The 'Liberation' cast hopes their show is a call to action

Bess Wohl's world-premiere play, running off Broadway through April 6, explores feminism in the 1970s and the present through a close-knit group of women.

March is Women’s History Month, a time to reflect on the progression of women’s rights, celebrate women’s contributions to society, and reignite conversations around gender equality. Bess Wohl’s play Liberation, running off Broadway through April 6 at the Laura Pels Theatre, does all that and more. Centering around a “consciousness raising” feminist group in 1970s Ohio, we watch as week after week, a small group of women meet to discuss how they can further the feminist agenda in their small town.

They discuss matters of the home, the workplace, economics, race, immigration, and their rights to divorce, abortion, and simply opening a bank account without a man’s approval. We flash back and forth through time to the current day, as Lizzie, the daughter of the group's organizer, questions how those hard-fought rights are now imperiled when her mother’s generation worked so hard to earn them.

New York Theatre Guide connected with three of Liberation’s cast members over email: Irene Sofia Lucio, Audrey Corsa, and Betsy Aidem. Lucio plays Isidora, an Italian immigrant stuck in a green card marriage because Ohio has not yet passed no-fault divorce. She’s ready and willing to fight for better for herself and her sisters. Corsa is Dora, a naive yet curious young woman who found her way into the group because she thought the first meeting was a knitting circle. She's a career woman navigating her patriarchal office culture before she knows it.

Aidem plays Margie, the oldest of the group who’s been playing the dutiful housewife role for 45 years. Now that her children are grown and her husband is more helpless than ever, she begins questioning her place in the world.

These actors have been living with their characters for nearly three months, and they shared how this play has impacted them and what they want their audiences to take away from Wohl’s feminist exploration of what came before and what comes next.

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How has your relationship to your character grown over the course of working on this play? What aspects of her journey stand out to you the most?

Irene Sofia Lucio: My relationship to Isidora has deepened over the course of working on this play. The erosion of civil rights, the loss of Roe [v. Wade], and the escalation of deportations has made Isidora’s plight more relevant and urgent.

Audrey Corsa: It's been important to me throughout this process to present Dora with the respect she is due. She's the youngest in the group and the least experienced, but she soaks up the movement like a sponge. Women like Dora are so often infantilized and objectified, so being present with and open to this young woman's nuance as she navigates the new orientation her life takes towards liberation has been a joy.

Betsy Aidem: It's remarkable that when you get a script, your instincts about a character are sometimes intuitive, but with Margie I had a lot of questions about how to solve this fissure between her dour edge, which seemed ironic and detached to me, and the ingrained servitude of keeping house for 45 years and feeling collapsed in her self-worth by being trapped in an unsatisfying marriage. This duality confounded and intrigued me.

[Director] Whitney [White] was really helpful in guiding me away from a person who apologizes, which was a dead end, to a more gimlet-eyed self-assessment. Feeling too old for the group and irrelevant as any source of an example was bleeding from both myself as an actress and the character. It evolved into a quiet certainty that all the years of experience and raising children, who Margie and I, Betsy did, and miss terribly, ended up being useful and helpful.

And then there’s how much I learned and still learn from this younger generation. Finding Margie’s backbone is the journey every night. Being willing to say I don't know. Jumping without a net. Margie would probably say after joining the group and being part of it for 3 years, “JUST DO IT.” My favorite quote from the Book of Isaiah: "If I am not for me, who will be for me? If I am only for me, who am I? If not now, when?"

Liberation draws parallels between the characters’ struggles in the 1970s and the challenges women still face today. How does this play further the conversation around the contemporary feminist movement?

Lucio: Just because progress has been made doesn’t mean we are done with the fight for equality. I'm grateful to the generations before us who have paved the progress we have made. But we cannot get complacent. Already we are backsliding on hard-earned rights. If we don’t hold the line, it will continue to backslide. We must keep the fight and raise our voices at any and all injustice.

Consciousness-raising groups of the '70s asked women to consider the “personal to be political”. We need to learn from that. The questions of those CR groups are still relevant and urgent: In what ways are our personal struggles and frustrations the result of greater societal injustices? How can we have conversations around gender roles and gender biases with our loved ones? How can we assert our equality at home and at work?

Corsa: Gloria Steinem (who recently honored all of us with her presence at one of our shows) has said that feminism isn't feminism if it's not inclusive. She has also mentioned that the movement is called a movement for a reason, we are all learning and growing, making mistakes along the way and holding one another accountable for those mistakes with love and from a place of respect. Liberation asks its audience/community to engage in the conversation, uncomfortable, hilarious or otherwise, and to keep moving.

Aidem: I thought the things I struggled with in the '70s were harder with respect to having agency as a woman. We had no resources for who to go to when we were harassed and there was so much shame around topics like abortion and rape. There was a huge tsunami we were running from. There was a male-generated theory that women were "asking for it" that became a legal strategy. It still sickens me.

The evolution of HR and intimacy coordinators and Me Too have undoubtedly helped, but now that Roe has been taken away, I fear the desire to keep us barefoot and pregnant has returned.

The play lets its characters step out of time and reflect on their role in the feminist movement. What would your character would say about the current state of feminism?

Lucio: My character says we’re “still fucked,” and that in the '70s they didn’t go “far enough.” Isidora is of the mind that being reasonable and “middle of the road” in approaching freedom is a short-sighted, apologetic way of “begging.” The only way forward is a radical fight towards equality. And for that we must be willing to break rules that were not made for us.

Corsa: Dora would look at her sisters outside of time with joy, admiration, patience and challenge — "listen to each other."

Aidem: When I become Lizzie's mom at the end of the play I say, "The way you took so much for granted, let so much slide, and not just the political progress, but the community, the solidarity. I don't know where that is now." I feel that in my bones because the marches I went to, starting with Cesar Chavez in the '70s, made me feel that chance was coming but it is now, in our current climate, in peril.

What do you hope audiences take away from this play?

Lucio: That every movement is comprised of people with different needs. We need to find a way to work together despite our differences. We need to join more groups and really listen to each other. See where we can find middle ground and how we can push for progress together. Outrage is getting us nowhere.

Corsa: I hope this play is like a homing beacon for the hearts and souls feeling lost in this current political environment. The personal is political. Self-determination must be balanced with community and conscience, as [another character] Celeste says. Know that we stand on the shoulders of the sisters who came before us.

When Ms. Steinem came to see the show we thanked her for all that she has done for the world, and she said "it was fun." So, fuck it, find the fun.

Aidem: We are at a crossroads, and I hope this play wakes us out of our stupor. The fear that power is counting on stifling us into silence must be challenged. That's the takeaway, to stand up and be counted, not sit idly by.

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Responses have been lightly edited for grammar.

Photo credit: Liberation off Broadway. (Photos by Joan Marcus)