Interviewee: Sherry Brown

Interviewer: Kiera Feldman

Date: 2/28/06

Location: Rhode Island State Council on the Arts office

Category: Women's history/Theater

Length: 1:37:43

Word Count: 15,629

[00:00:01]

Kiera Feldman: So you were the one that donated the-

[00:00:03]

Sherry Brown: Yeah, I put together the archives.

[00:00:05]

KF: Where did the archives come from?

[00:00:07]

SB: Oh my cellar, my attic. I had collected stuff over the years. I mean we had an actual office because we were a fulltime theater company. So we um you know just kept copies of reviews and articles and all that kind of good stuff. And scripts and notes and I can't even remember what else is in the archives. But yeah we just kept records and then finally when it came time to close we just gathered up copies of stuff we had both in the office and in our personal files and stuff like that. So

[00:00:39]

KF: Great

[00:00:40]

SB: And now it's great because now people are starting to come back and do these interviews. Another student from Brown came about a year ago maybe?

[00:00:50]

KF: Really you talked with another student from Brown? Who was it?

SB: You know I'm sorry but I can't remember her name.

KF: Was she in the oral history class?

SB: I don't think so. I don't think that was her interest. I'll have to go back in my calendar and try to look up.

[00:01:07]

SB: Obviously it's something that's beginning to happen now with sort of that cycle of people coming back and doing histories. So it's really cool.

[00:01:13]

KF: Yeah I think oral history seems to be gaining popularity. I think it's entering the mainstream with Storycorps on NPR.

SB: Yeah, yeah.

KF: I mean that's a different kind of oral history for sure, and you know academic oral historians think they're amateurs and that there's no methodology. But I mean it's kind of amazing that lots of people outside of universities know what oral history is now and think it's important.

[00:01:43]

KF: Let me just make sure I can hear you.

SB: Testing one two three testing one two three.

[00:01:55]

KF: Can you just begin by stating your name and today's date and where we are.

[00:02:04]

SB: Oh my god the date! Ok, no, I know it's February 28^th. Usually I don't remember the date but-and I'm Sherilyn Brown but usually I go by Sherry. And this is the State Council on the Arts in Providence Rhode Island.

[00:02:18]

KF: Great. Lookin good. I'll so let's begin. I'll just consult my cheat sheet. So can you just begin by giving me some general background about where you grew up and what your family was like?

[00:02:34]

SB: Sure. I grew up in Massachusetts in a little town called Sagas, which is North of Boston. And I got interested in Theater because of my grandmother, who in the 20s was in theater. She was something called a reader, where she would perform excerpts of stories and she used to travel around to actually the barbershop quartet bureau. And so when she left that life to sort of raise her kids, she became the drama coach for the town. She lived next door to me and there were always plays and rehearsal like door, and costumes in her attic. And so we got to dress up and play stuff and be in her plays. So she was like my first director, actually. When I was three years old I was in this like town historic pageant and I got to kneel down and look up and say, "Mother!"

[00:03:25]

SB: So um..but I actually loved theater and was in church and town plays and YMCA plays and was eventually in high school plays. I just always loved theater and had it in a family member, and I think that's so important. You know, when you're younger if there's somebody in your family who's interested in something, the power of that is very strong. So for me it was my grandmother. Thanks nana!

[00:03:53]

KF: (laughing). Great great. So did you go to college thinking you were going to study theater?

4:00

SB: Well actually it's funny because I come form a pretty working class family where nobody had gone to college. So it was a big deal when I went. I thought, "I can't major in theater! That's not useful! I can't make a living!" And so Clark had a good reputation for being a Psych school. So I thought oh I'm going to become a family counselor, some kind of counselor, something like that. First semester I was there, auditions came up for ap lay, I was off and running. That was it, it was over. Didn't even try. So I ended up majoring in theater, and just kind of minoring in teaching psychology and stuff. Yeah my intent was to try to do something else more useful. But look! It's turned out to be useful. I have a state job with benefits so...*laughing*...that I love! So who could ask for more?

[00:04:45]
KF: How did your family feel about you being the first one to go to college?

[00:05:56]

SB: Um...they were pretty proud. My mother certainly was because she had gone to secretarial school and had really, really wanted to go to college. So it was important to her that I go. So...I yeah she was always very proud. Even though when I started to go to college my grades started to drop because I was always in theater productions at rehearsals and never studying. BUT anyway I managed to get through and yeah she was really happy that I could go. She was very happy for me. And my dad too because he had grown up in poverty and...I'm not sure really what he thought. You know, I think he was proud. But I think he also sort of wondered was this really necessary to go to college to get a job. But I think he wanted that for me too. Actually I shouldn't say that. He probably did want that for me because later in life he put himself through Harvard night school. It took like ten years but he got his BA.

[00:05:52]

KF: When did he do that?

[00:05:55]

SB: When he was in his...well he started actually when he was in his 40s. And he finally graduated when he was probably about 55 or 60.

[00:06:03]

KF: wow

[00:06:04]

SB: So...yeah he came to value education. He didn't come from a family that valued education, but he came to value it.

[00:06:11]

KF: What'd your parents do when you were growing up?

[00:06:15]

SB: Um my dad was a advertising salesman for a newspaper. My mother was part-time librarian, and then she kinda dropped out and became a homemaker. But she also wrote...on the side. She really liked writing children's books, although she never had anything published. She also suffers from mental illness. So that was-she can't hold on a fulltime job, she was too anxious to do that. So that's been sort of a through-line in my life, in many ways. And sort of came into some of the characters, actually-that I created in the feminist theater. And advocacy work that I do even today.

[00:06:56]

KF: Great well we'll definitely go back to that. I'll make a note. So what year did you go to college and what year did you graduate?

[00:07:06]

SB:

I went from 70 to-I graduated in 73. I got out a semester early-I really needed to push through because I didn't have a whole lot of money to go. I worked my way through. And I remember this one point where I thought-I was reading how many credits you have to graduate. And I thought that doesn't take four years. And I checked it out and I went and I asked people and they said no you don't have to go for four years. And I thought, oh, ok. I mean I loved college but it was expensive. So I thought, well great, and so I graduated in January of 73. Or 74...January of 74, I'm sorry. So that was like 3 and a half years.

[00:07:46]

KF: Neat neat. So where did you go after you graduated?

[00:07:51]

SB: After I graduated I stayed in Wooster, Mass, where Clark is. And I joined a theater company called New England Repertory that was started by a director that I had worked with during my college years. He was outside the college but...um I did street theater. Uh with Model Cities in Wooster and was a neighborhood art teacher in Wooster for a while traveling around with Model Cities which was a sort of 70s social action type program that did a number of things. But I worked in arts things.

[00:08:30]
SB: Let's see and after that...after that actually is when I auditioned for RIFT [note: the Rhode Island Feminist Theater]-for the feminist theater. I was living in Wooster, went to Boston for the auditions and actually got turned. And I thought-I just had this sense like it was the next thing I was going to do in my life and I got really confused. And I thought, I know that this is what I'm supposed to be doing next. I just know. Because I had seen a production and really liked it. I had seen the play called Persephone's Return. And they called me back and they said they really liked my work but they needed to put somebody into a role really quickly and I would have had to move and it would have taken some time so they needed somebody who was local. Who didn't work out ha ha. So they called-I was up at a performance of theirs in Boston like a month later and the director saw me in the hallway and grabbed me and said we want you we want you. So I ended up-actually I commuted from Boston because by that time I had moved to Boston. Um...where was I working? I can't remember. I think I was on unemployment, actually, and enjoying going to films and doing stuff during they day. So then they said move to-or come join the theater. And I lived in Boston for a while, worked in the theater. And then moved down about a year later I think. I moved down about 75.

KF: So you were commuting from Boston to Rhode Island?

SB: mm hmm. And actually there were three of us who were commuting at the time. Yup, we'd hop in the car and come down or take the train or the bus.

KF: How often?

SB: Uh we rehearsed 4 nights a week, Monday through Thursday like 7 to 10 o'clock. And uh then we did performances. I think most of the performances were on the weekend. But yeah we had a four night a week rehearsal schedule.

