fbpx Sharing as Power | HowlRound Theatre Commons

Sharing as Power

Performer’s Reflection on Charles Mee’s Love Sonnets

How do young women take agency of their own storytelling? When sitting behind the table in a hierarchal rehearsal room is no longer enough, what could a more conversational and curious rehearsal process look like? This series will investigate these questions and expand on the process of creating Love Sonnets: Things Women Say, a staged reading developed under Emerson College's Mercutio Troupe.

It is not often, as an actor, that you are asked to talk about your own life in a callback. We knew Love Sonnets was going to be a unique project when we were asked to recall a time of self-actualization in our lives, and then share with the group. This was the most intimate and unifying callback either of us has ever experienced because it immediately created a brave space. Brave space is a term that’s thrown around a lot in theatre; generally it stands for a space where all creators feel comfortable exploring topics that may scare them. Our definition carried some of that, but more, it meant a space where it was okay to share what it meant for all of us to be women, both the ups and the downs.

Women are not often asked to question their journey. It is assumed that we know where we are going and will get “there” because the there is a life with a man and a family. Our future is mapped and our feelings assumed, so being able to even consider a time where we had come to a crossroads was nothing short of revolutionary. It was healing; healing in a way we didn’t know we needed.

We could bear witness to the perspectives being shared in the moment, and the sheer power of listening, really listening to each other, is where we both found our power and joy as performers in this show.

Healing became the feeling we associated with Love Sonnets, along with respect, support, sharing, sisterhood, and camaraderie. Throughout the rehearsal process, we navigated monologues with intense, silly, heartbreaking, heartwarming, and even potentially offensive subject matter, often all at the same time. For example, the monologues each of us tackled were funny, but also very vulnerable.

Mary Frances’ monologue was called “Ariel,” and in it the character is talking to a boy, her significant other. This boy can act like a real jerk sometimes, and at first it seems like Ariel is teasing him in a pretty malicious way (she calls him a “loser”) but when Mary Frances unpacked it with directors Caitlin and Victoria, she realized Ariel was both trying to understand how she could love a boy who is just so annoying, and more importantly telling him that he is a person deserving of love.

actors in rehearsal
Stage manager Sonya Rio-Glick, director Caitlin Bailey, and the ensemble in rehearsal for Love Sonnets. Photo by Maddie O'Hara.

Other monologues were more serious, and dealt with issues like drug addiction, suicide, and the ending of a marriage. But no matter the subject matter, each actor’s voice and each characters experience was treated with respect and validity. This is not to say that the creative process was without its conflicting opinions—we talked a lot about how this was a script that focused only on a cis-gendered, heteronormative view of romantic love. Some of us felt like that by focusing only on that narrative, we were just continuing the pattern of stereotyping women on stage. This was an issue that was very hard to resolve, but we eventually came up with a script that did as much as it could to go beyond that narrative, and that we believed our team could be proud of and stand behind.

To do this, we sat together and grappled with the idea of this show being a place for women's stories, but those stories being told through the pen of a man, Charles Mee. Mee wrote in the voice of a woman—many women. This fact brought up the question “Can a male playwright write an equitable female character?” This is a question that is often dismissed because of the severe lack of female representation in the theatre community. And while we still deeply believe that the work of female playwrights needs to be produced, we realized after a month of discovery and confusion the answer to that question (if there even is one at all) is far more complicated than a simple yes or no—meaning that men will still write women, we just don’t know how we feel about it. Since this question requires case-by-case exploration, we deeply encourage the theatre community to keep asking it.

company photo
The ensemble and creative team on opening night. Photo by Maddie O'Hara.

This was a process driven by questions and not answers. We were not able to put every aspect of womanhood into this show, and that was hard to deal with. But the specificity of point of view was needed. There was no way we would be able to include the lived experience and perspective of every woman on Earth; no piece of art ever created will be able to do that. But we could bear witness to the perspectives being shared in the moment, and the sheer power of listening, really listening to each other, is where we both found our power and joy as performers in this show.

Moving forward, we want to emphasize that this process of sharing is not one that is or should be confined to the female experience. This particular group of women was compelled to tell a story in this way due to the lack of representation, but sharing should not be an exclusively female undertaking. It should be a process engaged in by all genders because it is through sharing that we learn what it is to be a human. And isn’t that what theatre is all about?

Bookmark this page

Log in to add a bookmark
Thoughts from the curator

This series chronicles the production process for Love Sonnets: Things Women Say, a compilation of monologues for women.

Love Sonnets

Comments

0
Add Comment

The article is just the start of the conversation—we want to know what you think about this subject, too! HowlRound is a space for knowledge-sharing, and we welcome spirited, thoughtful, and on-topic dialogue. Find our full comments policy here

Newest First