- Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin may have starred as two sets of identical twin sisters in 1988's hit comedy entitled Big Business, but the best-selling stories written by Ann Brashares (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) are about four women of different shapes and sizes.
- While a popular TV series about identical twins named Sister, Sister lasted for six sisterly seasons, Shakespeare referred to the three witches in Macbeth as the "weird sisters."
- Although 1996's popular novel (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) was a great success for its author, Rebecca Wells, in some productions of Sergei Prokofiev's ballet, Cinderella, the ugly stepsisters are portrayed by male dancers.
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| Robert Helpmann and Frederick Ashton as the ugly stepsisters in the Royal Ballet's production of Cinderella |
The stars of 1954's White Christmas (Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Bing Crosby, and Danny Kaye) famously took turns performing Irving Berlin's song, "Sisters."
Beginning in 1947, the concept of sister city relationships began to spread around the world. Although Osaka and San Francisco entered into a sister city agreement in 1957, in November of 2017 Osaka severed the 60-year-old relationship to protest a statue erected in San Francisco's Chinatown honoring World War II's victims of human trafficking.
Thankfully, San Francisco still celebrates its sister city relationships with Sydney (1968), Taipei and Assisi (1969), Haifa (1973), Seoul (1975), Shanghai (1979), Manila (1981), Cork (1984), Abidjan (1986), Thessaloniki (1990), Ho Chi Minh City (1995), Paris (1997), Zurich (2003), Caltagirone (2005), Bangalore and Krakow (2009), Amman and Barcelona (2010), and Kiel (2017).
Some women become "soulsisters" because of a shared passion while others bond through shared experiences (working for the same employer, accompanying their children to school, doing volunteer work, etc.). Over the years, some also become experts at pushing each other's buttons.
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One of the films that fascinated me during CAAMFest 2018 was a documentary about Caridad Amaran and Georgina Wong, two octogenarians linked by a curious chapter in Cuban history. During the 1850s, Chinese laborers were brought to Cuba to work in the sugar cane fields as indentured servants. Most were single men who eventually married Cuban women. Julian Fong (who immigrated to Cuba in the 1920s after his family forbade him from performing opera) became Caridad's foster father and mentor. A famous tailor in Havana's Chinatown, Georgina's father encouraged his daughter to learn how to perform the lion dance and taught her the Chinese martial art known as kung fu. |
| Caridad Amaran's image as a performer in Cantonese opera is superimposed on a painting of old Havana |
S. Louisa Wei's charming documentary, Havana Divas, tells the story of how Caridad and Georgina became active in Cuba's Cantonese opera community. Back in those days there were four Cantonese opera companies in Havana. Caridad started acting with the Shanghai Theatre when she was only eight years old. Both women joined the Kwok-Kwong Opera Troupe in 1939 when they were teenagers and toured throughout the 1940s, performing for Chinese communities scattered around the island. After Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese bombers, many traveling performers were unable to return to their homes in China and spent several years living and working in Chinese communities in Canada, the United States, and Latin America.
Georgina stopped performing in order to enter college (she later became a Cuban diplomat). However, even in her eighties, she has no trouble recalling how tall and handsome the young Fidel Castro looked (Wei's film also contains some wonderful footage that captures Che Guevara's natural charisma). Unfortunately, Havana's Barrio Chino started to decline soon after Castro rose to power in 1959.
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| Georgina Wong and Caridad Amaran are the stars of Havana Divas |
As these two women reminisce about the years they performed onstage, recall how Castro's revolution affected their lives, and discuss the impact that the music of Cantonese opera had on their lives, Havana Divas draws a viewer into a cultural era that has faded away (barely one percent of Cuba's population is now Chinese). As the filmmaker explains:
"I have always been drawn to people who are able to cross borders of art, language, race and culture. It is refreshing to see young people cross borders when they are emboldened by their lack of experience; just as it is touching to see older people cross borders in the name of love and nostalgia. The journey of Caridad and Georgina is what I call a journey of 'love' and what my producer, Law Kar, calls a journey of 'nostalgia.' While I relate to these women through the love they have for their fathers, Law Kar sees how their youth, filled with the song and performance of Cantonese opera, became the impetus for them to 'return' to Hong Kong and Canton."
