Interviewee: Ada McAllister

Interviewer: Kiera Feldman

Date: June 30, 2006

Location: by telephone

Category: Women's history/theater

Length: 1:11:57

Word count: 9997

[00:00:00]

Kiera Feldman: Alright, we're recording

[00:00:02]

Ada McAllister: Alright we're on.

[00:00:05]

KF: Alright so could you begin by introducing yourself and where you are and today's date?

[00:00:11]

AM: Ok, I'm Ada McAllister and it's June 30, 2006 and I now live in Seattle, Washington. And um I've been doing-this is my 42nd year of doing theater and um I joined RIFT [the Rhode Island Feminist Theater] in 1974. It had been going for a little over a year at that point. And how I even heard of it is I was doing my master's degree in the performing arts of feminism at Goddard college in Vermont. And I rented my room out to Rita Mae Brown [laughs] and Rita Mae got a flier that RIFT was looking for a director. And so when I graduated I applied for the job. Um and I gave up my apartment in New York City and I moved to Providence, Rhode Island and I worked with the Rhode Island Feminist Theater for four years.

[00:01:10]

AM: And what really-I guess how I became involved in the women's movement was that I was living in New York City. I moved there after I graduated from college in 1967. And I become involved in the women's movement in 1969. And I thought you know, I stayed in New York until 1972-I was there for five years-um and I decided I wanted to combine theater and feminism and I chose Goddard because they had an independent study program. And but I was lucky because I got a teaching fellowship so I [inaudible]-the whole time that I was doing my master's degree, except for one quarter where I went out to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Because I ended up doing my master's degree on my great, great grandmother Lucinda Hindsdale-Stone who was a contemporary of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. And uh she was very involved in um in that era, in the women's movement. And so all of her papers and correspondence were held in the Kalamazoo library. Her husband was president of Kalamazoo College for 25 years and she headed up the female seminary and she was originally from Vermont and she audited classes at Middlebury. But was very upset because she wasn't allowed to actually get credited for them or to get a degree.

[00:02:41]

AM: So she and her husband worked very hard to get the first woman accepted into the University of Michigan. And she knew everybody, she met Sojourner Truth, she corresponded with Frederick Douglas' second wife for years. I had correspondence from um Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to go through and Ralph Waldo Emerson. And she was just a very fascinating person. I wrote, produced, and directed a play about her. And then, that's how I-that was my degree.

[00:03:20]

AM: Then I went off to Rhode Island. And um we worked collectively. We really tried to break down the hierarchy of the theater. After being there for three years-I directed rehearsal, we you know we chose as a company what subject matter we wanted to explore. And one of the things I was attracted to about RIFT was that it was not just an entire woman's company. It had men in it, and I thought that was sort of more representative of real life. However the second show that I did do with RIFT, it was entirely a women's cast-O Women's Piece. And Internal Injury that we also did was an entire woman's cast-about battering.

[00:04:11]

AM: And uh I would direct rehearsal and then I would go home and put it into script form and then the company-we'd sit down collectively [inaudible] and see what we wanted to keep and what more we wanted to develop. So that was sort of how we--our process of working-which at times was very frustrating but it was exciting.

[00:04:36]

AM: And we got a lot of mileage out of our bicentennial piece about Anne Hutchinson. And the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities funded us very nicely for that. And we were able to videotape that play, which we also had taken to Philadelphia. Um and I guess it's still annually shown on the PBS station in Providence.

[00:05:04]

AM: And I think it was that year that they gave me official title of artistic director. And then I took a leave of absence after that. I had not taken any vacations for three years from RIFT. And I came out west to Washington state where my sister was living at the time and am still living here. And I happened to stop-well before I left, the head of the humanities committee for Montana was in Tom Roberts' office in Providence, who was the head of the humanities committee in Providence. And she said oh I know an actress in Missoula, Montana that would like to meet you and I'll arrange for you to stay with her and I said ok [laughs]. So I spent a week in Jackson Hole and then I got into Missoula when I drove to Missoula from Jackson Hole at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. And I hooked up with Sally Summer, this actress, and was at her house and she invited other women actresses over to meet me. And um we-and I also was doing Clown workshops on this-well I have to talk about clowns, that's important. But anyway this fellow on his bicycle drove by and knocked on the door and was a friend of Sally and her husband Fred and she invited him to stay for dinner. And he's the man I ended up marrying. I was there for less than 24 hours and I met my husband [laughs].

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AM: When I went back to Providence after my, after that summer, I just worked on one more show, which was Internal Injury. And I only worked on writing that script and another woman directed it. So that was sort of my career with RIFT.

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AM: One thing that I brought to the Rhode Island Feminist Theater that we used whenever we brought someone new into the company was that I had gone through the Leqoc clown method. And which is just a wonderful workshop to be involved in-How to find your clown. So whenever anyone new came in we went through that process with them. We actually did have a run of one in Boston but um-we performed a lot in Boston and I know you know from talking to other people that Anne Hutchinson was toured a great deal, as was Internal Injury. But the nice thing about clowning was that it was something that we all did together. And we also took it to various colleges and universities. I know we went up to Maine.

[00:07:50]

AM: And we would write a show specifically around something like women's health or um pregnancy, planned parenthood, etc etc etc so and that was fun.

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AM: And then the other thing that the clowns did, my sister got married and we performed at her wedding. [laughs]. We wrote a special show to perform at my sister's wedding so that was kind of fun.

