"A group of women sits before us completely nude, unguarded, and unashamed. They are young and old, Black and white, straight and gay. Their bodies are diverse and real. This isn't a stunt or a provocation. It's an act of defiance and vulnerability—an exercise inspired by an article in the feminist magazine Ms. that urged women to reclaim their bodies and confront the shame society taught them to feel."
"In Liberation, Bess Wohl's daring and deeply analytical new play, the act of exposure is both literal and intellectual. Wohl strips away nostalgia and ideology to examine how the 1970s women's liberation movement reshaped lives, where it fell short, and what its legacy means today. She's less interested in celebrating the past than in interrogating it—probing questions of identity, sacrifice, and progress with the precision of a social scientist and the empathy of a dramatist."
"Set in the gym of a recreation center in Ohio in the early 1970s, the play centers on a consciousness-raising group of women who meet weekly to debate, commiserate, and imagine dismantling the patriarchy. The setting—a semicircle of folding chairs under fluorescent lights—could not be plainer, yet it becomes a laboratory for ideas: a place where conversation becomes activism and self-examination becomes rebellion."
Liberation stages a diverse group of women meeting in a 1970s Ohio recreation-center gym to engage in frank consciousness-raising sessions that blend literal exposure with intellectual inquiry. The women, varied in age, race, sexuality, and body type, practice vulnerability as a form of defiance and reclamation of bodily shame. The production uses a plain semicircle of folding chairs and fluorescent light to render the space a laboratory where conversation becomes activism and self-examination becomes rebellion. A central narrator, Lizzie, conducts interviews with surviving participants decades later to trace how the movement reshaped lives, where it fell short, and what its legacy means in the present.
Read at www.amny.com
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