Last October, Pipeline Playwrights presented the DMV premier of It’s My Party, written by Ann Timmons and directed by Rikki Howie Lacewell, at the Theater on the Run. This week Pipeline Playwrights provides a timely second chance opportunity to watch via a VOD encore.
Pitted against the established, well-financed veteran suffragists, the more progressive, indefatigable likes of Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and African American journalist-activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett lobby tirelessly for the ratification of the 19th Amendment, facilitating Congressional approval and according American women the right to vote.
Ann Timmons‘s dialogue, peppered with salient repartee, transports you to the twentieth century’s turbulent teens, where party rivalries and disparate ideological tensions divide not only Congress but the suffragist movement itself. Women battling with unrelenting perseverance, unwavering courage, and wry
observational wit prove to be as engaging a battle cry for equality in 1919 as it was in the late Sixties to early Seventies, and ever more so today.
Everything old is new again. The It’s My Party cast reboots feminism 3.0 with as much perspicacity as the suffragists 100 years ago, confronting one battle after another over years of near-triumph toppled by recurring defeat.
As president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (later founding the League of Women Voters), Carrie Chapman Catt was a keenly savvy political strategist. Not to be overshadowed, Alice Paul’s call to arms resonates: “Power is never given. It is always taken.”
Ann Timmons wrote It’s My Party to commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment in 2020. Timmons’ scrupulously scholarly script complemented by Justin Nepomuceno’s minimalist staging engagingly spotlights the dynamic backstory of the oftentimes combative suffragists’ unrelenting early twentieth century lobbying legacy to secure the right to vote for all American women. It’s HERstory on demand – a narrative that’s as timely today as it was over a century ago.
The metal bar fencing backdrop calls to mind the inhumane imprisonment of Alice Paul and other protesting suffragists in Occoquan. Rick Bassett’s original ragtime-period interludes evoke a nostalgic mood, reminiscent of live performance silent movie scores and inspiration for the soundtrack from One Battle After Another, which could easily have been considered as a title for It’s My Party.
Hybrid performances are an ideal option in the time of COVID, economic up and downturns, and this week’s snow-pocalypse. Many DC-area theater goers had tickets this week to cancelled sold-out shows and final curtain calls. You would cry too if it happened to you?
Luckily, if you missed It’s My Party last October you have a reprieve. And….. it’s déjà-view all over again if you didn’t. It’s My Party is available to stream as VOD through February 5, 2025. Tickets are available on the Pipeline Playwrights website.
#BRAVA
# STANDING-O
