A Feminist Farce: The Women of “Boeing Boeing”

A Feminist Farce: The Women of “Boeing Boeing”

By Rachel Kuhnle

Women in the Boeing Boeing cast backstage
The women of the Boeing Boeing cast pose in the dressing room
Boeing Boeing opened to audience acclaim on May 18th!

Rehearsing and performing Boeing Boeing sure is fun, but it’s a far cry from doing important, radical, earthshaking theatre… Or is it? Rachel here, looking for the feminist silver lining is a very unexpected place – the French farce Boeing Boeing.

One might assume feminism and farce are like oil and water, and sure, most of the time that probably is the case. But the women of Boeing Boeing are not to be underestimated – Gloria, Gretchen, Gabriella, and yes, even Berthe, are actually great role models!

For example…

Boeing Boeing is one of very few period farces where the women outnumber the men.

This really is a big deal. Despite theatre audiences being between 70-80% women, and the majority of theatre students being women, female characters on stage amount to only about 35% of all available roles. Even the Commonweal Theatre’s 2019 season only has 12 female character roles out of 35 total roles.

All four women in the script are named.

This might seem silly, but it’s very common in media, especially in film and television, for female characters to go unnamed – some studies find as few as 32% of female characters in television and film are named.

Gretchen, Gabriella, and Berthe are bilingual.

Ok, mostly, I just think this is cool. But hey – I’m making an assumption. They could speak MULTIPLE languages, not just two!

All four women are employed, speak intelligently about their work, and find some degree of identity and satisfaction in their professions.

Considering only about 38% of the workforce in 1960s was female, for all four women to be employed is pretty progressive. Will they stay employed once they marry? Who cares – that’s their choice!

All four women are knowledgeable about advancements in their field.

Of course, who wouldn’t be excited about turbo jets and a thrust of 19 thousand pounds?? These women must read Popular Mechanics.

They know what they want, they don’t need to be told what they want.

Think of your favorite love stories – how many of them are a guy-gets-the-girl scenario? It can be fun to watch guys pursuing girls with grand romantic gestures, but in those instances the guy is always “in the driver’s seat” so to speak. In Boeing Boeing, the women drive the action! Bernard and Robert are lucky – if Gloria, Gabriella, Gretchen and Berthe didn’t tell Bernard and Robert exactly what they want, Bernard and Robert would still be rolling around in their beanbags. And Berthe is worth every penny of that additional 40%!

Women in the Boeing Boeing cast backstage
The Women of Boeing Boeing (Left to Right: Lizzy Andretta, Rachel Kuhnle, Adrienne Sweeney, Elizabeth Dunn)

You don’t want to miss out on these incredible women in action. Be sure to catch a performance of the hilarious farce Boeing Boeing. For Tickets —-> Performance Calendar

Flights of Angels

“One man’s life touches so many others.”
It’s a Wonderful Life

With aching hearts, we must announce that our colleague and dear friend, Scott Dixon, passed away on Thursday, November 29, 2018. He spent the last two years living with cancer and has now journeyed on. His legacy will live in our memories of his work on stage and his written stories and plays. And in remembering the many years he devoted himself to our company and our community, we’re reminded why we so often speak of “our Commonweal family.” Scott was a treasured member of our family and we will not be the same without him.

To learn more about our plans to celebrate Scott’s life and legacy, CLICK HERE.

Scott Dixon with the cast of Dracula, Prince of Blood

 

 

All Things Sarah Ruhl

Following a brief hiatus, The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl returns to the Commonweal stage through October 22. You may not know much about Sarah Ruhl, you may have never even heard the name Sarah Ruhl before…Drama Unfolds to the rescue! In this edition, I have included several links to interviews with Sarah, stories about her and, especially, her thoughts and inspirations on the gorgeous play of hers on our stage for the next four weekends. Read all of them now or save some and keep coming back for further reading. And now, all things Sarah Ruhl.

“Putting Things up Against Freud”

—Your dialogue often reads like poetry, filled with poetic lines breaks and metaphors. How did you develop your unique writing style?
I started out as a poet, became a playwright, and kept going. I think playwriting contains all other genres, including poetry, the essay (or argument), story, song… And it’s one thing that draws me to the form again and again — the way it folds all the other genres in. Click here to read the full interview from Proscenium Theatre Journal.

—Sarah Ruhl on Subtext. Click here to watch the full video.

—Sarah Ruhl: “I think our generation has to look at Sigmund Freud and Freud’s impact, and many of us say, Oh, maybe Freud didn’t have it right. Something that he was right about he got from literature: the Oedipal complex, from the Greeks. So maybe we ought to go back to the Greeks instead of back to Freud on the Greeks.” Click here to read the full BOMB Magazine interview.

—Sarah Ruhl and her plays remind us to be ten once more and play, to wonder if stones have thoughts as in Eurydice, if cell phones are portals to the afterlife as in Dead Man’s Cell Phone, and if jokes in other languages were funny enough to kill you as in The Clean House. To be childish, to be childlike — to be ten! Click here to read the full Breaking Character Magazine article.

—I grew up seeing pictures of my mother all over the house flying, in green tights. She played Peter Pan as a girl in Davenport, Iowa. I was also mesmerized by a photo taken by the local paper of my mother as a teenager standing next to Mary Martin (pictured here). My early love of the theatre was formed in the crucible of my mother’s flight, as it existed in memory. A year after writing For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday for my mother, I sat down with her in Evanston, Ill., where she lives, to ask her a little bit about her long life in Chicago theatre. Click here to continue reading an interview by Sarah Ruhl of her mother Kathleen.

The Clean House is now playing on Monday & Friday nights and Saturday afternoons in rep with Dracula: Prince of Blood. This is a limited run of twelve performances.
GET TICKETS —> Performance Calendar.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you at the theatre—Jeremy.