Photo Credit: Lindsey Abendschein
In 1975, the women’s rowing team at Yale University protested to the athletic department for equal funding and conditions, eventually drawing national attention to their situation, as well as the overall need for equality in women’s collegiate sports. This, the “Title IX” protest, provides the background of Alice Austen’s new play, Girls in the Boat, which receives its world premiere production via First Stage this month.
The women on Yale’s team had previously been forced to wait for the school’s men’s team to shower after practice and were not provided with a locker room or usable showers of their own. Hence, they’d essentially just have to wait until the men were done, sometimes sitting on a crowded bus outside, no matter what the weather conditions. It’s when inconveniences become indignities without justification that great changes can emerge. American journalists were able to capture the women’s rowing team’s protest and, thereby, draw national attention to it. The spotlight on the women’s crew program drew attention to the importance of equal treatment for sports teams consisting of men, women or both.
“The play sweeps through a lot of women’s rowing history and touches on the protest, the 1975 team [the famous “Red Rose Crew” coached by Harry Parker that competed in the world championships that year], the 1976 Olympic team and more—all the way through Rio 2016,” explains Milwaukee-based director, actor and theatre educator Marcella Kearns.
“The characters of the crew are essentially all composites of women who had their positions in the boat,” Kearns continues. “Some of the characters are heavily based on real rowers whom Alice has known, and some are inspired by some famous rowers—Carie Graves (Red Rose Crew rower from Wisconsin and subsequent Olympic rower); Lynn Silliman (a young coxswain from California, also on the Red Rose Crew and in the Olympics); Anne Warner and Chris Ernst (who led the Title IX protest at Yale); and Anita DeFrantz (now one of the most powerful women in the Olympics), among others. The coach in the play is, in part, based on Harry Parker but is also a composite.”
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‘Bracing Relationships and Indomitable Personalities’
Kearns currently serves as the associate artistic director of Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and as an adjunct instructor of theater at Carthage College and Marquette University. She’ll be directing First Stage’s Young Company for this production. She’s quick to point out that Girls in the Boat is no museum piece about women’s rights struggles of days gone by. “Alice Austen has written a play that is both a race through and a love letter to the history of U.S. women’s rowing,” she says.
“Of greater weight to me in this story, however, are the sometimes thorny, sometimes bracing relationships and indomitable personalities of a crew striving at any cost to win the ultimate prize. This crew battles family, school, government, one another and themselves for the chance to do what they love most. For these women, unity is their best hope for victory. What e pluribus unum—“out of many, one”—may cost them, and how it may reward them, is the greatest legacy of a noble sport,” says Kearns.
Alice Austen is a noted playwright and producer. She’s received residencies and commissions from the Royal Court in London, England, the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf and Chicago Dramatists. She wrote Girls in the Boat specifically for First Stage’s Young Company—the Theater Academy’s award-winning advanced theater training program for high school students.
As artistic director Jeff Frank says, “We are very excited to have Girls in the Boat premiere at First Stage. The play was written specifically with the teens in our Young Company in mind. It shares a great American story that many people probably haven’t heard about before. For this production, Milwaukee Rowing Club members have been wonderful collaborators and advisors; our cast had the opportunity to meet with them to learn more about the sport of rowing, its ideals and its values. It was a very meaningful experience for the them.”
The Young Company cast for Girls in the Boat includes Kayla Salter (from Germantown), Emily Fedewa (Hales Corners), Mary Jensik (Greenfield), Molly Boyle (Port Washington), Ila Koch (Wauwatosa), Mathilde Prosen-Oldani (Shorewood), Reese Parish (Glendale), Selma Rivera and Jennie Babisch (Milwaukee), Sylvie Arnold (Hubertus) and Kate Lepianka (Grafton).
Girls in the Boat runs Dec. 7-16 at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center, 325 W. Walnut St., in Downtown Milwaukee. For tickets, call 414-267-2961 or visit firststage.org. First Stage deems the play quite suitable for children 13 years and older.