[00:10:13]

KF: So I have to uh...if people have never heard of RIFT, what should they know about it?

[00:10:21]

SB: Let's see. Oh...it's so hard to describe because like everything it has a cultural context. So if people aren't familiar with the 70s and what it felt like and what it was really like, I guess the first piece of what I'd have to say is that it was a time of...um...where self exploration was really valued highly. Self reflection...you know tons of people were into TM-transcendental meditation. There were just all kinds of political action movements. If you were into... civil rights, gay rights wasn't so active at that point. But just all different kinds of social action movements going on. And the activity on the college campuses and stuff like that. It was a very specific kind of era. And so...RIFT really grew out of that. I wasn't there at the founding, but I heard so many of the founders talk about the founding because we would do discussions after the performances. That I had a sense of what it came out of, because I didn't join until 2 years after the founding. But it actually was started by 6 men and 6 women at brown university. They had a class together and I'm sorry but I don't remember what the class was but I can tell you somebody who can give you that information. And they really wanted to explore their social and sexual politics together. And so George Bass who was head of Rites and Reason theater at that time, he gave them like I think 500 bucks to start a theater company, and so they did. And that was also part of what that era felt like. You wanted to do it, you do it. You know, it wasn't like we've got to go out and get funding, we've got to do all this stuff. There was a lot of grassroots stuff going on.

[00:12:13]

SB: And out of that grew a group of people who were really interested in continuing-those of us who had come to it from theater as well as the political side-and it really took off from there. When I think back on it, one of the things that really distinguished it from maybe other feminist theater or women's theater at the time is that we for the most part did full length plays. A lot of women's theater was sort of vignette style, you know short scenes that were connected in some way but not a full length play. Whereas we based our work on improvisation. There was usually a playwright in resident and we would come out with a full length play-it was like a four month development process. And then we would tour that play. So we were a touring theater, we were a feminist theater, and I guess the other thing that's important to know is people would ask us about the politics all the time. Because if you have the word feminist in your title people come at that from all different angles with expectations of what you're going to be, what you're not going to be. We got this expectation that oh we would women's topics-we could only do certain topics because that's what a feminist theater would do. And we always used to say, there is no topic or thing we can't do. It's our women's points of view-sorts of women affirming points of view-about anything in the world. And so that was the other philosophy that we had was that not that we had to be limited to certain things or certain styles or topics or you know that kind of thing.

[00:13:54]

KF: Could you talk a little bit more about like what made it a feminist theater, as opposed to a theater group. And what a women's topic or something pertinent to women's issues is.

[00:14:05]

SB: Um...for us, I don't think we ever sat around and had a definition of feminist. One of the playwrights who worked with the company I remember she said, "I was born a feminist when I was born a woman. That's it. You know, we were full human beings. A lot of us came from theater where we were really tired of being typecast of the classic thing of what everyone says, but there were three characters: the mother, the bitch, or the whore. That's what you got cast as, that's what you got to play doesn't matter what the character was. When you were directed that was usually what a director was looking for, particularly male directs.

[00:14:39]

SB: So a feminist theater was a chance for women to play interesting characters who had like real conflicts, who were real people, who were very full characters that.....looked as women as full human beings, that played attention to topics that were of interest to women, as well as things that were quote and unquote women's topics. We also considered the way we worked to be feminist. I mean that sort of notion of collectivity which we struggled with in so many ways and I'm sure groups still do today. You know, what does it mean in terms of decision making and power structures. We played with different structures and organizational structures that we had over time. We tried being director-less one time, drove ourselves nuts. But you know it was important to explore that stuff. We had a play that was genderless in terms of language. It was called-oh my god what was it called. O...something. Not O her....well anyway, we developed a language that was called the O language and it was totally without reference to gender. And that was fascinating because-there's a wonderful short story and I can't remember who it's by. It's a woman writer, I think. Called baby x. And they never name the gender of baby X in the story. And I don't care who's reading it, no matter how much we all think we can, you know-not that gender can be irrelevant to us, but that we can look past gender to a human being. When you read it, at least I found myself and everybody finds themselves wanting to know, my god is it male, female. And so that really inspired us to think about using a language that wouldn't define gender...when we spoke.

[00:16:27]

SB: You know, it was really topics of interest to us as women-or women and men. Some of the plays were women and men, some were all female casts. Um...so...that's really what it was to be feminist for us. And I'm sure if you had asked each one of us what's your definition of feminist you would have gotten slightly different answers. But it was that knowing that we valued ourselves as women and our thoughts and ideas and ourselves as theater professionals too. That was an important piece of it for me and why I joined.

[00:17:00]

KF: And...what's the motivation behind wanting to have like genderless-either a genderless performance or different things with how they arrange gender?

[00:17:12]

SB: That particular play was really just to explore...for us what it would be like using a non-gender based language. Because we looked at-we were reading people like Mary Daly and people like that about how gender-I mean how language shapes our world. Absolutely shapes our world. So if we are always talking with gender reference then that's the way we behave. And so we wanted to explore what would happen. So that's when we invented the O language and used it in this particular play.

[00:17:45]
KF: And what happened? What did you conclude from that play?

[00:17:55]
SB: Um...I think...it wasn't like there were set conclusions but the experience of it was very interesting and. It did...for me, it did change-I don't even know how to put this. It changed....the way I thought of things in the world. And i-because what I would do, outside of the performances or rehearsals I would um sort of use the O language to myself instead of he, she, whatever. Um...and it was kind of an equalizing..force. And I also found myself, though, very interesting in...how difficult it is to do language...without gender reference. How we're so steeped in it, no matter how much we think we can look past that or you know not consider people based on gender and all that kind of stuff. It's very difficult because that's now how the world is organized. So...it was an interesting sort of mind stretching thing. And also sort of emotionally it was interesting.

[00:19:13]

KF: How did the...O language work?

[00:19:15]

SB: I wish I could remember [laughing] I think it was fairly simple. But it was...Instead of using he, she, him, her-anything that was gender-based, we just used the letter O. I don't remember if we had a plural for it or exactly how that worked. It was one of the earlier plays that I was involved in. So um...I can't remember it exactly. But that was the basic premise. That you would never say a word that specifically referred to gender.. It was always O instead. O does this or O does that.

[00:19:53]

KF: You said it was very emotional. How was it emotional?

[00:19:50]
SB: Um...again I think brecause...we you know we're raised um...very much the opposite way. And so...to use it um...it was...kind of neutralizing in a way. It was good in that way, but it was also difficult. I guess that's the best way I can describe it. I mean it was just after a while when we spoke it as part of the play it became almost routine and I kind of liked it. I think we got kind of attached to the O language.

[00:20:43]

KF: Neat neat. So you mentioned earlier that when you tried out for the first RIFT play, that you got turned down and you felt like it was something you belonged, you belonged in RIFT. What-why did you think you belonged in RIFT?

[00:21:05]

SB: Um...for me it was like the perfect marriage of my theater background and caring about theater and they cared about theater. And doing it well, doing it fairly professionally, you know doing it without a lot of pay, but professional standards. Rehearsals. And my personal politics of feminism at the time. And just seeing those two coming together it was like oh this makes sense! And I really liked their style of theater, too. I don't-although I've seemed some good sort of episodic style theater, I much preferred that they actually attempted whole length plays. Because there wasn't a whole lot at the time. Ouur-we always talked about our goal was to be a time when we didn't need to exist. When there were a lot women playwrights being produced, women artistic directors of major rep companies and all that kind of stuff. So for me it was like -oh there's the vision. You know women are in key positions running the company, acting, performing, directing, designing, playwrighting. And it was sort of that twin connection to the feminism and the theater that I really liked.

[00:22:18]

KF: Um...so why was it important to have RIFT at this period in like the early 70s, early to mid 70s? Like, what was the broader scene like in terms of theater and also in terms of politics?

