The uninitiated, especially men, could be forgiven for getting the wrong impression of Estrogen Fest, solely from hearing that throw-down-the-gauntlet name. It does rather suggest humor-deficient radical feminists strutting and fretting their man-hating hour upon the stage, in between getting all tearful about how bloody hard it is being female, doesn’t it?
But the slogan of this exuberantly XX-chromosomal arts festival, now being staged for the fourth time and running through June 5 at Store-front Theater (in conjunction with Prop Thtr), is
No crying, no male bashing.”
“Some women’s festivals take themselves too seriously,” says Estrogen Fest founder and artistic director Ann Filmer. “They’re ‘good for you,’ but they’re not a whole lot of fun.”
Estrogen Fest 2005, subtitled “Changing the Rules,” encompasses two thematically linked repertory programs of theater, dance, music, poetry, and performance and visual art–a total of 18 shows over the festival’s course. The first program “History, Fantasy & Myth” takes on the depiction of women in each of those categories and demonstrates how they’ve smashed stereotypes. The second “We’re Still Here!” carries the female fight to break free–of everything from social mores to racial identity–to current times. And the whole shebang is, indeed, lots of fun: inventive, subversive, irreverent and, at times, frightening.
Singing duo Boomer Babes, for example, have a blast “exploding the myths of women as portrayed in pop culture,” says Jan Slavin, to which partner Pamela Peterson chimes in, “Like June Cleaver vacuuming in pearls.”
Truth be told, there is some crying–just a bit, though, during Jen Engstrom’s exquisite, note-perfect performance of Dorothy Parker’s “Sentiment.” And, judging from a recent rehearsal, Engstrom’s anguish will coax empathetic pinpricks in the tear ducts of anyone who has ever been through a breakup.
On a raw April Saturday two weeks before opening, Filmer and production stage manager Barbara Walk preside over a daylong festival run-through. Engstrom-as-Parker–misty-eyed and marinating in grief, a mockingly cheerful red cloche hat capping her bobbed hair–is collapsed into a stage-center chair representing a taxi’s back seat, having just relived her lost love in an enrapturing monologue by turns humorous and heart-wrenching.
“There’s room for everything in Estrogen Fest,” observes Engstrom, an ensemble member of A Red Orchid Theatre. “Some feminists might see `Sentiment’ and say a woman’s life shouldn’t be defined by a man. But sometimes, for a brief time, it just is; it’s a very human thing. Very female, and very human.”
“We like men–a lot,” remarks Filmer, who notes that all three of Estrogen Fest 2005’s short plays happen to be penned by male playwrights: Brett Neveu, Sean Graney and Jesse Weaver. Neveu’s “The Avon Lady” dramatizes the 1970s shift from stay-at-home moms to working moms “through the job opportunities [mothers] had then: basically inviting their friends over for coffee and trying to sell them things,” says Neveu.
Another kind of communal dynamic is on display in Weaver’s unsettling “46A,” directed by Filmer and featuring Est-Fest veteran Amy Dunlap. “46A” works on two levels: as a kindred spirit to Shirley Jackson’s classic chiller “The Lottery” and as a comment on the precarious relationship between stage actors and their audience.
Dunlap effortlessly shifts between surreal horror in “46A” and equally surreal comedy in actor/writer/composer Laura McKenzie’s antic, hip hop-flecked musical skit “Funk Cloud.” She exudes a sly, knowing sexiness as the titular miasma, gleefully sapping the joie de vivre out of McKenzie’s perky Holly Greencheese and Holly’s alter ego/imaginary friend Denise Pepperjack (a wide-eyed Caitlin Blackwell), to the snazzy strains of McKenzie’s skewed-jazz original score.
“I love incorporating music into a show so that it’s more a part of the action, not a `We’re stopping to sing now’ kind of thing,” McKenzie notes. “`Funk Cloud’ in fact started off as a song I’d written.”
Wiry and intense in performance–like a young Patti Smith, but with a sense of humor–McKenzie says she started penning her own scripts out of frustration that “most of the good comedic roles go to men. And men don’t have to be `hot’ to headline a movie, like women do. I look at Will Ferrell and think, `Where are the female Will Ferrells?’ But instead of getting mad about it, I write myself parts that I’d want to play.”
In fact, if there’s one element that links the widely varied creative spirits of Estrogen Fest, it’s that just-do-it approach–which performance artist Nana Shineflug sees as intrinsically Chicagoan. “Chicago is where it’s really happening,” says Shineflug, founder and artistic director of the Chicago Moving Company modern dance organization. “Chicago women [artists] have always been strong.”
Shineflug demonstrates this literally in her performance piece “Gotcha,” a vigorous and fascinating exploration of randomness in which she rolls herself in and out of a red carpet, stands on her head, and executes splits. Oh, by the way: Shineflug is 67.
Where Shineflug’s lifeblood is movement, poet Yolanda Androzzo (a.k.a. Sista YO!), whose heritage is a mix of black, white and Native American, found her essential identity through writing. “It’s a way for me to say what I could never say any other way,” says Androzzo, who performs her rap-inflected poem “I Ain’t Down” at Est Fest. As a teacher of theater, poetry and visual art to kids from kindergarten through high school (and a faculty member of the Old Town School of Folk Music), she connects her students to the limitless restorative power of creativity–an overarching theme of Estrogen Fest.
“I tell them, `Bad things happen, but you do get better,'” says Androzzo. “And you do that through art. When we write it out, sing it out, dance it out, shout it out, women realize our ultimate potential and personal strength.” Hence, she says, “the Est Fest slogan `No crying, no male bashing.’ It’s just females expressing themselves.”
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Est Fest schedule
The following is a list of Estrogen Fest performances. Prices range from $15 to $25. For more information, call the box office, 312-742-8497.
Most programs repeat on weekends through June 5. For a complete schedule, see metromix.com. (Dorothy Parker’s “Sentiment” with Jen Engstrom starts May 27. “Hoo-doo-the-Voodoo” with Martie Sanders starts June 4.)
Friday at 7:30 p.m. (repeated Saturday at 5 p.m.)
“I Ain’t Down” Yolanda Androzzo (poetry); “Skadi: Norse Goddess of Skiing” by Stephanie Shaw (theater); Rust Proof (dance); “Passages: Freed from Soil” The Dance Collective (dance); “Rapunzel” by Emily Schwartz (theater); “The Avon Lady” by Brett Neveu (theater); “A Brief Message from Amelia Earhart” by Miriam Weisfeld (theater); “Boomer Culture Medley” The Boomer Babes (music); “War Protest 1914” adapted by Marilyn Campbell (theater). Music by Soft Serve.
Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (repeated Sunday at 5 p.m.)
“I’m Still Here” Katrina Kelley (music); “Mixin’ It Up” by Marilyn Campbell and Maria Merrin (theater); “Fear of Scars” by Sean Graney (theater); “Gotcha” performed by Nana Shineflug (performance art/dance); “46A” by Jesse Weaver (theater); “Funk Cloud” by Laura McKenzie (music/theater). Music by Soft Serve.
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