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AM: So I can't really...is there anything...any question that you'd like to ask me?

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KF: [interrupting] Yeah. That was a fantastic overview, for sure.

AM: Thank you.

KF: And I think I'm going to back up a little bit. And maybe just ask you a little bit about your background and where you grew up and what your family was like.

[00:08:40]

AM: Ok. Well I was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1945 and my father was called into the war late in 1944 because he was married and already had one child with my mother. So he was the last push for world war II. So my mother was living with her mother in Evanston, Illinois and so that's where I was born. And when my father came back in 1946 we moved to Long Island where we lived until I was seven years old. And my father was a at that time a safety engineer for Liberty Mutual. He eventually became a-well actually he eventually became a, he went through many stages with Liberty, it was always scientific. But he the last thing he did was he checked nuclear reactors all over the world for safety conditions.

[00:09:40]

AM: And my mother as soon as we were all old enough to be in school-at 7 we moved to Wellesley, um and which is ironic because all of the women in my mother's family had gone to Wellesley. Her mother had gone, and it was sort of a tradition. And when my mother was born my grandmother contacted Wellesley and registered her in the class that she was starting. And she went through an all girls' school in Evanston, Illinois called Roysemore and when it was time for her to go off to college to refuse to go to Wellesley and she went to the University of Colorado at Boulder instead. Which was just, you know, they didn't even have dorms, you lived in people's houses. That's where she met my father who was from the southwest.

[00:10:30]
AM: And my father has a very interesting history also. His grandmother traveled in a covered wagon from Missouri to Texis. My dad was born in Dallas, Texas. He was one of ten children-it was a farming family, dairy farming family. And his father got it in his head that he wanted to homestead in New Mexico. So he moved his entire family in 1919 I believe it was to New Mexico to homestead. And my grandmother was living in a 2 room log cabin with seven children. And the neighbors that homesteaded next to them, the parents died of Typhoid fever and she took in their three children. And my grandfather went off to town, quote unquote. And they had sheep, they weren't doing dairy farming at that time, they had sheep in New Mexico. And there was a blizzard, a horrible storm and he could not get back to my grandmother for three months. And they lived off of pinto beans three times a day for three months and she had all these kids in this log cabin [laughing] don't know how she did it.

[00:11:45]

AM: But anyway so that was one of my father's favorite stories. If we didn't eat something at the dinner table then you know it was like listen when I was growing up we had to eat pinto beans three times a day for three months.

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AM: So um they eventually moved to Glendale, Arizona outside of Phoenix in 1923 and there were only 3,000 people in Phoenix at that time. [laughing] To put it into the context of today it's pretty incredible because that's one of the fastest growing areas of the united states the last few years. So that was my father's background. My mother once we all got into school, she went to work as a medical secretary. Now it's sort of a sad story about my mom because my mom started college in 1929. And of course that was, she wasn't there for very long because the stock market crashed. And at the end of that year my mother got a letter from her father saying I'm very sorry Margaret but you will not be able to go back to school um because I have two sons and they will have to support a family and I have to send them to college. And my mom came from really a rather wealthy family-my mother's father was a patent lawyer. So they weren't totally wiped out the way a lot of people were, but you know it was just a hard time for everyone.

[00:13:13]

AM: So anyway we were living in Wellesley and I graduated from Wellesley high school and I went off to a small woman's college in Columbia, Missouri. Not Stevens, but it was Christian College at the time and now it's called Columbia College and it's a four year school. And from there-well one day one of my roommates said I'm going to go addition for this play Ada and I think you should come with me. And I said oh ok. I really hadn't done any performing. Um I did a play in the seventh grade and I did a dance performance with my girlfriend in high school but uh I was in pre-veternarian medicine. And so I went off to this addition and I got cast, and that was sort of the beginning of my theater career. And the very next summer I went off to Summerstock in New Hampshire and I did three years of Summerstock. So 1964 was really my first year of professional theater and ten years later I was with RIFT.

[00:14:16]

AM: I grew up in a very middle class family but my mom was very uh independent and um she encouraged all of us to go away to school because she wanted us to experience a different part of the united states. And she found New England sort of oppressive as far as well the class system really. Uh you know if you didn't go to an Ivy League school you weren't getting an education and she sort of thought that was ridiculous. And she uh she's the one that handed me the book-the biography of my great great grandmother Lucinda Hinsdale-Stone and she said you should read this, you haven't read this, you should read this. And so that's sort of what got me in my head that hm you know I think I'd like to write a book about her. When I applied to Goddard they said why in the world would you write a novel, you've never written a novel but you've already been in the theater for eight years now so why don't you do this instead and I said oh ok [laughing].

[00:15:25]

AM: Um I did not have a good relationship with my father really until...I was in my 30s. We had a very contentious relationship. I really had no men around me of course in the war for over the first year of my life. And we just-when my father came back from Europe the story goes that he thought I was sort of worthless because I was already over a year old and I wasn't walking [laughs].

[00:16:00]

AM: So um anyway we argued a lot and I know after I read Susan Brown Miller's book and I came home and I talked about you know all the rape and pillage that everybody did during world war II. And my father made the comment that as long as men are on earth women will be raped. And I just you know we fought all the time, and I thought that was just the most outrageous remark. Although now I realize that it's true. You know all these wars that are going on all over the world now, the victims are so often women, and then they're kicked out of their tribe, so to speak.

[00:16:42]

KF: What was Susan Brown Miller's book?