[00:22: 35]

SB: Um well not just in rhode island but nationally I'd have to say, it was pretty pathetic for women to have any kind of management role in a major rep company. Um I think Arena Stage might have had an artistc director who was a woman at that point, but basically it was REALLY a man's world. And it's-I mean it hasn't changed completely by any means since then. But um, you know there were women who were in the company-there's one who I will give to you to talk to-who was part of Trinity Reportory company, which is a major repertory company here. And it was abysmal. If you were a woman you were just low on the totem pole, it was a boy's club, that was the power structure. And that was pretty much what you would find on any company. Even with men who were fairly you know decent directors and fairly sensitive about theater it just...there was a whole part of it that just was really very limiting for women who wanted to be performers. And um, as I said that wasn't just Rhode Island, that was everywhere.

[00:23:40]

SB: So I had to make a choice. Am I going to try and do the New York scene, which is where theater school would have sent me. When I went to the O'Neil theater foundation all of the teachers were new york teachers and so forth and I would have had chanced to audition. And I thought, you know I don't want to go that route for a lot of reasons, but that's just not-I don't want to be banging my head against a wall to fight and fight for roles that weren't that interesting to me anyway. And I really wanted a rep company kind of structure where you work closely as a company and as a group. And you're not just in one role and always looking for your next one commercially. Um but also that was the theater world too, that was not terribly friendly to women. And if you wanted any kind of a say in the running of the company or something like that, it was tricky. It was tricky. You had to figure out how to have input and do it in a way that it could be accepted, and a lot of times it really wasn't. So...and it was the mother, the bitch, the whore thing. [laughing]. You know it was like, I don't care what the role is, if it's Medea, if it's a sitcom, it's the mother, the bitch, or the whore, so...you really couldn't explore fully as an actor. Obviously not with every director, but that was, that was pretty much what the scene felt like.

[00:25:00]

KF: And why, what do you think it is about Rhode Island at this time period that RIFT was able to develop?

[00:25:10]

SB: Um I think certainly because it grew out of a university environment, that helped. Um also at the time Rhode Island was really kind of working class experimental friendly.

Like you could live here really cheaply. You could live in an apartment for 50 bucks a month and have a garden out back and walk downtown to a building to rehearse. And tons of empty buildings that you could rent cheaply and it was really artist friendly. And that's changed a lot in the last 10 years a lot because of the real estate values going up-well, that's changed a lot in the last 20 years but particularly in the last 10. But it was really kind of a gritty environment where if you had graduated from RISD or graduated from Brown or were coming here like I was from outside, you could get studio space or rehearsal space cheaply and there was a kind of uh...kind of um...it was very freeing in that way. It was not like big city pressure, both financially or commercially. But if was it's own kind of experimental ground and things that were going on and people who would stay from Brown or RISD, I mean that always is the case, that always enriches the Providence community. But it was very much a, a friendly sort of to low income people like artists at the time too.

[00:26:47]

KF: How um...how closely tied was RIFT to Brown and RISD? Was there a moment when it branched out into a more community thing, or was it always thought of like as a Brown thing that people came to?

[00:27:05]

SB: Um at the beginning-and I can give you again you know someone who was one of the founding people and he can answer that better for you. My impression is that-like even when I came in like 75 the rehearsals used to still be at Brown. They were at Hillel house. And so Brown was kind of a support, but even by then it was already considered to be an independent theater. It just had, because it had started at Brown, Brown was supportive in terms of having rehearsal space and stuff like that. So the first couple years, um I think it was mostly in terms of space that it supported it. And then it began to earn money and make a reputation and it became independent I think fairly quickly. Um but there was that you know that link at the beginning. And I can't remember, I'm trying to remember when we started rehearsing other spaces downtown. Probably about three years into its life, yeah, 2 to 3 years into it's life.

[00:28:07]

KF: So that would have been around 1975 around?

[00:28:10]

SB: Yeah, yup. There was an old, oh god what's the club that's there now. Um....I can't think of the name of the club, but anyway it was downtown, a former bowling alley. There was an alternative school called School One, which is actually now over on university avenue, but it used to be downtown in this old bowling alley. So we used to rehearse upstairs. You could see like the old marks on the floor from where the balls would go. But it was a great open space, great loft space to rehearse in. So we were there for quite a while. Um, where else. Oh grace church we were there for a while, there was rehearsal space there. And the building where the providence performing arts center is, actually upstairs there was a lot of office space so we got pretty cheap rent up there. I have no idea whether there are even offices up there or not anymore. So kind of gravitated into the downtown area where there were a lot of other studios and artists going on, yeah.

[00:29:15]

KF: And I haven't had you say this quite yet, but can you give the exact years you were at RIFT and what roles you did?

[00:29:25]

SB: Sure, yeah. I came in I believe it was 75. I was um I -the other thing was that everybody in the company was both, had an artistic function and a business function. Because we also believed in that, that you do the artistic function but you take responsibility for the business function, or technical part. So um I was primarily an actor, and I got into publicity was one of the things I liked because I liked writing. But then I also discovered that I really liked doing bookings. I loved setting up tours. So I was the person primarily responsible for making it a national touring company where we could actually make a living. I mean, it wasn't much of a living but we all had cheap apartments so. But yeah so I was the touring director for a number of years. And then...later on...we actually had a more traditional structure in terms of an artistic director and a managing director, and I took on the managing director role. And then I so I was with it until the end actually when we just decided that the end had come. It was probably about ten years---was it 85? Probably about 75 to about 85. I can't tell you exactly when it ended. [laughs]. You'll be able to know from the archives. I'm not good with years. You know, it was back there somewhere.

[00:30:55]

KF: [laughs] Um...let's see. Um, could you, I've heard about the collaborative playwrighting process. So could you explain what, how that worked, and why, why people wanted to write collaboratively.

[00:31:17]

SB: Um...I think again it came out of that urge to have characters that were really interesting to us to play. And the feeling that everybody had something interesting to share about it. We also liked working through improvisation, so the director would set up, whether it was a rotating director or one director, would set up the improv. And we would pretty much decide on an idea or theme or some characters to start with. And then we'd do some research, we always did research. We went out and did oral histories, we interviewed women at the time or whoever you know the characters were for most of our plays. We brought in stories that we told. So for example there was one, there was a play called Paperweight that was based in an insurance company. That was based directly on two of us who were working there through a temp agencies as clerks in an insurance company. And so coming in and sharing those stories as part of the playwrighting process. And sharing stories and sharing thoughts and saying, oh let's try an improv about this and getting it up on its feet. And then whoever was the acting playwright for that particular production, recording it, taking it away, you know editing it, coming back, and making a scene. And eventually characters would develop. I mean it was just a really exciting way to work. Um...at one point for some of us who had been in the company for a while, we also thought it was important to go back to the traditional way of working of just getting an already written script. Because that's a certain discipline as an actor too that you have to enter the playwright's world and their words as an actor, and that's a good discipline too. But we loved loved loved just being so...involved in the creation of the character. Watching it unfold, helping to edit...you get to play all those roles instead of it being done for you. It's just a really exciting way to do theater.

[00:33:25]

KF: Can you give me a specific example of one play? It can be Paperweight or another one, and how that unfolded and what the plot of the play was.

[00:33:40]

SB: Sure. In paperweight, um there was actually a supervisor where I had worked. Um...And there were actually a number of supervisors where I had worked, who just struck me as most of them were middle aged women who um spoke in a certain way, acted in a certain way, and they just were interesting to me. So the character that I developed, Mary O'Malley was kind of a compositve of all of them. And so we-and this is interesting because there was a movie called 9 to 5 that came out about a year after we created Paperweight, and it has the same sort of structure-it's Lily Tomlin and I forget who else is in it-but it has the same structure of fantasy life being a very important part of work for women, especially when you're in these mundane office jobs. So we all had a beginning fantasy life at the beginning. And um...I'm trying to remember, now did I dream I won the lottery or something?

