolis. She has also directed and written plays for the Minnesota

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Opera Company, In the Heart of the Beast Theatre, and the Illusion Theatre in Minneapolis, the Actor's Theatre in St. Paul, the Academy Theatre in Atlanta, and A Traveling Jewish Theatre in San Francisco.

In 1995, on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday, Boesing began developing the idea for These Are My Sisters.

"I really didn't decide to do it at first," Boesing said. "I wanted to do a one-woman show just because I wanted to do a onewoman show."

Boesing had been studying performance art, and asked performance artist Carolyn Goelzer to be her director.

"We worked back and forth with a lot of ideas around a performance art piece, and it just wasn't jelling. Every time we bumped into my history in the '70s I kinda went, 'Yeah, well, that was the '70s, we were all feminists back then,' and I'd kind of dismiss it in a way."

But Goelzer, who was too young during the 1970s to remember much about the women's movement of the time, wanted to hear about it.

"She'd say 'God, you get so much energy when you talk about what you guys did back then.' I realized suddenly that in some way

I had swallowed the backlash myself. I had thought of our work as not being so important any more. It just sort of shocked me that I had done that myself," Boesing said. "It was some way of saying, ‘Oh, maybe my life didn't add up to anything,' and in so doing, I was not only dismissing myself, but I was dismissing all of us."

Boesing decided she wanted to reclaim

those memories, not only for herself, but for other women too. She interviewed 40 women to gather material for her piece.

"I started with all of my old buddies from the time and I said 'What about this? Why are we forgetting this? What do you think, what's going on?' They started telling me their stories again."

After a year of research, writing, and rewriting, Sisters opened in 1996 and Boesing began taking it on tour.

Cleveland's Red Hen feminist theater got a copy of the script and decided to bring Boesing to Cleveland, even though it would be the most expensive venture Red Hen has ever done.

"The artistic committee reviewed it and said wow, this is something we really have to do," said Red Hen's Amanda Shaffer.

Shaffer said that she found the play heartening because it is a celebration of feminism.

"There's such a push to make feminism a nasty word," said Shaffer. "That's what Martha's about, is remembering, and hopefully making everybody feel good about feminism again."

Boesing will give two performances of These Are My Sisters on May 2 and 3, at 8 pm, at Lakewood Civic Auditorium 14100 Franklin Blvd. at Bunts. Tickets are $12 regular, and $6 for students and seniors, with group discount prices available.

She will also give a benefit lecture at 7:30 pm on May 1 at Loganberry Books, 12633 Larchmere, in Cleveland. For reservations and information call Red Hen at 216661-4301.

Feminist choir presents spring concert in May

Cleveland-Windsong, Northeast Ohio's only feminist choir, will present their 1997 spring concert on May 4 at Archwood United Church of Christ.

The program, which will begin at 4:00 pm, includes such favorites as From A Distance, We Shall Be Free, Sky Dances, and a traditional African folk song, Sikuyo. The concert will also be the occasion for director Sharon Marrell to showcase her new arrangement of "Sister" by Cris Williamson, one of the pioneers in women's music.

Williamson gave special permission for this choral arrangement to be made for Windsong and has sent a personal note of encouragement to the group. Windsong will provide a variety of songs as well as instrumental and vocal solos. A representative from Deaf Services of Cleveland will interpret the concert. Refreshments and a social gathering will follow.

Area gay and lesbian-owned and supported businesses have expressed support of

Windsong by donating goods and services that will be given away as door prizes. A freewill donation will be offered to help defray yearly operation costs with a suggested donation of $5-$10. Those who are unable to attend but would like to support Windsong's musical outreach, can send contributions to Windsong Treasurer Gayle Crawford at 3366 Sutton Rd., Shaker Hts. 44120. For more information, call her at 216-921-7328 or Chris at 330455-1423.

Future appearances for Windsong include May 11 at the Universal Church of Religious Science in Cleveland; June 21 at Kimbilio Farms in Big Prairie, near Wooster; and June 28 at both the Cleveland Lesbian-Gay-Bi Pride Festival and the Women's International League for Peace and Justice in Cleveland.

Archwood United Church of Christ is at 2800 Archwood Ave., off Pearl Rd. just south of the Pearl/West 25th exit off I-71 in Cleveland.

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