[00:16:45]

AM: Susan Brown Miller's book. Oh gosh now I can't remember the name of the title [laughs]. But you know what if you looked it up online you would, she wrote a couple of books but this is the first book that she wrote.

KF: [interrupting] How old were you when you read it?

AM: I was uh...let's see, I was mmm...I was 22 when I went to New York. I was probably about 24, 25 years old.

KF: Would this count as a feminist text?

AM: Yes, absolutely.

KF: And what other-

AM: It might have been Against Our Will. I can't really remember. But really what she was writing about was rape and oppression of women. The massive amounts of publications that came out after Betty Friedan's book in the early 70s was just, I mean it was fabulous. And we reclaimed our history, you know. I learned...so much about what, you know, there was Mary Wollstonecraft and there were these women in the middle 1800's from becoming involved in the abolitionist movement became you know involved in getting the vote for women. And the other thing that my great great grandmother did was that she started all these women's clubs in the state of Michigan. And women's clubs in the late 1800's were-there was a federation of women's clubs all over the United States and these were the women who got you know sewer lines put in [laughing] towns and got libraries open and you know they did all these civic works. And um so that has a very interesting history unto itself. And Lucinda got the first actual building built for a women's club which is still in existence in Kalamazoo. And the other really interesting thing that she did was that in like about 1870 after the Civil War, she paid for one of her daughter in laws to study art in Rome-and I have some of her paintings-but she also started a traveling school for women. And with introductions from Ralph Waldo Emerson, she'd take these women for 12 months to 18 months throughout Europe. And she met Disraeli and garibaldi and all of these people [laughing]. It was a small world back then and because of the fact that she was at that college for 25 years and the lecture circuit would come through town and they would all stay with she and her husband at their home.

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KF: So how would you say um learning about your distant relatives' history, how did it affect your feminism?

[00:19:51]

AM: Well it made me really....proud. You know, I mean, number one I was very proud of my mother who was a very independent woman and who um was not one of these stay at home moms. She just was very level-headed. She was very unprejudiced throughout my whole life. When I was on Long Island um you know I had a couple of negro children in my class, they were twins, Gerald and Geraldine, and they came over to my house all the time. You know, a lot of that would not have happened with other people at that time. And um I felt very proud and connected to know that my heritage came down from other strong feminist women.

KF: And about what year did you become interested in your relatives' history?

AM: In, Lucinda's history? It was like 1971. And I actually went out on a trip with my mother out to Kalamazoo with her. And we went to the University of Michigan where one of her portraits was hanging. And one of her portraits was hanging at Lancing at the capital. And of course there were portraits of she and her husband hanging at Kalamazoo college. And we went to the Ladies' club there and I spoke and um I didn't actually see any of her papers at that time but I did, you know, get an overall history of what-of the era that she was involved in the women's club.

[00:21:41]

AM: So that-1971 was really the turning point for me to uh connect theater and feminism. Now I was there you know when Gloria Steinem when all of us marched down fifth avenue [laughs].

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KF: Can we talk about the five years you spent in New York city and your involvement in the women's movement?

[00:22:05]

AM: Yes. I um...we had a um..a women's--how can I say it. Anyway we had a place-it wasn't a shelter but, I can't, my brain is not totally working, but it was where we met. Feminists met. It was on the west side on 26th street I believe. And I got involved in karate and I got involved with other women. One, two of the women, Victoria Vidal and Martina Bartlow now live in LA. Victoria Vidal is related to Gore Vidal. And um we started a little women's theater and we mostly wrote skits. We weren't doing any performing but we were doing some writing and exploring that way. And I also got very involved in karate. And um

KF: What year did you start doing women's theater?

[00:23:07]

AM: Um 1970.

KF: And where did the idea for women's theater come from?

AM: You know we just wanted to write something that...was empowering for us as performers. Vicky actually wrote this beautiful musical and we workshopped it-I was one of her singers for it-we workshopped it, we took it up to Yale. She was trying to get backers to get it produced and everything. And that was like around 1970, 71.

[00:23:40]

AM: And um...there was a building that we took over. The 5th avenue street building. The fifth street building, excuse me, down on the lower east side. And um...there was just a lot of radicalism, as far as...you know, you'd go to the women's building on 26th and they'd throw a key on a cord down to you. It was all locked up. And we'd go up on the second floor. They had all this literature there. And it was a way to connect with other feminists and be supportive of one another and to start creating and doing things together.

KF: And what kinds of things were you reading?

[00:24:28]

AM: Well, I wish I had some of the pamphlets that were printed out. And I don't know archivally how you would access them. A lot of stuff was, well, a lot of stuff was just um printed off like a printing press or -they didn't have Xerox then but what did they have, god it was so long ago and now we have everything because of computers. But anyway so there were articles, there were things that came from other countries, there were things about women in china, other women in the world, um what else?

[00:25:09]

AM: Ok then we had an entire library of these books that started being published. Then women's bookstores opened up.

KF: Do you remember any authors' names, or any titles?

AM: Well a lot of biographies about women like Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Ursula Leguinn wrote an inredible novel-women started writing feminist novel. Um I wish I had some of those but I think that they're packed away.

[00:25:42]
KF: So you're saying that there's a lot of radicalism but what-what do you mean by radicalism?

[00:25:50]

AM: Well...it's sort of like, you know, we didn't, we weren't physically radical the way the black panthers were, but radical in thinking. Disruptive, demanding, speaking out for ourselves.