[00:34:45]

SB: But I come out and I just remember the beginning is something like um....uh [doing an accent]... My name is Mary O'Malley and the first rule is to be clean. If you're not clean, forget about it, you don't look good. [normal voice] And that was based on somebody who was like that. And she had her um her blonde wig and her polyester pant suit and her plastic purse and that was the world she lived in. And she was very funny. She was actually-she became the office supervisor, that character became the supervisor. And she had her girls who worked with her that she cared a lot about, and she was also tough with them about following rules. And um...it was a play that actually became a an organizing play. The characters it turned out were not happy with their some of the situations at the insurance company. And so towards the end they're beginning to organize. And that was based on something that was happening at the time in the insurance company where I was working.

[00:35:47]

KF: How did they begin to organize?

[00:35:50]

SB: They began to discover that they didn't have to live this way, they could actually...get a petition. We didn't take it through like a union drive and all the stuff that was happening, but by the end of the play you see them changing and thinking aha, we're going to get a petition together, we're going to write it, we're going to sign it, we're gonna stand up against the powers that be here and really try to do something against the things that we don't like here. It was a comedy but it was the through line as they started to come together as a group of women.

[00:36:25]

KF: What were the complaints that they were making?

[00:36:27]
SB: You know it's funny I'm trying to remember. There was a character called Ms. Showalter who was like the boss boss. And she-I think it was issues like around....time, time off, um...it's funny now that I can't even remember. It's funny but I can't even remember the specifics. But you'll see the script. Just the way that they were treated and talked to and you know that kind of thing. So...

[00:37:05]

KF: What role do you think-you talked about imagination playing a big part in women's daily jobs. Can you talk about that some more?

[00:37:15]

SB: Yeah, well the characters were-there was one character who in her fantasy was a speed skater. Um...there was...um...I'm trying to thin of the other fantasies. One was a rock star, in fact she's one of the people I can refer you to who's still in Rhode Island. Her character [accent change] Kim was a rock star. [normal] And I can't remember but that whole opening sequence was completely devoted to each character. I'm not sure if you get introduced to who they were in the office-I don't think you did. The first time you get to meet them you're in that fantasy. And then the lights are down and you're at that little gray table doing your little whatever you're doing, your routine stuff. And then I think the second act opened...it's funny but I can't remember the exact way that that opened. But I think there might have been another fantasy sequence at the beginning. Um

[00:38:15]

And then just some of the other plays, and you'll see them. There was um Internal Injury which got the nickname of Eternal Injury because it was booked for so many years. It was a play about domestic violence, which at the time not many people were dealing with. You know there was Sojourner House, it was brand new. This whole notion that you might have a safe place for women was pretty new. We interviewed a lot of women for that story and um came up with a three character show. And that was just booked like, we went on so many different tours of that particular production. There was like three different casts of that over time.

[00:38:55]

SB: Um there was One is Silver, which is a play about women's friendships. And it was interesting because we started with the premise that women have all different kinds of friendships. Like we cross class and race and gender boundaries. And we found that that's not really what we do. We tend to go to people like us when we form friendships. So that was really interesting in the research phase of that in looking at women's friendships.

[00:39:25]

SB: And um let me see what else. There was a play um Anne Hutchinson: American Jezebel in 76, which was you know the big bicentennial. Um we found Anne Hutchinson, who was a Rhode Island women who was extremely important to Rhode Island history. She actually founded Portsmith, Rhode Island, but she was never given credit for it because she was a women so you know somebody else had to be listed as the founder. But she was excommunicated from Boston in the 1600s. And walked with her 13 children to Rhode Island when she was excommunicated from the church. And she really challenged the power structure there, I mean that was a total theocracy there-the Massachusetts Bay colongy in the 1600s. And um her trial was conducted-now this has modern day relevance-based on the bible because...as a theocracy that was the law that you had. And so...I remember being in the Boston Public Library reading the transcripts of her trial because it's the only original source material about her life. Everything else is secondary at best. But the trial is there, so we have her actual words about um...I just remember her saying when she was put on trial something about-essentially challenging their right to tell her what she could and couldn't do. Because she used to have um...after the church service, because woman had to be either not allowed or sat in the back, I can't remember what the regulations were. She was upper class so I think she was allowed to sit in the back. But women basically were not allowed into church, and so she used to go as an upper class women, and then she'd go back to her house and invite other women in and tell the other women what the sermon had been about. And so she would begin to interpret what the ministers had said. She also had this doctrine that you didn't have to have a minister between you and god. You could go directly to god. It was the covenant of grace, it was called, which I always loved. So she got into big trouble. And anyway so she challenged them and basically said what right do you have to tell me what to? And I remember their response was, 'we are your parents in matters of law and conscious.' And they got her on the biblical law-on the commandment you have to obey your parents. So, that's what they said, we're your parents in matters of law and conscious, so you're out of here. So she was in jail, in the winter, suffered a lot. And then walked here to Rhode Island where there was more religious freedom, around the time of Roger Williams and all that. Helped to settle Portsmith, Rhode Island. Had what were way before Fox started the Quaker meetings, she had essentially what were Quaker meetings. She believed in Native Americans having full souls. They were part of her gatherings. And um...governor Winthrop who was head of the Mass Bay colony at the time didn't like that she had escaped to Rhode Island. So he actually tried to annex Rhode Island so he could get to her. And then um she decided it was too close to comfort for him so she took off and went to New Amsterdam, which is New York. And that's who the Hutchinson Parkway is named after in New york. And she actually bought land that was Native American land that the Dutch sold to her and she didn't know that. So she was actually killed. She and all of her children except for one daughter-Susanna-were caught in the Native American struggles. Yeah. Yeah so she fascinating. So we did a whole historical thing about that.

[00:43:10]

SB: There was actually-we did a tv production of that for public television. Funny little production [laughs]. So let's see....what other scripts....those are the ones that come to mind at the moment. There are a real variety of stuff.

[00:43:22]

KF: What were...some of your favorite productions? Or did you just give them?

[00:43:30]
SB: Um...probably if I remember them they're my favorites. Yeah I did enjoy Internal Injury. It was um tricky to do, but I enjoyed the character that I developed. I LOVED Mary O'Malley in Paperweight-the one that I was talking about before, the supervisor. She just-she was funny and she was fun to do.

[00:43:53]

SB: Oh I know what we did! The other thing was did was we took a European clowning technique-the Jacque Lacak clowning method, which is based on-it's a very physical method of clowning. It's character clowns. And we had two different shows in two different periods of RIFT's history. One was actually a musical clown show that was kind of like fractured fairy tales. Um and...it was called like Snow White and the Seven Several Dwarfs, or something like that I can't remember. But then there was one that was like a musical version of the clowns. And I loved doing the clowning, that was great, the character clowns. Yeah, those were good. I had, my two characters were, in one play I was Bigmouth, who was a cave woman. And um the other one...Big Fat Jane the Storyteller was my other character. Yeah....

[00:45:47]

KF: [laughing] Who was that?

[00:45:50]

SB: Um...she was a storyteller, she came from a long line of storytellers. Which again is based on my own history of my grandmother. And she did something called the fine art of umbrella dancing. And I used to demonstrate it where I would put up my umbrella and sort of walk around one way, and then I'd stop. And then I'd walk around the other way and then stop. And that was it, that was the whole routine. So it was like that comic timing of clowning, and a lot of it was nonverbal stuff. But...yeah it was fun, it was very fun.

[00:45:25]

KF: Great, great. Let's see...um, so on a slightly different vain. I've heard that RIFT was involved in a bit of community outreach and things not necessarily related to theater. Did I hear correctly on that one?

[00:45:40]
SB: Um yes...I mean, in the sense that we were always um...when we did our research we were always basing it on real people's lives, particularly women's lives. And when we performed we would always have benefits for whatever seemed appropriate for that particular topic. Um we always had discussions after the performance because part of it was about educating people about issues that were relatively new at the time like domestic violence. There was a lot of feeling then that if you stayed in a marriage that was violent or a relationship that was violent that it was your own stupid fault-you know why didn't you just get out. And you know things that were really um, not that that misinformation doesn't exist today, but it was like the prevalent attitude. So we felt like part of our mission was public education and that's why we would always have materials and do benefits and we would book ourselves to places that were-I mean we booked ourselves in a variety of places, but we would always make sure that we were doing benefits for places that were doing the social action kind of work that we wanted to support and we could help them raise money.

