Bobbi Ausubel is a sought-after feminist speaker, theater director, playwright; and co-founder and co-artistic director of the Caravan Theater in Cambridge, MA (1963-1975). She co-wrote and directed the first play inspired by the modern feminist movement in the U.S. in the 1960-70s, titled “How to Make a Woman.” From 1975 to 1995, Ausubel taught physical-based acting at the Boston Conservatory, serving part of that time as Chair of the Theater Division. She also is a Registered Drama Therapist and is featured in the books “Feminists Who Changed America,” “Women in American Theater,” and “Fearless Femininity.” Ausubel is a contributor to the book “That Takes Ovaries,” co-playwright of the play of the same name, and an international Leading a Bold Life trainer for women’s and all-gender empowerment events and workshops, including with prostituted and sex-trafficked women and girls.
The Personal Is Still Political
Event Overview
In this webinar, you’ll get a backstage pass to the history of feminist theatre groups and talk politics, aesthetics, and the future of feminist performance with some of the genre’s iconic artists and scholars. You can find more information including scripts, videos, and suggestions for further reading at Feminist Theatre: Past and Present.
This is the first in a three-part panel series, “Feminist Theatre: Past and Present,” that celebrates the 50th anniversary of Cornell University’s women’s studies program (now Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) as well as the 30th year of its Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) academic specialty. Each panel will highlight a different moment in feminist and lesbian performance history along with how artists and scholars interpret them.
This series is sponsored by Cornell’s Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (FGSS) and LGBT Studies programs; Cornell’s Department of Performing and Media Arts; James Madison University; CloseToHome Productions; and the Women and Theatre Program of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.
What You'll Learn
- The history of feminist performance in the United States
- The relationship between feminist politics and performance
- The process of creating feminist performance
Speakers
Dr. Jessica Del Vecchio (she/her/hers) is a feminist performance scholar. Her current book project, “Straddling Feminisms,” analyzes what she terms “post-wave pop feminism” in relation to experimental performance of the past decade. Her writing has appeared in Contemporary Theatre Review, Theatre Journal, The Drama Review, and Modern Drama. Also a performer, she presented Songs of the Second Wave—her documentary theatre piece that explores feminist folk music of the 1970s—at venues across New York City. She is the Book Review Editor of Theatre Topics and is the former President of the Women and Theatre Program, part of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.
Martha Boesing has written over 40 produced plays, led workshops, and directed plays for theaters throughout the country. She was the founder and former artistic director for the At the Foot of the Mountain theater in Minneapolis, MN (the longest-running professional women’s theater in the country) from 1974-84. Boesing has won several national awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts playwriting fellowship, the Theater Communications Group’s Pew Residency Director’s Grant, and the McKnight Theatre Artist Award in 2001. In the 1960s, she was a company member of Minneapolis’ Firehouse Theater (an iconoclastic, experimental theater), and her work remains true to the ideological concerns of that time. Boesing graduated from Connecticut College for Women in 1957 and received an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin.
Roberta Sklar is an American activist, feminist, and award-winning theatre director. She is currently a communications consultant and senior strategist for OutRight Action International and other LGBT/equal rights advocacy organizations. Sklar formerly served as Director of Communications for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Empire State Pride Agenda. As a theater director, she was co-director of major works (“The Serpent,” “Terminal,” “The Mutation Show,” “Endgame”) at the Open Theater (1968-1972) and co-artistic director of the Women’s Experimental Theatre with Clare Coss and Sondra Segal (1976-1986). Sklar also has lectured widely and taught at Bard, Smith, Marymount, and Hunter Colleges, as well as the New York University Graduate Program in Performance Art. She and her wife Sondra Segal have two children and reside in New York City.
Sara Warner (she/her/they/them) is Associate Professor of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University and director of Cornell’s LGBT Studies Program. Warner also is an affiliate faculty member in Cornell’s Feminist, Gender, and Sexual Studies, American Studies, Africana Studies, and Visual Studies programs. They study the art of activism, paying particular attention to the role joy, laughter, and pleasure play in creating and sustaining social change. Warner’s work takes many forms, from academic tomes and mainstream journalism to community-based plays and the staging of “patriot acts” — political performances on national holidays. Their first book, “Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of Pleasure,” received the Outstanding Book Award from the Association of Theater in Higher Education and an Honorable Mention for the Barnard Hewitt Award from the American Society for Theatre Research, and was named a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
Sondra Segal is an American playwright, essayist, and innovative performer who established her roots in Second Wave Feminist thinking. Segal broke new ground when she first founded the Womanrite Theater Ensemble in 1972 then joined with Roberta Sklar and Clare Coss to found and become artistic co-director of the Women’s Experimental Theatre (WET) in 1976. WET was considered one of the leading women’s theatre collectives of the time, with Segal playing an integral role in developing communal research forms and a feminist approach to performance. Her theater works include co-authored trilogies “The Daughters Cycle” (“Daughters,” “Sister/Sister,” “Electra Speaks”) and “Woman’s Body and Other Natural Resources” (“Food,” “FoodTalk,” and “Feast or Famine”). Segal’s plays and essays on same-sex parenting have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Performance Arts Journal, The Scholar and the Feminist: The Future of Difference, Heresies, and Dyke Life.
Sue Perlgut (she/her/hers) is an award-winning documentarian and co-founder of the It’s All Right To Be Woman Theatre, an all-women theatre troupe collective telling stories from their lives. Perlgut also founded The Senior Troupe of Lifelong in Ithaca, NY, where she is director/writer and sometime performer. In 2007, she formed CloseToHome Productions to reach a wide-ranging audience with documentaries, videos, and multimedia films featuring topical and socially relevant issues ranging from retirement, to hospice, to abortion rights and women’s wisdom. Perlgut also creates short videos for artists, social justice causes, and politicians. Her most recent film is “It’s All Right To Be Woman Theatre: A Documentary,” available to stream on demand via Vimeo.