KF: What kinds of demands were you making?

[00:26:15]

AM: You know we were raising our consciousness. You know we had consciousness raising meetings [laughs]. Did you know about that? Where women would sit around in a circle and you know talk about what personally concerned us, and what-you know, it was about realizing that we were second class citizens and we were oppressed. It was consciosness. Having our consciousness raisted.

[00:26:44]

AM: Well we'd march and we took over that building and I can't remember how long we stayed at that building before we were ultimately ousted. But actually I was contacted by another woman whose book just got published I think by the University of Illionois. Let me see I have this written down in my day timer. And she interviewed women who were involved in the women's movement from 1969 to 1975. And so that might be something that you might actually want to...because the book did just get published. And I'm going to see if I can find where I wrote down. I haven't ordered it yet but that would really give you a good idea of what was going on in that period as far as...

KF: So tell me, what did it mean to you to be a feminist?

[00:27:50]

AM: Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975, University of Illinois press and this woman's name is Barbara Love. And I'll even read out this woman's phone number to you--________ [number deleted from recording]. I can't wait to read this--Feminists Who Changed America. What did it mean to me? Well it was interesting because...in being in theater I had no desire really to ever get married. And...so marriage wasn't really wasn't, marriage and children were not anything that I really was ever interested in. And I never did have any children. Except for the illegitimate child that I had and I could tell you about that story too [laughing].

[00:28:44]

AM: Because I got pregnant at 16 and I was sent away to a home for unwed mothers for 7 months.

KF: Why were you sent away?

AM: Because you were sent away. It was 1961. You did not-you know, today these young girls, they keep their babies, they go to school. You were ostracized, you were a whore, you were a slut, you were sent away. They don't even have homes for unwed mothers anymore.

KF: Did you keep it a secret from your friends?

AM: Absolutely. I did. We didn't even talk about it.

KF: What'd you tell them when you were away for 7 months?

AM: Well I grew up in Wellesley! People went to private schools. I went away to a private school. That's what I told them. I didn't even tell my best girlfriend. But it leaked out somehow because there were people who drove by that screamed things-"whore, slut!" But anyway so I have a son, I gave him up for adoption. It was one of the hardest things that I ever did. I mean, emotionally it was horrific. And I never had another child.

[00:29:57]

KF: Wow. How would you say having that child affected your feminism?

[00:30:05]

AM: Well. Being sent away to a home for unwed mothers and being locked up for 7 months with other women, you know-which was consoling because you were all in the same boat-but it definitely affected me as far as-[to delivery man] come in. [dogs barking, talking in background]. Here's my little delivery man.

[00:30:31]

AM: Um it definitely affected me uh as far as again feeling like I-you know, I'm the one that got punished. This young man didn't get punished. Now I have to say one thing for my parents too. They said-[to delivery man] I'm on an interview that's why I'm talking on the telephone, but this is where it goes. Isn't that a good place?

[00:31:03]

AM: So um you know this boy's family came to my parents and said oh of course our son will marry your daughter. And my parents said no, our daughter isn't going to get married. She's 16 years old. Do you think this is a marriage that's going to last? It's just going to end up in divorce. We're not interested in having her get married thank you very much goodbye. You know so I was the one that was punished and he was the one who got off scott free, so to speak. So I would say yeah, that affected my consciousness of what it was like to be a woman and that you were the bad person. But you know even though it takes two people to get pregnant, he was absolved and I was not.

KF: Did you not have any choice in the matter in terms of like getting sent away-

[00:31:50]

AM: I did have a choice. My parents sent me out to Milwaukie because they had very good friends who lived there. A minister and his wife that they had known from the 30s when they had lived in Detroit. And he, this minister said to me, Ada I will marry you if you wish to get married. He said, I will marry you-these are your choices: he said, you can go into this home for unwed mothers. It's run by the salvation army-dig this, it's run by the salvation army [laughs]-and it was connected to Wawatosa high school so I could finish my degree. Or you could go to this technical school and live here with us and take classes at this technical school. Because a normal high school would not have let me in, right. Or I will marry you if you wish to get married. And you know there was just this voice inside of me that said I don't want to get married. I'll go through this. And I also didn't want to go to um this technical school and then have to tell lie after lie after lie-where's your husband, why are you here, you know stuff like that. So I chose to go into the home run by the salvation army. And I have to tell you that the salvation army woman were absolutely wonderful to us. We never felt shame, we were never derided. We were completely supported. They were remarkable. Remarkable organization.

[00:33:41]

AM: At Christmastime they gave us all you know ten or twelve presents. And so through that whole seven months I only left the home on Sundays when MZ and Charlotte would pick me up after he had delivered his sermon and take me to their house outside of Milwaukee. And I'd have Sunday dinner with them and spend the afternoon and then go back that evening.

[00:34:08]

AM: Now my parents didn't even tell my brother or sister that I was pregnant. And my sister found out by opening a letter that came from my social worker in the state of Wisconsin. And she was upset and so freaked out about it that she had started menstruating at that point and she stopped for like two years. My brother was in the navy and he wanted to see me and he begged my aunt in Evanston to come up and take me up to my school, quote unquote, take me up to my school. He arrives at this home for unwed mothers-neither one of them knew you know that I was there, he didn't know that I was pregnant, he didn't know anything. And at that point I was seven months pregnant so he was quite shocked. But he you know was supportive too.

[00:35:06]

AM: So it was a very bizarre time.