[00:46:55]

KF: What were...in addition to domestic violence, what were some of the main issues you guys dealt with?

[00:47:00]

SB: Uh...certainly women's working rights. Um You know the rights of women to um organize and have decent salaries and all of that um that came up with Paperweight. Um.........the, in One is Silver it was really about women's....um....the kinds of relationships that women have, the bonding that women have. And although it may sound nuts now, because I don't know how it sounds to you from your generational perspective. That the time that women could take time to be together was not always just assumed. It's like you had to have some excuse. I mean, was it a Coffee clatch club in your neighborhood that you could go to with the girls to have a cup of coffee? Was it-certainly for my mother's generation, women coming together to do stuff would seem weird. So when it came to my generation the fact that we had things like Consciousness Raising groups-that's what they were called. I mean I remember having a C-R group in college where women would just get together and talk about their lives.

[00:48:17]

SB: and so that...that focus on women's relationships and friendships in One is Silver was the issue. And the um...the right is too strong a word, but like the necessity, the importance of women sharing our stories with each other and supporting each other even when you may have major fights going on. One of the relationships in that play is between a sister, two sisters. And how they have disagreements and can really fight with each other but they absolutely support each other and what they're trying to do with their lives as women, and trying to break away from-either supporting a woman who wants to be in a traditional role, which again was a huge thing. You know, you're not really a feminist if you're a homemaker, all that kind of dialogue that was going on then. And supporting women wherever they are, whatever route they've chosen and supporting their right to choose that life. So there was a lot around that. Um

[00:49:23]

SB: And I think for us as theater women, to do any topic that we wanted to. Like I remember once when we did two one acts back to back. We hadn't written them. And it was about young women in institution and older women in an institution. And they were comedies, and they were sort of dark comedies. And we knew we were going to get in trouble from probably political communities because we weren't doing like a social action sort of straight up play about institutionalized women. But they were really interesting, intriguing scripts to us. And so we did them. And they were funny, they were kinda weird, but we did them. And so part of what we were up to too was, when people would say well you know you're a feminist theater you can't do that. And we would say, yes we can. We can do anything. We're women, if it's of interest to us, it's worthy of being done. So that was, those would be part of the discussions we would do too.

[00:50:20]

SB: And historical, like the Anne Hutchinson, you know women of history who were lost, that was the political issue. I mean who the heck ever hears of Anne Hutchinson. You hear of Roger Williams if you're here for 10 minutes. Roger Williams founder of Rhode Island, there's the Roger Williams Baptist church, there's the Roger Williams Hospital, Roger Williams this, that. And Anne Hutchinson was actually a very key um figure, and in many ways much braver than Roger Williams in terms of taking on the power structure and all that, but you just never hear about her. And so that was our thing in '76 that we were going to pick a woman who was absolutely instrumental in the history of this part of the country that people for the most part hadn't heard of.

[00:51:10]

KF: So um regarding the importance of women's relationships, can you talk about some of the important female relationships in your life at this time?

[00:51:17]

SB: Oh in my own life? Absolutely. Well my sister I think is just we are so tightly bonded and I don't know how we would have survived in the family that we had without each other. And that's just as true now when I'm in my 50s and she's in her 40s as it was growing up through our whole childhood. And so that was one of my very first I think very tight relationships. My mother, even though she is bonafied crazy, is certainly one of my most important relationships. She has always wanted the best for me, um and even though she has made my life, really, really difficult in many ways, she has also challenged me to grow, to understand mental illness. I have a whole like avocational thing that I have done in the past with the alliance for the mentally ill about mental health rights and um all that kind of stuff. So she's-and she's creative and she's funny and she supported me, so she's absolutely key in my life. Being a lesbian woman, you know the lover relationships that I've had and just sort of switching into that in my 20s was a uh important part of finding myself. And those women who were all totally unique just helped me find parts of myself and live as a sexual being in a very different way than I've been raised.

[00:52:55]

SB: I think of teachers in my life who um...I mean teachers in the broadest sense, not that they have to be part of a school setting. But um, a woman who during the course of RIFT came and actually helped us work on organizational issues. Because we tended to be sort of collective loosy goosy which an be wonderful in lots of ways but can also be really stressful when you're trying to make decisions and you're trying to think about how you should be making decisions. Which was very good work but it can also be very stressful. And she came in and she had a whole body of knowledge about how you can make decisions. You know you have 10 choices about how you can do problem solving, or work as a group to do you know whatever. All these different structures you can choose. And so she was instrumental for me in thinking oh I really like this stuff, I really like knowing how organizations work. And it's stuff that I use very much today in my work here because I'm organizing a whole statewide network that has lots of teams in it and things like that. And so that led me into organizational work. So that's, you know, women have also been important not just for the emotional content of relationships but just really learning amazing things. Another thing I studied was conflict management, conflict resolution, because I came from such a crazy, conflicted family, There's an amazing woman here called Agnes Duty, she used to teach at URI, she's retired. And I studied conflict management, conflict resolution with her. And she's amazing, absolutely amazing, just tough and-another woman who just, she's going to be herself. She's going to look like what she's going to look like, she's going to act like what she's going to act like, you know. Nobody's going to tell her how to run things, but she's a really tough negotiator, and very fair, I learned a lot from her. All different kinds of things, I could go on and on and on [laughs].

[00:55:02]

KF: Could you go back to talking about your crazy family you said and why the relationship with your sister and your mom was so important. And also like you said like the way you were raised, you mentioned, like that your lifestyle conflicted with the way you were raised.

[00:55:18]

SB: Um...I was raised in a very sort of traditional, working class family. Raised to have a hope chest that I would have when I would put things in and grow up and get engaged and get married. And even though my mother wanted me to go to college, you know it was go to college, get a good job and meet somebody to settle down with and have kids and all that. And in terms of the emotional climate of the class, it was horrible. Because my mother was probably, I mean in terms of a diagnosis either bipolar or borderline personality, but has never acknowledged her illness and never gotten effective treatment. Which is really, really sad. It just makes my sister and I really really sad. So it meant that she was in rages a lot. Um you know I'd fall asleep with my parents fighting, my mother screaming all the time. And then she'd go into this place that was horrible, and then half an hour later it would be as if nothing had happened. So my reality base was really strange. Um and in fact there was a character that I created in one play called Maddy, and it was based on you know the idea of exploring madness and what it is to be crazy.

[00:56:40]

SB: Um...but yeah it was a very um...it was similar I think to friends of mine who grew up in alcoholic homes where you never quite knew where the ground was that was going to be pulled out from you at any time. And so it was like that. And so my sister actually ran away from home at 15 and I left at 16. Yeah. Just wanted to get out. Because it was just too emotionally embroiled, and just not healthy, not healthy. Not learning healthy ways to make decisions, or deal with conflict. And nobody understood mental illness at that time either. And there's so much more that's being done now...in brain research. And you know in another 50 years we'll look back and think that the medications and things we have now are really barbaric. But then there was nothing, there was no understanding of it. Just that she was like a difficult personality and stubborn and all that. So she was um, I mean it was pretty...devastating in my life that when she would have major breakdowns-psychotic breaks-and they would whisk her away. She never went to a hospital, she always went next door to my grandmother's house, her house. Got sort of locked in a bedroom, pulled down the shades, heavy drugs. And I'd go over and visit her and her eyes would just be totally glasses over, and she'd kind of speak to me in this monotone hello...and it was terrifying. To even go visit you're mother and I'd say ok, because I knew I should but I really didn't want to. Um, so yeah that was an instrumental part in my growing up too. That as I got older and began to understand that there was a thing called mental illness. Getting into-since she wouldn't take treatment of any kind, that's why I became a teacher with the alliance for the mentally ill because I least I could do you know help with other people who were having problems. Do some family advocacy stuff.

[00:58:53]

KF: How did you cope growing up?

