So, I was sitting in front of the TV last night, having dinner with my family (the dining room table is COVERED with production debris from our most recent show), slightly sleep deprived and malnourished from HELL WEEK, and trying to recover. There, in place of my favorite Monday night show, was the Golden Globe Awards show. Watching all those highly paid actors and film folk, eating their high-priced meals in their designer clothes was a bit like stepping into an alternate universe. You see, I've been working for many weeks with actors who make only a tiny portion of what they're worth -- no designer clothes for these folks! But we are all working to spread a message we believe in. Have I piqued your interest? Follow me...
Driven by statements like this:
"You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." George Bush to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005.
and the Tennessee Legislature's defeat of an increase in the minimum wage last session, Tennessee Women's Theater Project opened its production of "Nickel and Dimed" last Friday at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre in Nashville. We had good crowds on our opening weekend. We were fortunate enough to have the Tennessean take an interest in us and the message the play carries. The headline reads, Theater group dramatizes struggles of working poor and the story was on the front page (!) of last Saturday's Business section.
Onstage they have names like Gail and Barb.
In Nashville, they have names like Karen and Jenika.
They are the working poor, a segment of the American work force populated mostly by women in which the complicated calculus of early life choices, physically demanding work, low wages, and fixed and basic living expenses must be computed in order to survive.
This week, one small local theater company, Tennessee Women's Theater Project, is taking a financial risk — putting on its largest and most expensive show to date — to draw attention to a script that it hopes illuminates the lives of real women such as Karen Jones and Jenika Medaries.
The play that we're getting all this publicity about is "Nickel and Dimed." It asks the question: how do you make ends meet in a low-wage job? As an investigative journalist, Barbara Ehrenreich went "undercover" in three different parts of the country, working as a waitress, a maid, and a big-box retail clerk to discover what it's really like to live in low-wage America. Her best-selling book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America is acclaimed as one of the most important works of social criticism of our time. Now, Joan Holden has captured Ehrenreich's provocative, funny, and often disturbing experiences in a new play that is as powerful as the extraordinary book on which it is based.
When our tiny company went sponsorship-hunting for this show, I'd assumed that Democrats, Democrat-owned businesses and Democratic organizations would be the easy sell, considering the content and message of the play. However, ask as I did, no one stepped up to the sponsorship plate. When this play was presented in Cleveland, I'm told by the show's producer that Democratic sponsors came out of the woodwork, and sponsorship money was provided by prominent Democrats, as well as the unions. I can't say the local unions ignored us completely -- we were solicited to have the stagehands union represent our stagehands. Since my husband and I -- who are already working as producer and director for free so I can afford to pay the actors, stage manager, designers and other show expenses -- crew the show, I took a pass.
One person did step up to the sponsorship plate: the former chair of the Tennessee Republican Party. So, although it pains me, there on the front page of the program, listed as show sponsor, is a prominent Republican (I can't use my typical "repug" here; I won't denegrate the only individual who has helped put this show before the public) -- not a single Democrat. Is a puzzlement!
Theater is 'for giving'
[TWTP's founder] likes to point to the words of Eva Le Gallienne, a pioneer of regional, nonprofit theater in the 1920s. Le Gallienne said, "The theatre should be an instrument for giving, not a machinery for getting." Tennessee Women's Theater Project "is a theater company in that tradition," Clarke said.
If you're in Tennessee, come see the show -- we need the revenue. This Thursday, January 18, is "Pay What You Make an Hour Night." We want everyone to be able to see this show -- so if you make under the show's modest ticket prices ($15 general admission/$12 seniors and students) just tell us what your hourly pay rate is, and that's what your ticket price will be. Top price will still be $15 -- but anyone who makes more than that, and would like to pay that hourly wage, as a contribution to TWTP -- we won't turn you down. :)
If you can't make it to the show, but feel compelled to support it or Tennessee Women's Theater Project, we will gratefully take donations online at our website, or at our company address: P.O. Box 158525, Nashville, TN 37215-8525.
Stay strong! Be generous!
Tennessee Women's Theater Project