KF: Was this something that you talked about during consciousness-raising sessions?

AM: Oh yeah, oh yeah. You know, you can just meet a lot of women who went through that period and my uh experience. You know and these are closed adoptions. It's very difficult to find your child. I tried to find my son when he was 25 years old. And I couldn't. Now you can register on you know with a different organization where they can tap into it and try to find their birth mothers or birth you know father. But you have to register and they're the ones that have to seek you out. It's very difficult to break that closed adoption law. Now adoptions are open.

[00:36:04]

KF: Wow. Well um let's see....

AM: --How old are you?

KF: I'm twenty.

AM: Twenty? Well that's great.

KF: Yeah the idea of having a child at 16...wow.

AM: Right, but I couldn't feel sorry for myself because there was a girl who came into that home for unwed mothers who was 14.

KF: Whew. Wow. That's intense.

[00:36:33]

AM: I know. Also the other thing, growing up in Massachusetts-not that I would have thought of this when I was 16-but when I did get old enough and I was sexually active again and I went to get birth control, the doctor initially denied it to me because I wasn't married.

KF: And what year was this?

AM: That was 1964. And um birth control did not become legal in the state of Massachusetts until 1960.

[00:37:11]

KF: So were you um involved in any kind of birth control or abortion activism later in your life?

[00:37:19]

AM: Yeah, yeah. I did get pregnant a second time and I did have an abortion and having the abortion I never got pregnant again because it was more painful than labor and giving birth. Um you know to be dilated to have that tube inserted inside of you, and by the time I got in to have the abortion any medication that they had given me wore off. And um it was really very painful. And when I cried out in pain the doctor told me to shut up or he'd stop the abortion.

KF: What year was that?

AM: That was 1969.

KF: So this would have been an illegal abortion?-

AM: --It was right, it was the very year that New York City-just New York City, not the entire United States-legalized abortion. And I believe it was 1969. Might have been 1970. Now that I think of it I think it was 1970. Because it was nine years between pregnancies, so it was 1970, New York City had legalized abortion-I think it was the first city in the United States to do so-and um yeah I was you know I definitely supported Roe vs. Wade.

[00:38:43]

KF: So when you were in the women's collective and such, did you-were you guys involved in any activism in terms of women's rights?

AM: Oh yeah.

KF: What kind?

AM: Well we you know we would-there were articles that were written, there were the marches and the public statements that we made, there were the sit-ins and etc etc etc. Hold on one second because I have to talk to these guys for one second. [talking in background]

[00:39:20]

AM: I have to take clothes out of the laundry. Hold on one second.

KF: Ok.

AM: [in background] I'm talking to Providence, Rhode Island. They're under siege, I'm sure, the rain...

[00:39:37]

AM: Yeah how are you back there? Are you flooded?

KF: Actually no, we're pretty good. It's-feels like summer again today.

AM: Because Wilksbury, Pennsylvania had water up to the top of the street signs. Yeah and the Susquehanna River, they're hoping that the levees hold. They're new levees but they just don't know if the pressure of the water-and you know of course Washington, DC was flooded. And then just, what was it, just a month ago New Hampshire and Massachusetts were flooded. We're having gorgeous weather out here [laughing]. And we're not going to have rain on the fourth of July which we normally do so it's very exciting. Anyway uh

[00:40:22]

KF: So what were the issues in which you were interested when you were in the women's movement in New York City?

[00:40:28]

AM: Well one thing that I was always-oh! I have to tell you. I took some courses at City College and there was an article that was written called the Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. These were some of the kinds of things that we were [laughing]...I did, let's see, this was a um a child psychology class. I was sort of taking some education courses because I ended up teaching school for two years in New York City while I was doing theater and while I was involved in the women's movement.

[00:41:02]

AM: And um so that was a very interesting article-you know, the Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. And to claim that, and for everybody to say outright, 'women have an orgasm if their clitoris is stimulated.' You know, because I think during that period there was never, I don't remember any man that I became involved with that cared whether I had an orgasm or not, just as long as they had one. And they didn't know, they didn't really know anything about the mechanics of it. So, I mean part of that's due to youth, but-so that was an empowering article. I remember that very clearly.

[00:41:48]

AM: And um, we just-things like that. But my main focus, my main thing to grab a hold of was that I wanted to create theater that gave women strong roles and that they had an independent life of their own. In other words, it wasn't just you know that you were someone's wife or you were someone's sister or you were someone's daughter, but that you had independence. It was like grabbing a hold of independence and writing strong roles-[dog barking, to dog:] No, we're not barking, we're not barking.

[00:42:27]

AM: So anyway it was sort of like that.

KF: Well great, one more question about that period and then I'll move on to RIFT. Were you involved in the anti-war movement?

[00:42:39]

AM: You know, I sat in for Martin Luther King at the University of Kansas. I remember we took over the chancellor's office and sat in for Martin Luther King-he had been imprisoned. Now god what year was this? This was probably 1966. And um but every day on my campus there were people who stood silently in front of the library protesting the war. And I did not really do anything about the Vietnam war until I moved to New York City. And I spent the summer of 1970 in San Francisco-my brother lived there and he was going away for the summer and I grabbed his apartment for the summer. And I became involved with a man who was very involved-as a matter of fact he was the man I became pregnant by the second time-he was very involved in the anti-war movement. And when he came to New York there were some marches that I went on with him. And the other thing that I remember very clearly was that Angela Davis, who was a black woman and very radical, ended up teaching at the University of California at LA I think-- she was imprisoned in the women's correctional center which was right down in the Village. It's no longer there, it's been torn down.