[00:58:55]

SB: Part of it was the arts and theater. Um a lot of people who were involved in theater I find out come from families that were pretty disrupted. And a lot of us say that the arts saved our lives, and I truly believed that. I mean my being involved in theater and having my grandmother and being in those plays, allowed me to go to a place inside myself and find something good, something creative. And also just explore, what were all those difficult emotions that I was having. When my mother would be in a rage and I was frightened and I was really in a rage back at her, and you know all that kind of stuff. And I could put it into something creative and I could make characters out of it and I could do something with the energy and transform it into something positive. So the arts were really a big, big way.

[00:59:50]
SB: And um I've also loved nature, I love being outside. My grandfather used to take me out for walks in the woods. And I would immediately I wouldn't stay inside when I came home from school I would put on my play clothes and get outside and go out into the woods and climb walks and climb trees and just be physically active and stay outside as long as I could. And then there was my sister. And she and I just helped each other the best we could, you know, and survive.

[00:1:00:20]

KF: How'd you guys help each other?

[01:00:23]

SB: Um just by, you know I don't even remember us talking about stuff too much. Um I was the older sister. She did say that I sat her down at one point when I was...probably 15, 14, somewhere in there. She was five years younger. And I said to her, I just want to tell you that I think mom and dad are going to get divorced. They hadn't told us that, nothing. I had just figured it out on my own and so I was trying to prepare my little sister. And apparently I did a lot of that, sort of watching over her that I don't necessarily remember. But we shared a bedroom, we constantly played with each other, we laughed, we told stories, we you know made up our secret world. [laughs] She had things like um, she called them her secret formulas. She would take these tubes-I don't know where she even got them-and she would put, it's amazing she didn't blow us up! She'd stuff all this crap in like you know household cleaning fluids and Kleenex-there was always Kleenex of different kinds stuck in there. You know, beads that she'd find, dirt and rocks, she'd shake it up and she'd stick it under her bed. And we always used to talk about her secret formulas, what was in it, things like that [laughing]. Stuff like that...I mean there's an unspoken kinship that's you just know things are rough, and so you...you know you just talk to each other, you help each other if you're afraid of something, you play games with each other. Stuff like that. She was like my best friend.

[01:02:12]

KF: And you guys are still close?

[01:02:15]

SB: Yeah, very. I'm just um smiling because we're actually in court with my mother right now because she's in a house that's falling down around her. And she's too paranoid to like sign official documents and stuff because she thinks the government is out to get her. And it's very hard to try to sell the house, or there's land next to it we could sell the land and try to get some money. So ironically she feels better by taking it to court because there's a structure, a system, a judge will tell her what to do. Well yeah I've been talking to her like every single day, 5 6 7 times about, have you talked to the judge, have you done this, have you talked the lawyer, have you done that, have you done the-so we're working together to try to resolve this latest thing. So it's like a like an ongoing theme in our lives. We sort of said at one point, [laughs], you're like who's going to poison her porridge, I can't take any more of this. And that's the kind of humor we can have with each other and speak shorthand and it's fine [laughs].

[01:03:25]

KF: [laughs] That's great. And so moving on in your life, as you started realizing like the importance of women's relationships, can you talk about what a consciousness raising group is and what it meant to you?

[01:03:37]

SB: Yup, the first one I was in was um in college and it just meant that some women from the college, we were all sitting in my room and you'd literally talk about anything that was important to you. What happened to you that week. I think we might have had some very basic rules about like don't interrupt each other. But basically you'd bring food, you'd bring a bottle of wine, and you'd just sit and talk about your life. And discuss issues with each other. And that was really what it was about. And I had another one when I moved into my own apartment when I was in the new England repertory company, same thing. Actually we'd rotate around to each other's houses, that's what we did. And again it was just a chance to actually share stuff about each other's lives. Which now sort of sounds again I imagine fairly like uh and? But it was not that usual. I mean you could still have good women friends like in campus and stuff if they were in class with you or in theater with you. But to actually admit that we were important and that our lives were important and that were issues that we wanted to discuss was like another like step. And so we would sit there and we would talk about like if you were getting treated badly on your job and what you might be able to do about it. Or...if you were having relationship issues, or. There was the whole issue of, I remember two of the women in the group were a couple. And that for me was like a whole new discussion of like well what are lesbian relationships like, are they like relationships with men, do you know, did you ever have relationships with men before? Or, you know it was a place where you could come and safely discuss stuff and just know that you were not going to be judged, at least openly. You know, everybody made the attempt to help give advice if you wanted it, shut up if you didn't, and just feel like you were safe..um from whatever the issues of the day were. ....Mostly all white, we weren't really into dealing with race issues at the time. Um of those groups, although they became more important later on. Some groups began to deal with, were multiracial groups, they began to deal with racial privilege and things like that. But at the beginning when I was there wasn't so much of that.

[01:06:08]

KF: And um, when did you start identifying as a feminist?

[01:06:18]

SB: I...I guess when I joined the theater, in some ways. I was...always myself and pretty stubborn about what I wanted. And so...I'm trying to think of like...I don't think in high school I ever called myself a feminist. Um I think it probably was...college. And again I don't know if I ever used the word to describe myself. But I certainly was you know I was interested in reading Ms magazine when it started and hearing what Gloria Steinem had to say and you know all of the stuff that was fermenting at the time. It was somewhere in that college age, when I was having consciousness raising groups and uh...thinking about how women were important to me and women's lives were important to me. I would say probably yeah during my college years. And then obviously when I joined the theater it was like, oh it's a feminist theater so...that's what it means is to be part of this theater and all of the things that I talked about earlier. Be able to play a character that's...much fuller and interesting and that kind of thing.

[01:07:43]

KF: How did um your idea of feminism or being a feminist change over time, would you say?

[01:07:55]

SB: Um...I think of the 70s as really like tumultuous. I mean I think of it as, there were so many factions of feminism. And there were huge uh fights in terms of lesbian separatism, and if you were a lesbian you should be a separatist and you should only hang out with other women and you should blahblahblah you know, and there were the this and the that and the socialists and the-so the the different kinds of categorizations were really-I mean I know they're still there, but from my perspective anyway, maybe it's I'm less in touch with them, but they seem less, um uh...what do I want to say, not less prevalent, but just not like the main focus of everything now. People were really trying to sort all of that stuff out with political philosophy and trying to figure out what their own points of view were and all that kind of stuff. And I always loved that Gloria Steinem, I think it was Gloria Steinem, that said I don't care who you're in bed with as long as you're in the front lines when it matters. You know, that kind of thing.

[01:09:07]

SB: And so, for me it just became more...of who I am um. It wasn't identified with a specific philosophy, it was just, if I'm a woman and I'm doing this and I'm living the fullest life I can, then that's what being a feminist is, you know. And that's, I don't even think about what it is anymore...it's just kind of...who I am. And it's who other women are. And even if they don't identify as it, but I see them out there living their own lives.

[01:09:43]

SB: We always used to make fun of um Anita Bryant, I don't know if you've read about her, but she was very anti feminist, anti gay, she was the Florida orange juice woman, you know her whole thing. Um and we always used to joke about her because she was never home. She was talking about how women should be homemakers and all that, but the woman was never home! She was on tour, she was-she was a great feminist, you know! [Laughs] So uh...anyway. That was always a good chuckle.

[01:10:10]

KF: [laughs] She was Save Our Children or something?

[01:10:15]

SB: Was it Save Our Children? I can't even remember, something like that.

KF: [laughs] Right right, women should be in the home! [laughing]
SB: [laughing] Absolutely! Get in the home, YOU! I'm not but that's ok.

[01:10:31]

KF: So how do you think your relationships with women compared with men?

