We The Women was based by two actors, Nathalie Love and Samantha Ressler, as a approach of rebalancing the sheer gender inequality in theatre, the humanities and the leisure business at giant. The numbers are nonetheless stacked towards girls and in favour of white male straight performers, who’re nonetheless given a disproportionate platform throughout the leisure business. Sufficient is sufficient.
Based mostly out of Los Angeles, the all-female collective is searching for to shatter gender boundaries for feminine performers and the standard theatre mould while making certain black voices should not solely amplified, however given an equal footing by taking their disruptive dwell theatre experiences – most notably they hosted a wake for 2019 on the iconic Hollywood Ceaselessly Cemetery – on-line throughout the international pandemic. Powerfully, their new Wake/Rebirth collection permits us to mourn the previous and look ahead with hope to the long run.
Right here, the collective talk about how, as white girls of privilege and given the context of the worldwide lockdown, it’s extra necessary than ever to amplify feminine voices, particularly black feminine voices. Because the collective powerfully says themselves, activismand artwork goes hand in hand…
It is necessary to us to acknowledge that activism and the humanities go hand in hand. We recognise that performers usually draw from their shared experiences, corresponding to institutionalised racism. It’s not solely our obligation to lend our platform for artists to share their tales, as a result of they matter, however our obligation to actively dismantle the programs that perpetuate racism. We the Women was born out of a spot of privilege (having been based by Nathalie & I, two white girls) and we can’t simply profit from our various group; we have now to do the work to ensure their place in society is one rooted in equality.
We help Black Lives Matter unconditionally and black artists will at all times have a spot, voice and platform in our group. It’s now our job as white girls of privilege to amplify their voices as loudly as we are able to. We pledge to proceed to coach ourselves, be taught, pay attention and try to do higher each day to help our collective mission. In that spirit, We The Women is matching any donations made to Nationwide Bailout Fund, Black Visions Collective, Colour of Change, NAACP Authorized Protection and Academic Fund, The Bail Mission, Black Lives Matter, Reclaim the Block, Communities United In opposition to Police Brutality, Justice for Tony McDade, Justice for Breonna Taylor & I Run with Maudto attain our aim of 5K.
For the previous two years till this March, We The Women group would meet up in Echo Park or West Hollywood, hopping between espresso outlets and drinks spots to fulfill with different female-identifying creatives. Like everybody else, we’re now on Zoom and Google Hangouts, brainstorming methods to merge our love for theatre with the web realm and preserve our community of performing artists creatively stimulated.
Women, because it seems, positively know how one can preserve creating in a disaster. Naturally, the pandemic has compelled dwell occasions producers in every single place to be much more artistic with their work. We hosted our annual fundraiser in January (The Wake for 2019) and since we’re not staging a conventional piece of dwell theatre in LA this summer season, we determined to repurpose our funds to help a Digital Wake/Rebirth, designed to showcase feminine artists responding to our immediate from world wide.
We The Women’s Wake and Rebirth occasions discover the cycle of life and demise, development and loss, and enlargement and regression. With a world disaster on our fingers, it felt pure and applicable to open up the submissions to any female-identifying creatives worldwide. Reviewing all the unbelievable artistic work and studying about so many rising feminine artists has helped our complete group survive quarantine. We’re thrilled to share all the artistic authentic work in our Wake and Rebirth collection, now featured digitally on @wethewomencollective on Instagram.
This collection has been extremely uplifting and is a real testomony to the truth that artwork can and can endure all. We have been unbelievably impressed by all of the fantastic submissions that got here in from world wide and really feel as if there’s a mild on the finish of this tunnel. Writers are nonetheless writing, singers singing, dancers dancing, and gamers enjoying – perseverance is an intoxicating drug, and I really feel hopeful and optimistic by the truth that so long as we proceed to create and shine a lightweight on girls’s voices, as We The Women has finished, our business will develop in the correct route.
We stand with We The Women of their mission to amplify feminine voices.