Liberation

The cast of Liberation.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

“The personal is political” was one of the many rallying cries of the second-wave feminist movement in the late 1960s. Given what people were fighting for – the right to make decisions about their own bodies, for one – it was a fitting phrase around which to unite.

It’s also a necessary one when telling stories of that era and beautifully demonstrated in Liberation, the new play by Bess Wohl in performances at Roundabout Theatre’s Off-Broadway Laura Pells Theater. Directed with efficiency and compassion by Whitney White, the play interrogates of the Second-Wave movement and how it succeeded (or didn’t) through the framing of an unnamed narrator’s memories (played by Susannah Flood with plausible conflict) whose mother recently died. Now she is digging into her family’s past, attempting to reconcile the woman she knew – a traditional wife and mother – with the woman she was before marriage and family – a political activist. It wouldn’t hurt if she found some answers to her own questions about fulfillment and happiness on the way, as well.

“The year was 1970,” she tells the audience. “And my mom. My devoted, dutiful mom who sewed the costumes for every school play and cooked every family dinner … and took me to every piano lesson … she was actually … a radical?”

Kayla Davion and Charlie Thurston.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

 The play then moves back in time to a 1970s gymnasium (the appropriately grungy set is by David Zinn) where Lizzy (also played by Flood), is joined by five women who have gathered for the first meeting of a consciousness-raising group. Susan (Adina Verson) lives in her car and longs to own a motorcycle. Dorothy (Audrey Corsa), held back at her job by her gender, is furious that her less talented co-worker has been promoted before her. Irene Sofia Lucio plays Isidora, a plain-spoken Italian immigrant waiting out her green card marriage, and Betsy Aidem plays Marge, a middle-aged housewife who resents her retired husband’s refusal to help with household chores. She resents it so much, in fact, she fantasizes about killing him. Celeste, the only Black member of the group, played by Kristolyn Lloyd, was forced to stall her academic career to care for her aging mother. And although she hung the fliers and reserved the gym, Lizzy is adamant that she is not the group’s leader. She is a frustrated journalist, forced to cover weddings at the local paper. (When she asked for more serious subjects, she was also given obituaries.)

This group of actors seamlessly forms an ensemble. While each character is complicated, in depth and vital, none of them fight to be the star of the play. Enough specific detail is given to each of them to avoid being reduced to stereotypes of the era. Instead, they feel like real people, even when the actors performing them change – Kayla Davion fills in for Flood, playing Lizzy in one scene, and Aidem plays her in another scene, so Flood can play herself, asking her mother the questions she wishes she had while she was alive. Aidem and Flood share a warmth and grief that feels natural and inevitable. Theirs is a profoundly moving scene, brimming with honesty and emotion.

It's easy to idealize the past, especially when words like “sisterhood” are repeatedly spoken. But Wohl doesn’t filter Liberation with rose-colored glasses. (After one of the women declares their group is going to “change the world,” she turns to the audience and quickly says, “I know, I know, but it was the 70s”.)

It's easy to idealize the past, especially when words like “sisterhood” are repeatedly spoken. But Wohl doesn’t filter Liberation with rose-colored glasses. (After one of the women declares their group is going to “change the world,” she turns to the audience and quickly says, “I know, I know, but it was the 70s”.)

In some cleverly-staged scenes, the narrator addresses the inherent racism of the time, as well as the frustration that having children prevented parents from participating in the movement. Davion, playing a mother visiting the gym to retrieve a forgotten backpack, points out that the group’s meeting time – 6 PM on a weeknight – is a time when most women are at home, supervising homework and cooking dinner. (This conflict is also addressed in the playwright’s opening speech to the audience, when she says, “Surely you’ve noticed all of those six-hour, eight-hour, ten-hour plays are by men with no children?” she says. “A woman with children would never.”)

The conflict between parenthood and activism continues throughout the play, demonstrated when Lizzy meets Bill (Charlie Thurston) but feels compelled to hide the relationship from the other women. It’s further complicated by the fact that Bill professes his support for Lizzie’s work and repeatedly states he wants a marriage of equals. (I’ll admit to feeling skeptical at this declaration, wondering if and how he would follow through with this promise.)

Susannah Flood and Betsy Aidem (with Irene Sofia Lucio in the background).
Photo by Joan Marcus

That skepticism permeated much of my experience viewing the play. It was impossible to wonder how I would react to this production had Kamala Harris won the election and America was led by a woman of color rather than another white man. (Or if women were not referred to as “household objects” on social media.) Also inevitable is the frustration of hearing lines spoken in the 1970s that are equally relevant today – complaints about denial of no-fault divorce, the inability to leave a spouse due to income inequality. I wondered if, Liberation was performed in repertory with Wendy Wasserstein’s Uncommon Women and Others, audience members would know which play was written in which decade.

These frustrating experiences render the programming of Liberation even more vital. This play, which beautifully humanizes the past and personifies how the personal is political, should be seen by many. But following Trump’s takeover of The Kennedy Center, this play’s existence is even more endangered.

When thinking of the progress achieved and bonds of activism formed between these women, the narrator wonders, “So why does it feel like it’s somehow all slipping away? And how do we get it back?” One hopes Wohl’s next play will provide some answers to these questions.