[01:10:43]

SB: Hmm..........I don't know. I think, I'm obviously very sensitive to women's issues. Um...you know I wonder about women's lives and kind of what kind of...for lack of a better phrase, what kind of power structures they live in, like what kinds of choices they have in their lives. And I'm much more aware of that with women than I am with men, I think. Um...with men I just kind of assume that they have more choice with their lives. I...think....a lot of um, but I think also because I have three brothers by my father's second marriage. My parents did divorce, that was the end of that story. He remarried, I have three younger brothers. And in them I just began to see the damage, really first hand that society does to young boys in terms of taking away their feminine side. And be a man, and all that kind of garbage. And that um taking the gentleness out of boys, because my middle brother is particularly very very gentle boy and I don't know how the heck he surived. And...so I think, well I don't know if my relationships with men and women are so different. I think I really... at this point in my life see people as kind of full human beings, and really are curious about their individual stories. Like how they grew up-and that's the theater part of me is seeing people as characters, in the good sense of like what's their story? Who made them who they are? Um and um...yeah. So. I'm not sure there's a whole lot of difference in stuff that I may be more sensitive to women's stories and wondering what their history is and if there's any way that I can help the. But not that I wouldn't be helpful to guys but, but particularly younger women coming along-or older women-who just....grew up without a lot of support, too. Especially women who are in the gay community who...grew up in horrible conditions. Uh...just you know double dating guys because if they were ever out they would be in a heck of a lot of trouble. I know someone who was threatened on a college campus with being outed and being sent to a psychiatrist as crazy and locked up. I mean you hear all of these stories of..what happened. And so just being...sensitive to wherever...people's histories have led them. And...that we all come with our own limitations because of our own histories as well as our strengths because of our own histories. And I think I'm probably a little bit more tuned into that with women than with men.

[01:14:00]

KF: Great. How...so in terms of, men in the Rhode Island Feminist Theater. What were their roles like?

SB: the, you mean, their acting roles, their character roles?

KF: or how did they function in the institution.

[01:14:14]

SB: Um...the...I'm just trying to think of the plays that men were in...most of the plays...Um they worked right alongside, I mean they did exactly what we did. They were part of the improvisations, they were part of the discussions, they were part of the company just like everybody else was. So it's not like there was a separation of it. Um...and...actually as the company, the company was pretty much an all women company towards its last years, so there was never a time when like the women managed the company and the men didn't. That I know of, anyway. Maybe there were in the first couple years but pretty much the roles were the same.

[01:15:06]

KF: What drew men to belong to a feminist theater?

[01:15:09]

SB: Well it's interesting because that was part of the like audition and interview process and they had all different kinds of answers. They liked women, they wanted to explore feminist issues, they liked theater, they thought this was a kind of interesting theater. Um...so their reasons were probably as varied as the women who joined. Yeah...it was interesting.

[01:15:25]

KF: How would you characterize the audience who came to-

[01:15:39]

SB: Hmm. They were different sort of audiences depending on the location. Here we would actually, we would after we would develop a show we would usually have a run of 4-6 weeks and it was...it was a small theater kind of audience. That um, some of them actually went to like Trinity that was the major Rep-the only Rep company. So there were theater people who wanted to see what we were up to, because we did get a reputation as a you know, the uh Persephone's Return had gotten one of the Best of Boston awards. Since we had gotten enough theater awards that people came to see us for theater. So it was like a theater-going crowd. Then there was obviously the feminist theater who came to see us, whatever we were going to do next. And um...political communities, sort of the broader social service and political communities. University students, certainly. And then when we would be on tour it would really depend on who was sponsoring us. So, uh we did one tour to England where we were part of an international theater festival so it was that audience coming to that. If it was, if we were being sponsored by a women's shelter or something like that then it would be people who were donating to the shelter and that kind of specific political audience. I mean certainly a big following in the women's and feminist communities.

[01:17:21]

KF: So do you think the goals of the Rhode Island Feminist Theater were met?

[01:17:27]

SB: I think some of them, yeah. I mean...when I look at, I mean it's not like if you walked into New York now, you've got that many women running that many major companies. But you do have a heck of a lot more, I think there's a lot more acceptance as part of a power structure of a theater company. That women actually have opinions and that's ok. Um...And I think, yeah, things are definitely dinner. Although it's interesting because the Magdalena festival was here this summer-I don't know if you were around but it's an international theater festival, women's festival. And..some of the women in the audience-I was a panelist-were saying aren't you going to come back? There's still such a need, I mean there's just such a need for doing this kind of self-aware...theater. And um, so I just say well you know the next generation of women are coming along and doing what they're doing! Like the Beehive in Olneyville. Like I definitely see the cycle beginning again. Like Christina in our office, who's coming in, who's uh, you knjow she's part of the next generation who's coming along, she's doing that work. So it's not like I feel like oh wow that got wrapped up, it's done, it's taken care of. But things definitely did go through a cycle of change.

[01:19:01]

SB: And now one of the things that began to happen even at the end of RIFT in the mid-80s that's really different, when we first started women's centers were usually in some basement, if there was even a women's center in a campus where we would perform. It'd be in the cellar, it wouldn't have a budget, you know you'd just get together furniture from the local salvation army or something. By the time we were leaving, women's centers were carpeted, they had funding, there were women's studies programs that were accepted part of program of study. I mean that was a huuuge change. And there was a whole generation of women who began to come to the discussions who...didn't get the struggle. Not really, I mean they did, I mean obviously there was still a lot of issues. But they didn't get the sort of real grassroots struggle that a lot of us had been through with even finding a space or having some funding or get that recognition for coursework or that kind of stuff. So there was definitely a change and, you know there was a good and bad side to that. I mean certainly lots of wonderful things came out of that and we want the rights that we've gained and the recognition that we've gained. But the-and I'm sure other generations have felt this way too-when you lose touch with that struggle, you lose touch with some of the meaning and what you fought for.

[01:20:18]

SB: And I think of that with labor rights too. With unions when they've gone way down in membership because um you know we've forgotten what it was like before unions. You know I'm in a union now and it's great, but I take it for granted. And I really don't, I mean I know some labor history but I really have no idea what it was like when I could be shot on a picket line because I was standing up to some big corporation. So it's interesting, the cycles that you see.

[01:20:49]
KF: So for you personally what were some big successes in RIFT?

[01:20:58]
SB: Um..Mostly just the performances, the characters. I loved it, I loved like any actor I loved when I got good reviews. When we used to perform in Burlington, Vermont there was always this one reviewer who absolutely loved me. So it was always like oh good! [laughs] Um...because I loved, I mean I loved the characters. I loved performing, I loved being an actor. I mean I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the performances. I enjoyed being involved in creativity every day. Um working full time now in administration now-I mean it's not like this isn't creative and I do other stuff on the side-but I had gotten the company to a place, along with everybody else, but a lot because we had touring bookings that I was bringing in. Where we could, that was what we did full time every day! So that was like a huge success. The tour to England was great. Um...yeah, I think just generally um having a company that was, you know a theater company that managed to survive for how ever many years that it survived for, which I can't remember, but at least 10 years [laughing].

[01:22:11]

KF: And how about major challenges for you personally?

[01:22:17]

SB: Um I think for me it goes back to having grown up with a crazy mother who didn't, who was just a horrible example of how to resolve conflict. So when you're coming from that kind of background and you're in a situation that's like a collective, that's struggling with decision making and power issues. I had NO idea what I was doing. And I had, you know I'd get upset about stuff and I wouldn't have ways to deal with it. Or I just I really struggled a lot with...working in a group, how to express an opinion. Um...decision making, I mean I was all over the place in my 20s. So that's when I really began to look for teachers, like that women that I talked about who came into the company who talked about how you can, there were different processes and decision processes you can use in groups. And I really sought out teachers because that was very difficult for me. I had no really good role models in how to work within a group and how to express disagreement in a way that positive. And I was very very sensitive in feeling like, when people would make comments or disagree with me, you know taking it personally and feeling really hurt. I mean I just had no really healthy ways to deal with emotional ...relationships or things like that. So group work was very very challenging for me. And then as I got older and got better at it and got more techniques it got easier. But I would say that working in a group that was very volatile, in a again in a time period that was very volatile. With lots of different um political streams-sort of being, not really working together. I think a lot of political movements are much smarter now about let's form coalitions, folks. But then it was much more divided. Or it felt much more divided to me.

[01:24:37]

SB: And um...and it was a time where a lot of women were very, very angry. You know, just letting that come out for the first time. And...that was, I mean that was good in the sense that it needed to happen. But for me, having been around a mother who was like really, really angry all the time, it just made me angry or it made me or I mean I just couldn't-or it would make me back off and just totally withdraw. So it was um, it was an intense time and that was difficult for me. Because I just didn't have the tools to deal with it. And that's why I became really interested in conflict resolution and began to study that and have actually done some training and stuff in that now. So if I could just go back now [laughing] with the knowledge I have and help me back then....!

