With the year-long Women’s Voices Project, Evanston’s Piven Theatre is embarking on a celebration of ladies who aren’t afraid to be loud, creative and in charge of their own narrative. In tandem with the company’s 45th anniversary, the Women’s Voices Project is an ambitious, multi-pronged endeavor that aims to engage the community with a curated blend of arts and activism.
One of the Women Voices Project’s signature shows runs Feb. 6-11 when Piven’s young female students launch a storytelling festival that turns princess culture on its tiara’d head. “The Princess Who Stood on Her Own Two Feet and Other Stories” will feature young women from seventh through ninth grades. The devised piece promises to be rich in comedy — and profundity. Created through a series of workshops by the actors, the fairytale updates will delve the journeys of girls navigating the transition into womanhood.
The youth programs will be followed by professional comics on Feb. 27 and 28, when the “operatic travesty” of Forte Chicago — a unique mashup of opera and sketch comedy — takes the stage. Beyond February, the full schedule offers includes everything from Greek tragedy to dance to contemporary solo storytelling.
“For us, celebrating women’s voices every day is a fundamental part of our organization,” Piven Executive Director Leslie Brown says. “Our teaching staff is female. Our directors leadership is female. But there are times when we wondered if maybe we were in a bubble.”
One of those times came last year, when Shira Piven (daughter of Piven co-founders Joyce Piven and her husband, the late Byrne Piven) was featured in a New York Times article on the dearth of female power players in the filmmaking industry. The article noted that women comprised a scant 3 percent of directors in Hollywood.
The numbers for live theater aren’t much better: According to statistician Marsha Norman’s industry-leading statistical blog The Count, more than 75 percent of the plays produced in 2015 (the latest year stats were available) were penned by men. Piven has long been an outlier in terms of gender parity. Still, Artistic Director Jennifer Green wanted to do better.
“Our response to that New York Times piece was that we needed to step up and do whatever we could to create a pathway for women’s voices,” says Green. “We decided to say ‘yes’ to a whole bunch of different projects, all centered on source material written or adapted by women.”
As the theater did with last year’s Quality of Mercy Project, performances and artists will be paired with organizations all over town in order to provide talkbacks, workshops, chances to take action and enrichment activities all rooted in words on stage. Northwestern University, the Evanston YWCA and the Evanston Public Library, Story Studio Chicago, Girl Meets Code and Girl Meets Voice and S.O.U.L. Creations Inc. founder Gilo Kwesi are all on board to help out with programming.
“For us, putting women in leadership roles is an everyday thing,” says Brown. “We want to bring the community into that process, and offer even more chances for women to be mentors, artists and to get involved.”
For more information on Piven Theatre and the schedule of events for the Women’s Voices Project, go to www.Piventheatre.org.