TDF Stages

The stars of Bess Wohl's acclaimed new play can't stop talking about it

It's not just famous women like Amy Schumer, Tina Fey, Sara Bareilles and Gloria Steinem flocking to Bess Wohl's Off-Broadway play Liberation, which runs through Sunday, April 6 at Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theatre, though rumors are rife about a transfer. Future feminists are going, too.

"My daughter is only 4½ but she did come to see the play," says Adina Verson, who plays Susan, one of six disparate women who start a consciousness-raising group at an Ohio rec center in 1970. "I knew that my kid would not sit through all of it because it's too talky, but she loves being naked. I was so excited for her to see the nude scene at the top of the second act. She's not old enough to understand the concepts we were talking about, but she did understand that we were naked, which she loved, and that we were talking about things that we liked and didn't like about our bodies. We were able to have a mini-conversation about that and it was beautiful."

Directed by Whitney White and subtitled "a memory play about things I don't remember," Liberation is sparking lots of beautiful and complicated conversations about the women's liberation movement of the 1970s: its achievements, its failures and why a half century later the fight for equality—personally, professionally and politically—continues. Inspired by stories Wohl's mother shared (she worked at Ms. Magazine) as well as interviews with second-wave feminists around the country, the play took 20 years to write and has a fluid form. Susannah Flood portrays Lizzie, the playwright's alter ego, a mom who ends up stepping into the shoes of her own mother 50 years prior as she organizes a group of women looking to lead a revolution… or at least support one another as they try to navigate the patriarchy. Her collaborators are Susan (Verson) aka Susie Hurricane, a rebel who lives in her car and whips up a "womanifesto;" Margie (Tony nominee Betsy Aidem), an empty nester and housewife who fantasizes about stabbing her husband; Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), a Radcliffe grad and book editor who's returned home to care for her ailing mother; Isidora (Irene Sofia Lucio), an Italian immigrant and filmmaker trapped in a green card marriage; and Dora (Audrey Corsa), who's dealing with sexism at work but only showed up because she thought it was a knitting circle.

In two wonderfully rich and witty acts that toggle between then and now, the women get to know each other intimately in exchanges so real and raw, it feels like eavesdropping. While the nude scene that opens Act II has garnered a lot of attention (and is why audiences are required to lock up their smartphones in a Yondr pouch), the characters are emotionally naked throughout. It's no wonder the cast has become so close.

"I love the group scenes," says Verson. "It's so rewarding to be able to watch these incredible people I'm onstage with and be moved by them. Like the opening scene when we introduce ourselves, our director Whitney says it's a domino effect. We are energetically linked as characters and as an ensemble. It's so exciting to feel held and propelled in that way."

The performers also appreciate being able to do this play at this fraught political moment. "I've been involved since the workshop, which happened a little over a year ago," says Corsa. "Carrying this story into this most recent election cycle was heartbreaking but also enlivening. I'm so glad that I had the script to refer back to this past year. This show has been such a gift, and this is really such an amazing group of women. I'm inspired every single day."

While most of the show focuses on the group, there are a handful of powerful, perspective-shifting, two-person scenes, including a climactic conversation between Lizzie and her deceased mother, magically embodied by Margie. "That's one of my favorite moments ever, that very last scene between Susannah and Betsy," says Corsa. "Getting to sit with the whole play under our belts and watch the two of them work together and feel so totally connected with each other and with the audience, it's a very communal experience."

Lucio agrees. "From the beginning to the very end, the group goes through a huge arc, and that scene is so muscular and rewarding in the best way. And there're also some really uncanny parallels in that scene between what's happening right now [in our country] and what was happening then. It feels enlightening, it feels terrifying, and it also feels a bit like a call to action. I think this play is very good about giving people energy as opposed to despair in a moment like this."

While the characters possess attributes of real-life women, Liberation is no documentary. According to Lucio, the cast was "given some basic information, and then pretty much given free rein to serve the text and fill it" as actors. In their research, Verson did come across an activist named Shulamith Firestone and realized "this has to be who Susie is based on. She wrote The Dialectic of Sex, which is a book that Susie references when she's talking about artificial wombs." When Verson asked Wohl about the character's origins, the playwright explained Susie was "also based on one of the editors of Ms. Magazine Bess knew as a child." So the six women are inspired by but not limited to history.

Flood, whose Lizzie frequently breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience, was particularly excited by a recent Community Night performance. "Roundabout has this program that reaches out to diverse communities that don't always get to come to the theatre," she explains. "It made a tremendous difference in the quality of attention, in the energy of listening, in the conversation that happens between the performers and the audience."

That conversation continues after the curtain falls. "There have been some really beautiful moments with women who I don't know at the stage door, who are deeply shook by the show," says Lloyd, who plays the only Black member of the group. "The ages have been different, the ethnicities have been different. It's been really great to see how the show is connecting with a wide range of women."

"And men, surprisingly," adds Aidem, whose acerbic Margie is the only character who starts off married with kids. "In general, people are moved and shook up. They really get caught up in the story, and they follow all the characters with equal relish."

"I experience a lot of people who don't really want to talk about the play, but they want to talk about their mothers!" says Verson, while Lucio adds, "My mom came to see the show and we had a very meaningful moment right after. By her watching the show, it was as if we had a conversation that we didn't actually have," since the play explores the way motherhood shapes and constricts women's lives.

One reaction that rankled Corsa was when a few men told her that they went into the show thinking it was going to be "a 'niche story'—that was challenging to hear," she says. "It really touches right on the problem, the fact that women's liberation seems to be niche for some people. I think plays that involve women or minorities are often seen as kind of eat-your-vegetables type of theatre. But Liberation does a really brilliant job of calling people in."

And the issues the show grapples with—how can you be liberated when you're beholden to others as a mother, a wife, a daughter—don't just apply to women. "The thing that the play really pulls up for me emotionally is a question that I think can be engaged with no matter your gender identification, which is how to love more than one thing unconditionally in your lifetime," says Flood. "I had my child later in life. My parents were acting teachers. I inherited this craft as a family guild kind of a thing. So it's a deep vocational identification for me. It binds me to my family. But then I also have this kid, right? And so now when I leave the house to go engage in not just my profession, but my vocation, I'm also walking away from my child, and that creates an incredible personal tension in me. I think in some ways that's specific to being female, specific to being a mom. But it's not just a niche question of feminism. It's a question of the soul's actualization over the course of an individual's lifetime. Men can identify with that, nonbinary people can identify with that, women can certainly identify with that. As one of the characters says, 'If you want to talk about love and freedom? It's almost impossible to have both.' Loving people requires personal compromise. And I'm not just talking about, 'You take Monday mornings, I'll take Tuesday mornings.' I'm talking about when people say, 'My identity has been compromised.' That's hard."

"And how do you show up? And what do you regret in the ways that you didn't show up?" continues Aidem. "The bigger thing for me beyond the mother-daughter things that are addressed in the play is what's happening in the world right now. Every night, Irene's character says, 'Maybe we just blow it up. Maybe we blow it up and people get angry enough for real change.' I feel like we're at a crossroads. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, we've got to get this cast not just to do the play, but to start an action group. We should become activists. The time is calling for that."

---

Liberation is frequently available at our TKTS Discount Booths.

TDF MEMBERS: Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.