Theater Creates Community & Dialogue

By Darien Bates

Last Friday, the Falls Church area’s Providence Players opened their eighth season with a production of “The Women,” the 1936 society comedy by Clare Booth Luce. Despite the fact that the play features a cast of characters who scheme and squabble, the performance features the best of what neighborhood theater has to offer, a group of amateur actors who come together to present a vital art for a community. In its second year performing at the new James Lee Community Center theater on Annandale Road right outside the City of Falls Church , the group garnered its largest audience yet for an opening night and packed the house for the Saturday show and the Sunday matinee as well. In both the size of the audience and the quality of the performances, the weekend opening was an indicator of the growing enthusiasm and support for performing arts in this area. Unlike the professional theater available in Washington , D.C. , or New York , which pulls its actors from areas all over the region and even the country, local companies like the Providence Players, while lacking some of the panache of professional theaters, allow local people to take part in a dialogue about a variety of issues presented through theater. At noon Sunday, two hours before curtain, the 35 person, all-women cast of “The Women” gathered in the dressing room to begin the lengthy ordeal of curling hair, applying make-up and putting on costumes. In a 90 minute period, they completed their transformation from middle-class, 21st century women, to wealthy, pre-WWII society wives and divorcees. As they prepared for the show, several cast members took time to talk with the News-Press about what brought them to the play and what they have discovered by being a part of the performance. The thoughts ranged from a discussion of social issues, such as the changing place of women in society, to reflections upon the impact of the medium of community theater.

“The Women” is set in 1936 New York, and is centered on the world of upper-class women who fill the pages of society papers and the chairs in club bridge rooms. With a biting wit, Clare Booth Luce explores how these women spend their days stabbing each other in the back and scheming about how to further their own ends in ways that would make Machiavelli proud.

The center of the story revolves around Mary Haines, a woman happily married for 12 years. Her joy over a contented marriage feels wrong to at least one of her friends, Sylvia Fowler, who hates the idea of someone else having a successful marriage when she is so miserable in hers.

Having discovered that Mrs. Haines’ husband, Stephen, has been having an affair with sales girl Crystal Allen, Mrs. Fowler sets Mary up to “accidentally” discover the truth from Olga the manicurist. But though Mary knows that her husband is being unfaithful, all of those close to her, including her mother, tell her to ignore it. They say that it doesn’t mean anything, excusing Mr. Haines’ behavior as part of a mid-life crisis.

But Mrs. Haines can’t get over the infidelity, especially when she realizes that Allen doesn’t just want an affair, but also the position as wife to Mr. Haines. Finally, Mary can’t take it anymore. She asks for a divorce and heads off the Reno , a city apparently devoted to high society women seeking separation from their husbands, whether by choice or force.

Throughout the rest of the play, Mary works to understand the forces that caused her divorce. She watches as her friends deal with their own relationships, and comes to terms with what marriage is supposed to mean for her and her family.

On the periphery of Haines’ story are the lives of the other women, all of whom are trying to understand their own positions in life as women. Sylvia Fowler is dealing with her own, and her husband’s infidelity. Peggy Day, newly married, is learning what it means to be someone’s wife, and what that means in terms of her own independence. The Countess Delave is trying yet again to recapture love, despite her series of failed marriages. Finally, Nancy Blake, who serves as a stage representative for the voice of Clare Booth Luce herself, attempts to deal with what it means to be a successful but unmarried author. In some cases the struggle for identity is very clear. Mary Haines’ daughter comes to her mother pouting after her brother made fun of the fact she is a girl. “I don’t want to be a woman,” she tells her mother, insisting that men have all the fun.

Other times the struggle is hidden, like with Edith Potter, who is constantly pregnant. As much as she complains about her condition, clearly she chooses giving birth, either as a way to keep a handle on her husband or as a way to avoid having to look at herself as anything other than a mother. One of the most interesting parts of the play, viewed now nearly seven decades after it was written, is the degree to which the idea of feminism has changed.

When written, the play was considered to be a progressive piece that confronted and challenged the idea of what women were supposed to be. Unlike what is typical in most male-oriented plays of the time period, women actually take an active role in representing themselves.

The off-stage men, rather than being the protagonists, antagonists and creators of the play’s universe, actually become objects for the women to fight over. Individual men, whether Mr. Haines or Buck Winston, are just descriptions by the women, who can choose to discuss them however they please.

By presenting women who take control over their own identification, the play directly confronts and criticizes a culture that forced women into a certain preconceived set of roles; wife, mother, mistress, which marginalizes even the women like Blake, who choose to not take part.

Clare Luce Booth was no foreigner to these progressive ideas that allowed women to be independent agents. Booth was a one time editorial assistant for Vogue, considered to be a revolutionary magazine at the time, then a managing editor for Vanity Fair. She held a seat in Congress as a two term Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives and became ambassador to Italy . In 1983 President Ronald Reagan awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Booth clearly transcended the confining world of upper-crust femininity. But the play also showcases the limits of Booth’s feminism and the distance that gender politics have come since the play was first performed.

Despite her criticism of the limits imposed on women, “The Women” ends up reinstating the same male-female power relationship that led to those restrictions. Mary Haines is implicitly blamed for the dissolution of her marriage, not because she confronted her husband’s philandering, but because she chose personal pride and honor over the responsibility of being a wife and mother. When she does finally end up with her husband in the end, the marriage is mended because she decided that she would rather live with her man, than force him to accept a relationship where he has to live by the same rules she does.

In terms of today’s feminism, Mrs. Haines could never end up subjugating herself to the marriage and a new commitment to Mr. Haines without an equal commitment from him to change the dynamics of their relationship. Even more profoundly un-modern, is the overall presentation of women who are shown to be unable to overcome social stereotypes, and insist upon stabbing each other in the back and fight each other, rather than work towards any comprehensive social change.

Luce Booth wrote the play during the time period when Eleanor Roosevelt was starting to establish herself as a leading feminist, showing all the ways women could participate in a larger social and political area. Yet the play is strangely devoid of women who are able to see much beyond their own lives and egos. The play does not read as though Luce were being ironic about those role limitations even though she moved beyond them herself. For the actors, the content of the play has sparked some thoughts about the progress made in gender roles as well as some of the things that haven’t changed.

Stephanie Hammel, who plays the character of Nancy Blake, told the News-Press that the idea of women as being somehow unable to function in a group has become outdated. She pointed to the production of “The Women” as a perfect example. Commonly a place of discord, Hammel said that the backstage atmosphere has been congenial. “I’ve thought of how there’s still a stereotype that if you get this many women together there’s going to be competition and drama,” she said. “I don’t sense that here.”

This feeling was echoed by director Barbara Gertzog, who said that one of the reasons she chose the piece was to prove that a large group of women could work together without the kind of bickering and nastiness portrayed in the play. But the surprise over the easy cooperation between the women is just as indicative of how societal assumptions may lag behind individual behaviors.

After all, despite the ability for women to have their own successful careers, tabloids and gossip magazines still focus on women fighting over men. An example pointed out by Liz Smith, the actress playing Edith Potter; is the never ending saga between actors Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie over Brad Pitt. Somehow, despite the fact that both these women are fabulously wealthy and famous, society and the media tell us they still should be consumed by fighting over a man. Then there’s the television show “Desperate Housewives,” which presents nearly an identical picture of the kind of domestic scheming and trickery that appears so dated in “The Women.”

In fact, while the Providence Players’ production provides a first hand look of how women and feminism have progressed since the 1930s, it also shows that the presentation of women in many ways hasn’t made it nearly as far.