Bobbi Ausubel is a sought-after feminist speaker, theater director, playwright; and co-founder and co-artistic director of the Caravan Theater in Cambridge, MA (1963-1975). She co-wrote and directed the first play inspired by the modern feminist movement in the U.S. in the 1960-70s, titled “How to Make a Woman.” From 1975 to 1995, Ausubel taught physical-based acting at the Boston Conservatory, serving part of that time as Chair of the Theater Division. She also is a Registered Drama Therapist and is featured in the books “Feminists Who Changed America,” “Women in American Theater,” and “Fearless Femininity.” Ausubel is a contributor to the book “That Takes Ovaries,” co-playwright of the play of the same name, and an international Leading a Bold Life trainer for women’s and all-gender empowerment events and workshops, including with prostituted and sex-trafficked women and girls.

Dr. Jessica Del Vecchio (she/her/hers) is a feminist performance scholar. Her current book project, “Straddling Feminisms,” analyzes what she terms “post-wave pop feminism” in relation to experimental performance of the past decade. Her writing has appeared in Contemporary Theatre Review, Theatre Journal, The Drama Review, and Modern Drama. Also a performer, she presented Songs of the Second Wave—her documentary theatre piece that explores feminist folk music of the 1970s—at venues across New York City. She is the Book Review Editor of Theatre Topics and is the former President of the Women and Theatre Program, part of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

Martha Boesing has written over 40 produced plays, led workshops, and directed plays for theaters throughout the country. She was the founder and former artistic director for the At the Foot of the Mountain theater in Minneapolis, MN (the longest-running professional women’s theater in the country) from 1974-84. Boesing has won several national awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts playwriting fellowship, the Theater Communications Group’s Pew Residency Director’s Grant, and the McKnight Theatre Artist Award in 2001. In the 1960s, she was a company member of Minneapolis’ Firehouse Theater (an iconoclastic, experimental theater), and her work remains true to the ideological concerns of that time. Boesing graduated from Connecticut College for Women in 1957 and received an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin.