AM: Hold on I have to talk to these guys for a second. [talking in background]

[00:44:28]

AM: So I remember that march and I remember Randy saying ok now you've got to have a scarf for tear gas and you've got to have-I mean, you know because they gas these people when you go out and demonstrate. Particularly for the Vietnam War.

KF: Did you see a relationship between the Vietnam War and the women's movement?

[00:44:49]

AM: More the Civil Rights movement and the women's movement. I really think again it was just like the middle 1800s when there were abolitionists who you know realized that they were oppressed also and became you know-and did the push for emancipation for women, the proclamation of emancipation etc etc. So I think that the women's movement grew more out of the Civil Rights movement in this country in the 60s than the Vietnam War.

KF: Were there any non-white movement involved in your group?

AM: Yeah. My karate instructor was a black women and um I through her I met a lot of other young black women who became involved. But it was more white women that hung out at the women's building than it was black women. And um-what flashed across my head for a second? Well there were also some Asian women. And then of course there was the whole thing between the lesbians and the straight women.

KF: Can you explain that to me?

[00:46:17]

AM: Well, it at times became very contentious.

KF: How so?

AM: ...Because well it was like what Rita Mae Brown said, 'Women should not speak with the enemy.' And men at that time were considered the enemy. Now, I-you know that was not my thought process. But many lesbians really tried to usurp the women's movement in a way because they didn't want anything to do with any man, and they didn't want YOU to have anything to do with any man. That's what was unique about RIFT because Earth Onion-a feminist theater in Washington, DC-was all women. And I'm trying to think um ...there were other women's theater groups in the United States. A very active group in Milwaukee of all places. I knew that because one of the women that ended up coming to Vermont had taught at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and I ended up meeting a lot of her friends when I lived in Madison. And I wrote a play while I was there. I worked with Broom Street theater. My husband and I lived there for a year before we came back out to the northwest.

[00:47:46]

AM: So that...that was unique about RIFT that it had-that students at Brown, both men and women, started the Rhode Island Feminist Theater.

[00:48:00]

KF: So um, just to clarify one thing a few minutes back, were there lesbians in your group in New York city or-

[00:48:08]

AM: There were lesbians in my group in New York City, absolutely and there were lesbians in the Rhode Island Feminist Theater. And a couple of them were very outspoken and demanded that we do a show that was just only women. We had to agree that we would do both all-women's shows and shows with men in them. So the second piece that we wrote, O Women's Piece, was all women. It was four women.

KF: So when you got there um there were both men and lesbians in the theater group?

AM: You know when I got there there was not one lesbian in the theater group when I got there.

KF: And then when did they join?

AM: They joined the next year.

KF: Ok. And were there any gay men in the theater group?

AM: No.

KF: Did they join at any point later on?

AM: No.

KF: Ok-

AM: --Oh! That's not true! That's not true! Norman, Norman! Who teaches theater at Ithaca college, Ithaca college. He joined um, he first came on as sort of our set designer and prop person while we were doing O Women's Piece. He stayed with the theater for two years and um he was involved in the Ann Hutchinson piece.

KF: What two years was he involved?

AM: He came in I would say, ok I started in 74-1975. And stayed through 1977.

[00:49:46]

KF: Ok good to know. And so when you got there, there was a mixture between Brown students and people from-who weren't related to Brown at all?

AM: No, it was all Brown students when I joined.

KF: Ok so you were the first one who was a non-Brown student when you joined?

AM: That's correct.

KF: Ah, so what was that like?

AM: Well for me it was fine but I didn't know until later on that it wasn't so fine for them.

KF: Oh really?

AM: I didn't know until later on that there was some disharmony and contention in the direction that I was taking the theater.

[00:50:25]

AM: Oh! Now I have to, I forgot all about Eric. That's not true. There was a man at Brown who was studying opera who was one of the originators. So incredibly creative. He has since passed away from AIDS. But he was a gay man. Eric Benson.

KF: Oh ok. And what years was he involved?

AM: Well he was there 74, 75. We performed Persephone's Return for, I mean, we got a lot of mileage out of that. It was a play that we juxtaposed scenes from the myth and from um you know life at the time, you know, current time. So um I don't know if you know the Demeter, Persephone myth. Persephone ends up having to spend half the year underground with Hades [laughing]. So that's sort of when supposedly-I really wanted to use Greek mythology in that-and here were other books at the time that really delved into this too. That a lot of Greek mythology was really explaining how the patriarchy took over the matriarchy. And um I another play that I wrote was based on Evelyn Reed's book. I'm not going to be able to think of the name of it oh my god [laughing]. Terrible. It's been so long ago, you know. But um I did a play called Who did what when, and it dealt with-and I juxtaposed that play with current [inaudible] scenes of a young woman having cheated her grandmother, and her grandmother trying to convince her that this is what was proper and this was what you should do and what you shouldn't do. And um, sort of showing-oh it was called Women's Evolution by Evelyn Reed. And she died right as the play was opening. I got the most wonderful letter from her husband.

[00:52:41]

AM: But really she talked about you know that it was the women who were cooperative and lived in the village and were the food gatherers and the men sort of were on the periphery. And that was a very matriarchal society and how that changed. I was very interested in that. Reclaiming the matriarchy, and reclaiming our history! Which nobody even knew about. You know, I'm sure if you took an anthropology class in the 50s and 60s, nobody was bring out these little statues of the goddess and talking about the goddess and you know the matriarchy. I mean the women's movement really helped reclaim our history, of how humans evolved and how society evolved.