"When I follow Caridad and Georgina’s journey from Cuba to China, I can’t help but see it as an extension of their love for their late fathers and a testament to what their fathers had left them. Following their journey, I see their splendor on the opera stage slipping away over and over: first with the end of China’s Civil War in 1949 (when many Chinese coolies moved back to China, leaving a diminishing Chinatown), next when Communist leader Fidel Castro assumed power (prompting remaining Chinese Cubans to move to other parts of America), and a third time when they returned to Hong Kong and Canton just in time to witness the decline of Cantonese opera as an art form even in China. A deep sense of nostalgia and pathos permeates their movement through the fading vestiges of the charm of a golden age."
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| Poster art for Havana Divas |
With a soundtrack that mixes Cantonese opera with contemporary Latin music, Havana Divas contains some fascinating footage of both Havana's and San Francisco's Chinese communities in the first half of the 20th century. There is some excellent archival footage of Cantonese opera performers who appeared in New York and Honolulu. However, some of the film's most poignant segments take place in 2014, when Caridad and Georgina travel to China to reconnect with their beloved art form's cultural roots. In one breathtaking sequence, they visit a studio in Foshan where they are dressed in traditional costumes from Cantonese opera and their faces are made up as classic characters. The effect is stunning: the two women suddenly look 50 years younger and ready to step back onstage again.
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| Georgina Wong and Caridad Amaran dressed in traditional Cantonese opera costumes for a 2014 photo session in Foshan |
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| Georgina Wong and Caridad Amaran dressed in traditional Cantonese opera costumes for a 2014 photo session in Foshan |
"Last year, I lost my father in a traffic accident. At first, I only felt hurt by the painful knowledge that such a loss is permanent and irreversible. Now, I begin to see that the true color of a fatherly love does not fade. My father taught me music; he taught me to be passionate, to value optimism, and to keep an open and inquisitive mind. These lessons continue to enliven and brighten my life," writes the filmmaker. "What I hope to bring to life in this documentary is not only the legend of these women, but the poignant beauty of love and loss that surrounds our collective feelings for our fathers."
Havana Divas contains many poignant moments as Caridad and Georgina perform the songs they sang as teenagers to new audiences. But there is also a moment of stark reality when the filmmaker asks Caridad if she has any goals. "Goals?" asks Caridad. "I'm 80!" Here's the trailer:
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In recent years, the theatre and film industries have been severely challenged by the #Me Too and #Time's Up movements. One of the burning issues involves women whose careers may have been jeopardized because some of the critical decision makers affecting their futures were misogynistic men. Theresa Rebeck (who has frequently spoken and written about this problem) did a stunning job of depicting how misogyny plays out in an office setting in her 2017 play entitled "What We're Up Against."With the accelerating churn rate among leadership positions throughout the nation's theatre community, more and more people are watching to see if regional boards of directors and their search committees seek out qualified women and people of color instead of merely reinforcing a pattern of filling such positions with white men. Created by Rebecca Novick, Lia Kozatch, and Evren Odcikin, a spreadsheet tracking American Theatre Leadership Change is hoping to track parity and accountability in job searches. The bottom line will also give insight into which new leaders have a compelling artistic vision.
A perfect example of a controversial drama written by a young female playwright is currently receiving its Bay area premiere from the Shotgun Players. Written by Ruby Rae Spiegel (a graduate of Young Playwrights Inc. and Yale University), Dry Land focuses on two young women on a suburban Florida high school's swim team. Amy (Martha Brigham) is dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. Having researched her options for getting an abortion, she has run up against unexpected obstacles (such as the need for two credit cards) and the likelihood that her mother would have to be told about the procedure. When asked about her inspiration for Dry Land, Spiegel stated:
“I read an article in The New Republic on the rise of DIY abortions and was really shocked. This article looked at how American abortion rights are being rolled back. Now we have pills that can be bought online. The Internet is really shaping self-abortion methods. In the United States it’s becoming more difficult to obtain a safe abortion. Clinics are disappearing, and young women across America have to resort to these self-abortion means. Dry Land is as much about abortion as it is about female friendship and loneliness. The title of the play is about safety, trying to find that safe place to swim ashore.”
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| Amy Nowak (Reba) and Martha Brigham (Amy) in a scene from Dry Land (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
As Dry Land gets under way, Amy keeps asking her friend Ester (Grace Ng) to punch her in the stomach as hard she can. When constant punching fails to bring immediate results, Amy ends up taking some pills that are supposed to help induce a spontaneous abortion. Although the resulting bloodbath in the middle of the girl's locker room will be a jarring experience for many audience members, I'm pretty sure that the men attending a performance will be more squeamish than the women (which is surprising considering how many men love to watch horror movies filled with gore).