Roberta Sklar is an American activist, feminist, and award-winning theatre director. She is currently a communications consultant and senior strategist for OutRight Action International and other LGBT/equal rights advocacy organizations. Sklar formerly served as Director of Communications for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Empire State Pride Agenda. As a theater director, she was co-director of major works (“The Serpent,” “Terminal,” “The Mutation Show,” “Endgame”) at the Open Theater (1968-1972) and co-artistic director of the Women’s Experimental Theatre with Clare Coss and Sondra Segal (1976-1986). Sklar also has lectured widely and taught at Bard, Smith, Marymount, and Hunter Colleges, as well as the New York University Graduate Program in Performance Art. She and her wife Sondra Segal have two children and reside in New York City.

Sara Warner (she/her/they/them) is Associate Professor of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University and director of Cornell’s LGBT Studies Program. Warner also is an affiliate faculty member in Cornell’s Feminist, Gender, and Sexual Studies, American Studies, Africana Studies, and Visual Studies programs. They study the art of activism, paying particular attention to the role joy, laughter, and pleasure play in creating and sustaining social change. Warner’s work takes many forms, from academic tomes and mainstream journalism to community-based plays and the staging of “patriot acts” — political performances on national holidays. Their first book, “Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of Pleasure,” received the Outstanding Book Award from the Association of Theater in Higher Education and an Honorable Mention for the Barnard Hewitt Award from the American Society for Theatre Research, and was named a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

Sondra Segal is an American playwright, essayist, and innovative performer who established her roots in Second Wave Feminist thinking. Segal broke new ground when she first founded the Womanrite Theater Ensemble in 1972 then joined with Roberta Sklar and Clare Coss to found and become artistic co-director of the Women’s Experimental Theatre (WET) in 1976. WET was considered one of the leading women’s theatre collectives of the time, with Segal playing an integral role in developing communal research forms and a feminist approach to performance. Her theater works include co-authored trilogies “The Daughters Cycle” (“Daughters,” “Sister/Sister,” “Electra Speaks”) and “Woman’s Body and Other Natural Resources” (“Food,” “FoodTalk,” and “Feast or Famine”). Segal’s plays and essays on same-sex parenting have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Performance Arts Journal, The Scholar and the Feminist: The Future of Difference, Heresies, and Dyke Life.

Sue Perlgut (she/her/hers) is an award-winning documentarian and co-founder of the It’s All Right To Be Woman Theatre, an all-women theatre troupe collective telling stories from their lives. Perlgut also founded The Senior Troupe of Lifelong in Ithaca, NY, where she is director/writer and sometime performer. In 2007, she formed CloseToHome Productions to reach a wide-ranging audience with documentaries, videos, and multimedia films featuring topical and socially relevant issues ranging from retirement, to hospice, to abortion rights and women’s wisdom. Perlgut also creates short videos for artists, social justice causes, and politicians. Her most recent film is “It’s All Right To Be Woman Theatre: A Documentary,” available to stream on demand via Vimeo.
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In this webinar, you’ll get a backstage pass to the history of feminist theatre groups and talk politics, aesthetics, and the future of feminist performance with some of the genre’s iconic artists and scholars. You can find more information including scripts, videos, and suggestions for further reading at Feminist Theatre: Past and Present.
This is the first in a three-part panel series, “Feminist Theatre: Past and Present,” that celebrates the 50th anniversary of Cornell University’s women’s studies program (now Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) as well as the 30th year of its Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) academic specialty. Each panel will highlight a different moment in feminist and lesbian performance history along with how artists and scholars interpret them.
This series is sponsored by Cornell’s Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (FGSS) and LGBT Studies programs; Cornell’s Department of Performing and Media Arts; James Madison University; CloseToHome Productions; and the Women and Theatre Program of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.https://ecornell.cornell.edu/keynotes/view/K093021a/primaryAmerica/New_YorkeCornell