Liberation, 15 February 2025

As an individual with a complicated gender identity, I have explored questions of gender through many lenses—philosophy, history, politics, art, literature, theatre… you name it. I have been the messenger of gender into spaces that are confused about the necessity of having a conversation about gender more times than I can count. Perhaps my initial reaction to Liberation came from the naïve assumption that this conversation is ubiquitous; maybe it’s because I bring it with me.

The characters represent 1970s stereotypes: Margie (the middle aged housewife wanting to get away from her husband, portrayed by Betsy Aidem), Dora (the young working woman tired of losing promotions to unqualified men, portrayed by Audrey Corsa), Celeste (the highly educated African American woman who can be different things with different people, portrayed by Kristolyn Lloyd), Isidora (the radical woman with the green card marriage ready to stir up as much trouble as humanly possible, portrayed by Irene Sofia Lucio), Susan (the runaway Jewish lesbian who loves her bird and her motorcycle, portrayed by Adina Verson), Joanne (the housewife with four boys who is too busy attending to the needs of her family to be able to attend a women’s group that meets at 6pm on a school night, portrayed by Kayla Davion) and Lizzie (the well meaning woman who feels that something is missing in her life who ultimately chooses to get married and have children, portrayed by Susannah Flood – who also at times plays her daughter who is the narrator of the play). The production was framed as a memory play in which the protagonist narrates and examines her mother (Lizzie) and the women’s liberation group her mother started to try to figure out how it is she came to exist when her mother was clearly a young, passionate activist who could have lived a freer life.

In the opening monologue, the daughter explained the conceit of the story that she’d be telling; she refused to let us know how much time it would take as an allegory for the fact that we still don’t have gender parity/equality and no one knows how much time that will take. It felt reductive and unnecessary. As the first act took shape, the characters felt like caricatures, and though there were some great philosophical statements made by some, they weren’t functioning as a unit. It called into question whether all women are the same, and whether all women need the same things to be happy and fulfilled. At the very end of act one, the protagonist’s father, Bill (a man willing to commit to redefining marriage as a partnership of equals, portrayed by Charlie Thurston) enters the picture to be the catalyst for act two’s exploration of the very different lives each woman wants, and freedom meaning freedom to choose, even if that choice is to love a man and share a life with him. Act two portrayed the women several years later, all bonded to each other as friends (some as lovers) and all deeply committed to changing the world. They slowly fall apart as each has some kind of secret hypocrisy placing a stumbling block between them and the true liberation in which they all profess to believe. This provokes a heavy conversation of how people reinforce their own oppression and get in their own way, essentially keeping themselves down. Toward the end, the protagonist confronts her mother, Lizzie, and is told a hard truth—we never know the path not taken, so we never know if we made the right choice. We just have to find the joy and meaning in the life we have.

I feel strongly that the second act could have been the entire production, and that a lot of the set up in the first act was gratuitous and could have been inferred. That being said, my feelings about the necessity of the show were strengthened by seeing the splintering in the second act as the characters discussed power imbalances (who wants it, who has it, who could have it, who prevents others from having it, etc.) and whether telling stories that aren’t yours is an important act of commemoration or a disgraceful act of taking ownership of someone else’s journey. Many of these questions are alive and well in today’s world, especially as we live in a post-Roe, early-Trump-second-term world. I realize that I am finding my 2025 self asking some of these questions. What are the consequences of striking/public demonstrations? Who is it safe to be myself around? How can I embody my values in the world? To what extent do I have power and who else has power over me? What is freedom, and do I have to agree with anyone else’s definition of it in order to validate my own sense of morality and justice?

Despite its flaws, Liberation served as a timely reminder that action and advocacy cannot wait until all power and rights are lost—it is a radical act, but we must motivate ourselves to confront injustice as early in the cycle as humanly possible to stop it in its tracks before we must put our bodies and our lives on the line in the hope that it does good for others. We must not wait until progress is impossible. We must start now.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Polk & Co.