KF: What did you hope to accomplish through feminist theater with these kinds of themes?

[00:53:45]

AM: Well I hoped to...you know, in many ways it was like preaching to the choir. I mean I'm sure when we toured, and we toured at a lot of colleges and universities, most of our audience was women. And I don't know that you could expect much else at that point. However, as the movement gained a stronghold in our culture, I think that it evolved also in theater. And you know when I started out as an actress, I never thought that I'd be writing a play. I never thought that I'd be directing a play. You know, and I am not writing now-Hey, if you could interview someone who I think is absolutely brilliant it's Paula Vogel. And she's lives right in Providence, Rhode Island. I love her work. And I think that she's a very strong playwright. And Susanne Lorrie Parks. And you know we now have some very respected and produced women playwrights. Whereas the only person that I could think of off the top of my head to tell you who was writing when I became involved in the movement, was Lillian Helman who actually got produced on Broadway and was a woman playwright.

KF: So what do you think was the relationship between um arts and politics?

[00:55:23]

AM: The relationship between art and politics? I think the relationship between art and politics is what it's always been-it's a reflection of a political viewpoint. I mean I don't know that art is always all political, but when it is political I think it's reflecting where that artist's politics stand.

[00:55:49]

AM: Now I've been painting pet portraits for the last five years, but last year when that photograph in the newspaper came out of the coffins draped with the American flag and this woman got fired from the newspaper for printing that photograph because President Bush didn't want any photographs of dead soldiers shown in the news you know on the media or in the newspaper. And I did a painting of that, I did a very political painting of that. And um actually had some postcards made of that, went and heard Cindy Sheehan speak here last month and gave her some of those postcards. I mean what's happening in this country right now is really abhorrent.

KF: Definitely. Let's see so-

AM: --Totally shocking. It's like taking...20 years of, going back well even more than that. I don't know who this guy is. He's crazy, and everybody that's working with him. [laughing] Your president. And the fact that they're trying to whittle away at Roe vs Wade and it just, everything that they're doing it makes...You know that the 60s-they were an empowering time to be politically involved, to um you know to have our own agenda, you know, to be loving, to be caring, to be creative in dress, you know. And I'm sure there were people back then who thought my god how can these people walk around looking like that. When I walk around going, my god I want to see these bodies that are tattooed when they're 80 years old [laughing]. You know some of these tattoos are so elaborate and so huge or covering people's entire bodies. But when you look back in history at certain points there were tattooed people, you know so things come in cycles. And certainly the women's movement is coming cycles. And I'm sure that there will come a point that you know people will get angry enough that, well I'm hoping that once this administration is out that somebody has some levelheadedness that pushes us in a different direction but...

[00:58:21]

KF: Yeah. But to turn back 30 years though, back to RIFT. What were some of the things you debated among yourselves?

[00:58:31]

AM: We had a lot of-it ended up, you know, that there was a lot of contention about how we functioned. We actually had two women come in as intermediaries to try and get our communication skills better. Because there was uh, you know, there were times when I felt very um unappreciated with how much work that I was doing actually and my specific contribution for RIFT. And then there were other people that probably considered me power hungry. There was-we really tried to stay grounded to a collective process. And it wasn't always easy.

KF: And were there-um I thought you mentioned something like, were there tensions between the heterosexual and the homosexual members?

[00:59:27]

AM: You know...not really. I mean, we worked that out. I think that that was...--are you interviewing Deborah Bertoldi?

KF: No, who's that?

AM: She was with RIFT. She was in the Ann Hutchinson piece, and she lives right in Providence. Uh Fred-are you interviewing Sherry Brown?

KF: I have interviewed her, yeah.

[00:59:51]

AM: Yeah ok right. So she was one of the lesbians. The most wonderful woman though, and not not...um...uh...not contentious the way um now I can't think of her name but very talented woman who was just with us for that one show. And then of course Barbara Conley who was a lesbian and she passed away. She got MS and she passed away about 5 years ago.

[01:00:21]

AM: But Deborah Bertoldi lives right in Providence and she worked on that one show. And uh it could give you a good perspective of-I think. And Sherry I know must have been much clearer about the woman that came in to help us sort of sort through, you know, rights, hidden agendas-what are your hidden agendas and what are your communication skills etc etc. We went through a whole-we worked with those women for quite a while. And it was very nice because they contributed their time for us.

KF: And let's see, were there contentions between the men and women in the group?

[01:01:02]

AM: No.

KF: No? Ok. And when so let's see, just to clarify a couple things. When you left, were there like more men, or less men, or the same amount of men in the group?

[01:01:13]

AM: When I left it was all women.

KF: Ok. And um, and then when you left would you say there were more, less, or the same numbers of uh homosexual members in RIFT?

[01:01:31]

AM: Hmm. I would say there were more. That...yeah there were more. You know, the hard thing is that after I left, um...they did take Internal Injury down to Florida, they did take it down to England. It was our play about three different battered women. And uh and the woman, Jessica-I can't think of her last name-who directed that show stayed with the company I think for a little over a year. But they ultimately didn't hold it together. And I don't know if Sherry talked about that because of course I really, you know, wasn't there. As it slowly disintegrated. Um...I'm trying to think...what play they wrote after I left. I don't even know if they did.

