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Guerrilla Girls liberate CRH crowd

 

A crowd gathered in the Center for Faith and Life Recital Hall last Thursday, waiting for two women in gorilla masks to take the stage. What they did not expect was for them to run in through the back and pass out bananas as they went. Welcome to the world of the Guerrilla Girls.

The Guerrilla Girls On Tour group is an offshoot of the original Guerrilla Girls, a group of women activists within the art world. This second wave of Guerilla Girls focuses on advocating women's history and propelling women forward through performances, plays and workshops.

Throughout the performance the Guerrilla Girls used a projector, music and skits to make a point about the discrimination female artists face. They used statistics, specific examples of discrimination, fan and critic mail and history about women artists during the performance.

"I liked the use of humor to highlight issues and make it easier for us to swallow," Erica Schmitz ('06) said.

Schmitz and other audience members who did not know very much about the Guerrilla Girls were surprised by the liveliness of the performance.

The Guerrilla Girls On Tour is an internationally-acclaimed anonymous feminist theater collective addressing the lack of opportunities for women in theatre and art and searching for a way to combine theater and visual art. Each member wears a gorilla mask and takes on the name of a dead woman artist to take the focus off of themselves and put it on the issues they address.

Although there are about 26 members total, the Guerrilla Girls split up into groups so they can tour more places. The two Guerrilla Girls who performed at Luther used the stage names Fanny Brice and Aphra Behn. Both are famous women performers of the past to whom the Guerrilla Girls wanted to give recognition.

Because all the members of the Guerrilla Girls On Tour work in the theater industry and do not want their work to be judged based on their activism, no one in the theater world knows their identities.

"Everyone makes a choice about who to tell, but no one in the theater world knows," Behn said.

Johanna Krock ('07) thought their performance was refreshing. She heard about it in her Literature by Women class.

"So often feminism carries a serious tone," Krock said. "It is good to laugh and break out of stereotypes and look at it from a different side."

Behn claimed that even though Luther is a small school, she was very pleased with the audience.

"It was a really good, really powerful audience," Behn said. "I liked the space we were given because we like to be close with an audience and talk to them."


The Guerrilla Girls consistently stressed the importance of audience participation and there were two occasions where they had Luther students come on stage and be honorary Guerrilla Girls.

They sang a satirical song about the political atmosphere of the United States while Lindsay Sumner ('07) played her acoustic guitar on stage. All Luther students wore masks while on stage.

Kim Powell, head of the communications studies department, asked Sumner if she would be interested in performing.

"We met for an hour this afternoon and practiced," Sumner said.

Powell arranged for the Guerrilla Girls to come to Luther last spring. Their next trip is to Florida.

Because of their disguised identities, people frequently ask Behn why she tours in March so often, which is Women's History Month. She joked about the half-hearted responses she gives.

"Oh . I don't know," Behn would say. "I'm just really busy."

Not everyone in the audience was impressed with the Guerrilla Girls' performance. A group of students said that they had some problems with the Guerrilla Girls. Their main complaint was that the Guerrilla Girls made everything a political issue.

But the Guerrilla Girls seemed unconcerned with critics. In fact, the audience laughed the hardest at points in their performance when they read outrageous letters from people upset with their work. They said they were proud of being controversial.

"No matter how unpopular your position is, don't be afraid to say it," Behn said.

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Genny Countryman

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