Who Will Host?
Gloria Steinem in your living room?
Steinem-style in support of her prescription for “the only surefire way out”: live storytelling…i.e. theater. Cram all of the best friends of the board into your living room for an in-home rendition of Gloria: A Life.
I have been frequently refreshing the Concord Theatricals map of “upcoming productions” for this play; no change in the month since Ms. Steinem passed:
We should all still fill a canoe and paddle down to Texas in October…I am sitting on a bench on the Mystic River in Massachusetts watching Medford middle schoolers pile into 8 vessels. So, we have our crew if you don’t want to move an oar—middle schoolers work cheap, you aren’t allowed to pay them in cash, but they accept taquis.
I was assuming we could do a Gloria world tour this year. I know season announcements come out in the early months of the next year. So, maybe next year we can try to ride the 2nd wave to feminist fun.
…however…don’t you think this show wants to slot into the current season? Say what you want about Ms.Steinem before history—but really the internet—takes over. We need all of your impressions of Ms.Steinem before she just becomes a wig, a pair of glasses and a bad belt on Halloween…then a once-a-year meme. Let’s read everything she wrote so it is not just the Times pleading into the printed wind for us to remember her as a writer. I will compile it all and send you the dramaturgy packet. Replete with Ms. Steinem paper dolls to dress.
$5, $50, $500, or $5,000. I will stop there. $50,000 is the usual. $500,000 when we move it to Broadway. But, for now. Baby budgets so we can call it a benefit. Like Gloria’s 50th birthday party. A benefit for Your theater.
I use my other favorite map to figure out to whom to mail my proposed productions. For Gloria we need a 2/3 Kamala crowd. Gloria Steinem is speaking from an enormous amount of experience when she says that a room that is half and half “makes everyone quiet”, but a room that is 2/3 in one direction mandates politeness, sensitivity and great listening.
Even on that very reduced scale we can see a few spots of blue in Montana. Blue means that more than half of that county voted for Kamala….not quite 2/3…but we are to assume that theater attracts some of the more Dem-leaning locals. Gloria Steinem’s brand of 2nd wave feminism was nurtured on the road around the whole country…not just in liberal land.
Maybe some Montanans want a quick last look at the life of the revolutionary that really really really wanted to see a woman president before she died. It will hurt to hear it…but not as much as it hurt when we had hope:
Samantha Power’s apartment “watch party” for the 1st woman president, Hillary Clinton. She invited all of the female ambassadors from the UN. All 37 of them had to watch and think about what it meant for the women of their country.
In the middle shot, Gloria Steinem is telling Samantha Power, the United States’ ambassador to the UN that Steinem “didn’t think it would be this bad”. But, though she “had thought we would have had a woman president by now” She wasn‘t shocked. Evidently, she was the last one at the party, and her final words were, “Let’s look at the upside of this downside”.
This is how Montana voted in that election:
Wait!…before you look at the below map of Montana, take a deep breath, and adjust for population. Where you see deep red - 5 people live there and 4 voted for Trump. If there is a dark blue speck, then that is Montana’s version of dense and those 1,000 folks voted for Clinton. This is actually what 60/40ish looks like:
and then, the two presidential elections after that:
Those sparser, bluer maps are the change from the previous election. It got bluer in 2020, and then subtly redder in 2024.
- Donald Trump (Republican): 352,079 votes (58.39%)
- Kamala Harris (Democratic): 231,906 votes (38.46%)
2% better than Hilary Clinton; 2% worse than Joe Biden. Always all 3 electoral college votes go to Trump. Note, that this ‘red‘ state is really 60/40. That is almost half and half.
I see two benefits for Montana theaters to supplementing this summer’s production of Little Mermaid with a show that is so left-leaning:
- For us bluer folks: from the mouth of Gloria, herself: “you are not crazy” and “you are not alone” for the folks that look at a map like the one above and see red.
- For us purple, pink, fuschia…even red folks: you don’t have to “share your story” like Gloria asked as her final request to us, you can just sit and listen. So, if you are right leaning, or decidedly purple, hearing the opinions of the “crazy women” of 2nd wave feminism in a truly mixed bag room of folks might be refreshing! It is much more satisfying to politely disagree in your head or out loud with a real person.
Gloria (super D) and Jill Ruckleshaus (R) model this for us on Meet the Press:
Start with the Steinem statement, “in solidarity with my co-worker”, when you agree about the details of your common cause. In this case, Republican J. Ruckeshaus says, “this movement is about the full expression of a woman’s potential”.
2nd wave feminists, of the Ruckleshaus mold, welcome into the fold even the factions that are radically opposed to her own way of life: when asked if she thinks that women who want to abolish marriage harm the broader feminist movement; Jill Ruckleshaus answers, “Oh, I don’t think so. There are many people who are responsive to that argument. To another large portion of the population, of which I am a member, the institution of marriage is a very important part of my life. But it is not the entire reason for my being.”
Ruckleshaus can parse this one out so efficiently that you might miss it; the “Oh, I don’t think so” is the important part. She doesn’t want to quiet any sector of the feminist movement..! She has said that marriage and raising children is absolutely part of her fulfilling her own potential. However, She can hear that someone else thinks her way-of-life to be unnatural…and! She thinks other Republican women will have no problem hearing that, too! Right!?!?
One commentator opened his question to Steinem, “If you’re really as smart as you say you are…” that made her smile. The impressive demonstration of smarts was humbling. Both women quickly divide the arguments that mattered to their larger cause from the ones that were noise. And then! Respond with honesty about where they diverged … with respect! And acceptance! an the occasional sly approving smile!
So, Yes, to a Steinem-style gathering of minds in your living room. No, to a partisan-politics-party in your living room…especially if it wants to be a woman-wins-the-presidency one. We learned our lesson. Samantha Power called that “one of my many terrible ideas”.
this week, 3 Montana theaters…and their board members’ living rooms… 3 versions of Gloria: A Life for $5 each. These theaters are all so beautiful. And, if you are not used to Montana, they share some special quirks that us more southern, more coastal folks will find so exotic.