[01:02:37]

AM: I know that I went back to Boston-I did a production of Internal Injury in Madison, Wisconsin, and it was very different than the production that we had done on the east coast because the chorus members-I actually had 6 performers instead of-[to men in house] so everything is good guys? [more talking in background]

[01:03:18]

AM: What was I going to say? I don't know-I did go back to Boston and they did a piece that they did not write but that someone-it was a published play. And I also saw their production of Internal Injury that they were doing in Boston. But I don't know exactly what it was like the last couple of years with RIFT. But Sherry was there right through the end.

KF: Yeah...yeah. So how would you say RIFT changed over the course of your time there?

[01:03:53]

AM: Um...I think...[to someone else, 'Thank you.'] I think our writing got a little better. You know, and I think it got more sophisticated. ...

KF: Any other ways it might have changed?

[01:04:18]

AM: Um...well you know that first year for RIFT, I think that they didn't really leave Providence and they were-you know they had done two shows and I got to see one of them. Well maybe that's not true because I think I actually saw them perform the Johnnie show at the University of New Hampshire, so I can't actually say that. But I think we...had more community outreach and developed a good reputation for doing good you know theater as we went along. You know, the longer we were out there. Now Brown was very supportive. I can't remember the name of the gentleman who started the black theater there, but he was very supportive of RIFT. And he actually helped get the Johnny Show and I can't get the other first play that they did and Persephone's Return all published. Which was very nice.

[01:05:31]

KF: And...let's see, I'm just looking back over my questions to see if I've forgotten anything. Well am I forgetting to ask anything?

[01:05:43]

AM: Gosh I can't think that you're forgetting to ask anything. Um let me think. Um well I...you know, I stopped writing-the last play that I wrote was in 1991. And it was about a woman writer from Butte, Montana. Her name was Mary Maclean. She was published at 19 year old, catapulted to fame like a little rock star is today, spent 9 years on the east coast, made a tremendous amount of money off of her first book. So I wrote this play, and it was workshopped here in Seattle. It was chosen along with out of 70 other plays to be workshopped at the University of Arkansas in Sayetville in 1991. And I simply could not get a fully mounted production of it. So I just, I stopped writing and I focused on directing and acting. Um but when I first moved to Seattle, and this is just a wonderful theater town, I did a lot of-I wrote quite a bit. And would usually have it either performed at the Directors' Festival at New City Theater or the Playwright's Festival that ultimately New City Theater mounted. So

[01:07:08]

AM: So the great thing about RIFT was that you know, we worked as a collective and everything that we did was produced. That is very difficult to get a play produced.

KF: Yeah, for sure. One question that I forgot was what kinds of connections did RIFT have to either other theater groups or other political groups?

[01:07:33]

AM: Hmm. Oh I forgot to mention something else which made me flash on that. Um but uh first I'll just tell you that out of Goddard Rita Mae Brown and 2 or 3 other writers-and there was this publication company that started in Planefield, Vermont, called Daughters, and that published Rita Mae Brown's first book. Um we started a summer feminist school called Saggarus [sp?]. And um my karate teacher actually from New York City came up to be sort of the physical-sort of the karate teacher etc etc etc. So that was sort of exciting.

[01:08:23]

AM: But RIFT, RIFT stayed very connected with other theaters in town. Deborah Jean [Templin] actually came to us from Trinity [Reparatory Theater]. She had had an internship at Trinity. And she stayed with us for one year. But she really wanted to be doing more performing and so she left. But um...I don't know if I could...ask me that question again. How were we connected with other political...?

KF: Um other theater groups, either in Providence or outside of Providence that influenced you or you guys were in contact with.

AM: Well we were in contact with Bob Corona. We were in contact with the Looking Glass Theater.

KF: Is that in Providence?

AM: Uh huh. Both of those were in Providence. As a matter of fact, Bob Corona's on your website. And he-his father was a performer and he's a performer and I assume he's still in Providence, Rhode Island.

KF: Let's see, any other feminist theaters?

AM: I can't think of any others, but I'm sure that that's not true. Well, I corresponded with a lot of people. I corresponded with Earth-the woman that founded Earth Onion Theater-for years.

KF: Is that a feminist theater?

AM: Anyone who contacted us, you know, I corresponded with. We had inquiries, you know, but I can't think off the top of my head, and I don't know if anyone kept...any of those files. You know what I mean? I might have kept some stuff and I might actually have it [laughing] packed up. But um...

[01:10:18]

AM: Rhode Island is a wonderful state to be an artist in. Because the art community is-it is so small and so you know so many other artists. Whether it be poets, writers, people in theater. There's just a wonderful connection that way in Rhode Island.

KF: Yeah definitely. Well any last comments?

[01:10:52]

AM: It was one of the more...incredible experiences in my life. To be...you know, doing feminist theater in the 70s with all these other wonderful, creative women and men. And um it was just a very exciting time. I love Providence, Rhode Island. I love Rhode Island. I loved-I always tried not to anything but theater in the summer and not have a job because we were all so poor [laughing]. And sort of like go to the beach [laughing]. Rhode Island has great beaches.

[01:11:37]

KF: Definitely [laughing]. Well thank you so much.

AM: Well thank you for calling and interviewing me and I'll be interested in you know-this is all going to be posted on the website that you send that link to?

KF: Uh huh, it will be. Do you mind if I turn off the recording?