Video of "On Account of Sex" recorded live at the Kansas City Fringe Festival in July, 2023.
"On Account of Sex" Video
Hollywood 2023 Vacation Video
A video of my recent trip to California going from Sacramento to Hollywood.
"On Account of Sex" Available for Production
The cast requires four women. The running time is approximately 75 minutes, but can be trimmed to 60 minutes. Suitable for all ages, and ideal for middle/high school audiences. Performance royalties are negotiable.
Download the script
Meet the women who persisted for over seventy years to add four words to the Constitution: “On Account of Sex.” Seven leaders of the women’s suffrage movement relate their struggles, failures, and triumphs, beginning with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and ending with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, when women won the right to vote. This unconventional exploration of women’s history is filled with humor, inspiration, and songs of the 19th and early 20th century.
The 19th Amendment states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” It took seventy years of constant and challenging activism to give women the right to vote throughout the United States.
The play follows seven leading figures in the suffrage movement: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Carrie Chapman Catt, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Alice Stone Blackwell, and Alice Paul. These women traversed the country and led national campaigns to win voting rights in the states, and the play highlights their efforts to win legal battles, challenge naysayers, and pass the torch to the next generation. When they ultimately confront the president of the United States, they are faced with abuse, imprisonment, and forced feedings until they are finally triumphant in passing an amendment.
Throughout the play there are period songs that bring the era to life, many of them popular tunes of the day with lyrics tailored to the suffrage cause, and many of them quite humorous. These include “The March of the Women,” “Let Us All Speak Our Minds,” “Daughters of Freedom,” “Keep Women in Her Sphere,” and “Song of the Harassed Man Voter.”
“On Account of Sex.” was originally intended to be produced in 2020 for the 100th Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, but the live Fringe Festival was canceled due to the pandemic. An online reading of the play was recorded for the August 18, 2020 anniversary of the amendment, and we’re excited to finally be able to produce the full production live on stage as intended.
"On Account of Sex." Review by Chris McCoy for KC Fringe
“On Account of Sex” is perhaps one of the most well-researched and cleverly written Fringe shows I have ever seen. Taking its title from the 19th Amendment that granted women the right to vote, the performance is a feminist history lesson delivered as postmodern vaudeville. Four performers accompanied by keyboard and tuba relay the trials and tribulations of the early Suffragettes in the long and arduous passage of this amendment through innovative staging, crafty character creation, and an elan for political entertainment.
The show is performed in the style of Agitprop (agitation propaganda), a form of political theatre popularized in the 1960s by groups such as San Francisco Mime Troupe, Free Southern Theatre, and El Teatro Campesino. The style uses allegorical characters to deliver political messages with little spectacle through silly, melodramatic acting. While you don't need to know that history to enjoy the production, it helps in understanding this approach to the subject.
The four actresses are from different decades of their life, which powerfully reminds us of the historic progress that women fought for on behalf of future generations. The only set is a clothesline, and all the props are items traditionally associated with women’s work in the home (sewing, cooking, cleaning, etc.). Costumes are t-shirts with the image and name of each character, which proves doubly useful as the actresses play different roles throughout. Characters include Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cody Stanton, Frederick Douglas, among many others.
The score is composed of "Suffrage Songs of the Era." While the performance style is intended to be broad, there could have been a bit more cohesion in the acting and directing to really allow the ingenious writing to be clearly understood. Overall, I found the show revelatory and smiling ear to ear until the well-deserved standing ovation. This show is suitable for middle school audiences and up and especially of interest to history buffs. You will heartily laugh (and learn) throughout.
Chris McCoy
"On Account of Sex." Review in KC Studio
At KC Fringe, “On Account of Sex” Is a Charming (and Infuriating) Musical Retelling of American History
Vivian Kane
July 24, 2023
Politics, generally speaking, often walks the exasperating line of being both extremely important and infuriatingly tedious. That dichotomy is the entire foundation of On Account of Sex, which traces the seventy-year-long fight to gain women the right to vote.
No one could possibly deny that this battle was of the utmost importance—least of all the women at its center. The musical from Fourth Wave Theater, currently running at the KC Fringe Festival, features a small cast of four actors (Claudia Copping, Caroline Dawson, Rita Hanch, and Dianna Royer) playing famous suffragists of the early 20th century—largely well-known names including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Lucy Stone. These women dedicated their lives to their cause, risking alienation, personal safety, and so much more.
At the same time, we can share the frustration at the tedious bureaucracy they were up against. The women are forced to deal with nit-picking semantics and political practices (lobbying, votes, and the like) that move at an extreme crawl. The timeline of their fight to add four maddeningly simple words to the constitution is also represented visually onstage via a literal clothesline—just one of many inventive set design elements mixing women’s domestic lives with their political battles—that serves to let the audience know throughout just how very far there is left to go in this fight.
Written by Bryan Colley and Tara Varney and directed by Varney, On Account of Sex is a competent and largely engaging retelling of a momentous part of history, aided by some jaunty songs—mostly period music (arranged by Tim Gillespie, performed live onstage by Gillespie and Sandy Weidman) with relevant, often humorous lyrics reflecting the women’s fervor and their frustrations.
My biggest fear going in was that the show would erase the more complicated, less heroic elements of the suffragist movement—namely, the ways in which it frequently found itself in opposition to the abolitionist movement. To its credit, the show did not that. It did not gloss over the ways in which the country’s ur-white feminists were largely in direct conflict with Black Americans, but rather discussed the conflict at some length.
Still, the actual Black women involved in this movement are mostly relegated to a footnote via an end-of-show shout-out. Legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass makes a few appearances, played by one of the core white (or white-presenting) actresses, which is an odd enough choice to make one wonder if it would have been best to leave him out entirely. (I think it’s clear that neither option is ideal, and that the cast—and cast of characters depicted—is simply in deep need of some diversity.)
Ultimately, there’s a lot of fun, drama, and historical information to be gleaned from this show for all Fringe audiences but On Account of Sex seems best designed for—and has the potential to be extremely successful as—a school tour. There is a rudimentariness to the story and structure (including having the audience read constitutional amendments aloud in unison) that young children would likely appreciate and absorb well, to the point that it makes me wish the Fringe Festival had more matinee showings for younger audiences.
“On Account of Sex,” part of the KC Fringe Festival, runs at The Center for Spiritual Living (1014 E 39th Street) through July 29. For more information, visit kcfringe.org.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)