[01:25:28]

KF: [laughing] If only, if only. So could uh, could you take me back to the time when...RIFT was kind of falling apart. What led to the break-up of RIFT?

[01:25:43]

SB: Um it actually, it was pretty orderly. The board was...interviewing for the next artistic director. And a lot of company members including myself were feeling like we wanted to move on. But I didn't want to just like drop it. So there were a few of us who said ok let's try to make this transition. So uh the women who interviewed, it just didn't click. And I think we went through maybe a couple rounds of interviews. And there just was no match with somebody who had the leadership. So we just said, you know what, everything has its own cycle, it's own time. Um....this just, this is it. So we just made a very kind of orderly decision to close. And i mean it was sort of sad, but those of us who were in it I think had sort of come to the end for various reasons, and wanting to go on to do other stuff or whatever. Um, so that's when we just decided that we would close.

[01:26:52]

SB: And we had some kind of, we thought very carefully about what kind of company we would donate our assets to because there were regulations about who you could give your money to. And we had a gathering of people who had been in RIFT over the years. And it was actually kind of a peaceful closing, [laughing] so it wasn't like there was this kind of giant, horrible thing that had happened and we said no more! It was a very uh just very timely.

[01:27:22]
KF: Why did you feel like it was time to move on?

[01:27:24]

SB: Um...for me, I was ready. I thiknk actually I had started to work part time here. And I was really interested in pursuing um-actually I was doing three things. I was performing in schools in a whole history sort of program and I was interested in that. I was only doing RIFT part time. And then I was starting to work here and getting really interested in the arts council and what it did. So I just felt like professionally and personally it was time to go whatever the next thing was for me that was, you know. I don't know more challenging, but different. I was ready to do that.

[01:28:04]

KF: So was it like, would you say it was part of like moving on from your 20s to your 30s or was it related to broader changes happening in Rhode Island or in the country between the 70s and the 80s? Or a combination of the two?

[01:28:22]

SB: You know I've never really thought about that before. It's possible that it had to do something with the change of the 80s...um...being different from the 70s. It's very possible that...um...that climate felt different. And that was a piece of it. Um...it wasn't so much for me 20s into my 30s. Although I had said to myself if by 35 I didn't have a good paying job with benefits I was going to have to leave RIFT. Because you know I really had to start thinking about my future. Um...but it was more just the specific things that I was involved in-I was growing in new directions and I had gone about as far as I could with RIFT and um I didn't see it going in any new directions that were significantly different. So...Probably a combination of things. Yeah.

[01:29:24]

KF: And how was the climate different in the 80s than in the 70s?

[01:29:28]
SB: Um for me it just felt much more...uh...much less uh like reflective and, all the good fermenting that went on in the 70s. Of let's just take what we had in the 50s and the early 60s-I mean the 60s didn't start until 68 you know-um and let's just like examine everything. Let's throw it up in the air, let's question stuff. Um Let's look at our lives, let's look at our politics, let's look at everything. Let's just really...examine stuff. For me the 80s was kind of like moving into an era of...oh, you know things are going well, there's no really need to reflect on things or examine things. Let's just live a good life and not worry about stuff. I mean I'm exaggerating but that's what it felt like to me. Is that we were just, the 70s were an exciting time of change. And um difficult as they were, the 80s became a lot more, I don't know sort of mundane is the only way I can put it. I mean, for me, just not...exploratory in the same way. Not not challenging in the same way. Much more kind of like....even.

[01:31:00]

KF: Do you think er...how did the art scene in Rhode Island change with the close of RIFT?

[01:31:07]

SB: Um...I don't think the fact that we closed changed the arts scene in Rhode Island too much. Because a lot of people actually came to RIFT from out of state when they auditioned. Some were rhode islanders but a lot were not. ...I think there were small groups in that time period...like the Dance Rep company that's no longer around, the Rhode Island Shakespeare theater is no longer around. Um...there was kind of a passing of that era. Kind of all together. And then what happened is though is sort of towards the end of the 80s there was a whole new like cycle of groups that have come to be. Um AS220 and all the stuff that now we know as the stuff that really has taken root here. The Perishable Theater, and the Gam theater which used to be whatever it used to be-Alias Stage. You know a whole new generation of people coming in, staying from colleges, creating stuff. Um so now...And it actually feels to me like the groups who are here now have more staying power. And they really have, for whatever reason. I think we as an arts field have gotten more into stabilizing ourselves and thinking as ourselves as a business or as organizations and thinking more consciously about how do we stick around for a while.

[01:32:44]

SB: I mean to run a theater company there was there were no even like management programs. Whereas now you can go into non profit management or arts management. You can actually get a degree. There was none of that, you just like made it up as you went. So um I think there's a there's much more staying power for groups that are here. And it's great, it's exciting because there's new groups coming up all the time. And this is the place where I get to know about it because of where I work! [laughing]

[01:33:10]

KF: And could you state just where you work and what you do?

[01:33:14]

SB: Oh ok! Um I'm at the rhode island state council on the arts, which is a state agency. And every single state has a states arts council. I run the education program. And I um do a number of things. I actually the assistant in the program, Dan, runs the grants part of the programs to schools where we hook up artists and schools to work in all areas of the curriculum. Be it the arts or history or English or math. And I work in professional development for teachers-how to incorporate the arts into their teaching. I work with policy stuff. My biggest thing is something called the Arts Learning Network. And the goal is equal access to the arts for all kids. So, the idealism and my politics are right there! Because we had a task force, we looked at what and who-what kids are getting the arts and who isn't. And what kind of access we have and how unequal it is in Rhode Island. And so we're setting up a whole network with teams and action plans and doing all this stuff. Accomplishing a lot. We changed the graduation requirement so that all kids, the graduating class of 2008 from high school all have to have the arts.

[01:34:30]

SB: So the political action is still in there! It's absolutely there, it hasn't gone anywhere. I've had this incredible job where I can...put it into practice. So...that's what I do.

[01:34:44]

KF: So...looking back from where you are now back to your previous job, is there like one happiest moment or one time that you can say, yes that's what I really want to hold on to?

SB: of back then you mean?
KF: back in RIFT, yeah

[01:35:02]

SB: Um...yeah I mean not one moment but one sort of thing that always comes back to my mind is when we were touring. Just getting in the van, bringing our musical instruments, getting on the road, you know, and just...um traveling and singing and telling stories and doing whatever we were going to do. And then hitting a new location and setting up for the night and seeing that new location and that theater and then performing and meeting a whole new group of people in the discussion from another part of the country. And then packing it up again and getting back on the road. I loved the touring, I loved you know meeting people, performing in different places. I loved getting to see the country that way.Um And just...I think actually it's affected the way I like to travel. I don't like to just travel for the sake of traveling. I love to be in a place where I'm actually contributing something or have some connection locally. And I think, I don't know which came first, but when I think back, that's one of the things I loved about RIFT is getting to actually know people where we were performing. Knowing that we... meant something to them. You know we knew because we had the discussions after the show, and we would get letters or they would come up personally and talk to us and thank us..you know for how much we had changed their lives or how much we had supported them or helped them or helped them think about something or...that was, it was just really good work. Really privileged work. So that's what I think of.... And I feel the same way about my job now, actually. But yeah, I loved hopping in that van and gettingo n the road [laughs]. Now that's a 60s thing-well no I mean people do it now but I associate it with Kerouac and all that stuff. Yeah.

[01:36:58]
KF: Great well is there anything else that um I'm leaving out or you're leaving out? Anything else you'd like to add?

SB: Not that I can think of.

KF: Great, well I think that I've gone way over-oh I'm only 7 minutes over time!

SB: Hey not bad. [laughing]

KF: Last words?

SB: Nope, good questions so. Yup.

KF: Well thank you very much.

SB: I'm just so curi-[end of tape]