When the 2020 presidential elections take place, women will have been allowed to vote all over the US for a whopping 100 years. It’s still kind of shocking that women couldn’t vote in certain parts of the US as recently as 1919, but then . . . it’s been a long, slow process of society recognizing women as being fully-formed people in the modern world.
Milwaukee’s first mental asylum was founded about 60 years before women were able to vote nationwide. Naturally there were aspects of mental healthcare that were more than a bit backwards back then. The 1860s were a very different era. Women were treated quite tragically by the system back then. Danceworks and Cooperative Performance Milwaukee explore the challenges of women in mental institutions in the 19th century in A Woman’s Place. Devised by Kelly Coffey, the piece, “uses movement, text, and aerial work to weave a tale about a time when women were institutionalized for behaving in ways unacceptable to a male-dominated society.”
A Woman’s Place runs Feb. 13 - 21 at Danceworks Studio on 1661 N. Water St. For more information, visit Cooperative Performance Milwaukee online. Also of note is a detailed, in-depth blog about the show that’s been started by Susannah Bartlow. You can check that out on her website.