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| Martha Brigham (Amy) and Grace Ng (Ester) in a scene from Dry Land (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
One of the fascinating things about this play is how Spiegel's writing provides a springboard for a skilled director to shape certain dramatic moments. While the bloody scene in which Ester has to help her friend as Amy miscarries will leave a strong impact on audiences, it is followed by a painfully slow and relatively quiet scene as a male janitor enters the locker room, sees a floor covered in blood, and slowly mops up the mess until the room is clean again.
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| A janitor (Don Wood) cleans up the women's locker room in a scene from Dry Land (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
It's easy to see how some artistic directors could consider this play a hard sell to subscribers. Apparently, one man fainted during a performance of Dry Land in London/ A British critic vowed that he would only sit through the abortion scene again at gunpoint. However, Spiegel's reaction to the news was right on point.
“It was important to me that Amy is risky with her sexuality and that she is or has tried to carve out a performative sexual identity for herself that pushes against the idea of female purity. There are so few representations of abortion on stage and screen. It makes sense that it would be shocking to people who have no experience of it. If blood wasn’t part of it, I wouldn’t put it on stage. But it is. I’m glad this man is doing all right, but if it’s shocking to men, you almost certainly have a female friend who has gone through this. You should ask her about it. It’s always a helpful theatrical device to have people in a bodily crisis because it can create an arresting image onstage and become something that is exchanged and negotiated between the two characters. My hope is that if it is shocking to you, it makes you think about what is an extremely common experience across the world. This is not for shock’s sake.”
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It would be a terrible mistake to think that Dry Land is all about gore and the anguish of teenage pregnancy. Spiegel has crafted a wonderfully funny scene for Ester when she goes back to visit a friend in her home town and ends up being stuck in the hallway of his college dormitory because Victor's roommate is having sex with someone and has locked him out of the room. As always, Adam Magill does a wonderful job of portraying a young man with limited social skills who has trouble expressing himself.
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| Adam Magill (Victor) and Grace Ng (Ester) in a scene from Dry Land (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
Working on Angrette McCloskey's drab locker room set (with excellent sound design by Sara Witsch and lighting by Cassie Barnes), Ariel Craft has done a stunning job of directing an extremely challenging play. It is a testament to the talents of Martha Brigham (Amy) and Grace Ng (Ester) that, at such early stages of their careers, they can deliver such complex and fully-committed performances. As Craft writes in her director's program note:
"Dry Land premiered in New York City when playwright Ruby Rae Spiegel was a mere 21 years old. Still on the slippery onramp to adulthood herself, she wrote this play unpacking the expectations that young women live with and the quiet agony of failure. This play questions the limits of fortitude as you face the vast chasm between the person you are today and the person you aspire to be. It encourages you to revise your own sense of self and to allow space for the aspects of your identity that you’d rather not acknowledge. While the play might not provide simple answers, it does provide a challenge: be strong and be flexible, because the road to really knowing yourself is long, and the road to living comfortably and appreciatively in that skin is even longer."
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| Martha Brigham (Amy) and Grace Ng (Ester) in a scene from Dry Land (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
"The sheer existence of this play, penned by a near-teenager, is a testament to the exquisite thoughtfulness and depth of wisdom to be mined from the mess and melancholy of youth. Watching Dry Land is, for me, an exercise in active listening: discovering myself in the struggles and triumphs of these young women. You may not be a teenage girl (or a competitive swimmer) but the play is about you, too."
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| Martha Brigham as Amy in Dry Land (Photo by: Ben Krantz Studio) |
Following its development at New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Summer Theater session (as well as the Ojai Playwrights Conference), in a relatively short time, Dry Land has been staged at the HERE Arts Center, Colt Coeur, Permanent Record Theatre, London's Kings Cross Theatre, Center Theatre Group, TheatreLAB, Kirk Douglas Theatre, and Forum Theatre. There's no doubt that it will become a popular play for small theatre companies and university drama departments.
However, just as the Parkland students have been remarkably effective in confronting politicians who have become the tools of the NRA, there is a very specific audience that needs to see this play. If I had my druthers, I'd like to see Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, every member of Trump's cabinet, and all of those self-righteous conservatives who have voted against women's rights forced to attend a performance of Dry Land surrounded by their wives, daughters, and granddaughters. I think that would be a fabulous consciousness-raising session that could demonstrate how the consequences of their craven political actions have left them with blood on their hands.
Performances of Dry Land continue through June 17 at Shotgun Players (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer:
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