One acts by Red Hen and Charenton opening 6/9

As summer approaches and the temperature rises, our attention span drops: we seem to prefer our entertainment short and light. This weekend two small companies are taking advantage of our propensity for comedy. Red Hen, Cleveland’s feminist theatre, and Charenton, Cleveland’s traveling free theater, are both opening bills of two comic one-act plays that take playful looks at gender.

At Red Hen, the title of the bill is Women on the Verge…of Figuring It Out. Forget the stereotype of feminists having no sense of humor. Artistic Rose Leininger has found a pair of comedies that take an unexpectedly light approach to the theme of women recognizing their own power.

Area writer Maureen Johnson’s Harvesting the Marigold Seeds needs a cast with stamina. Her world premiere one act takes place in an storefront exercise club with women talking about their lives as they work out in two-minute increments. Johnson, who teaches English and creative writing to high school students at Lake Ridge Academy, was inspired by her experience at a local Curves. “There we’d be, at 7AM, revealing all kinds of intimate parts of our lives, and the voice would be going, ‘Move on, please.’ That seemed to be a metaphor for what we need to do.”

The other play, a U.S. premiere, is a prize winner at Canadian Fringe Festivals: Nicole Natasse’s comic solo piece Brownie Points, about a woman in her 20s who realizes that it’s time to stop living her life according to the Brownie Girl Scout Code.

“These are fun, light shows about serious issues being said in a manner that everybody can relate to them,” says Leininger. Johnson agrees. “Women and girls keep grappling with the same thing,” says Johnson, “trying to balance our own needs while trying to please other people.”

The shows opens tomorrow and runs through June 26th at Cleveland Black Box Theatre, the Warehouse District space where Cabaret Dada performs. See it Thursday and Friday at 7:30PM and Sunday at 3:30PM. http://www.feministtheatre.org. (216) 216-556-0919.

At Charenton, which specializes in modern classics, new Artistic Director Jacqi Loewy has found two old time comedies which contrast two takes on gender. “I wanted to do something fun and light,” says Loewy. “I had just come back from New York and seen Spam-A-Lot – it was so nice to see people laughing so heartily.

As the “male” play, Loewy has chosen the very politically incorrect If Men Played Cards as Women Do, a ten-minute play written by American comic genius George S. Kaufman, where men gossip, dish, and flutter. “We’re looking at doing it twice, once the way it was written, and once with a contemporary set of characters.”

For her quartet of women, Producing Director Mindy Childress is directing Alice Gerstenberg’s 1913 comedy Overtones. Four actors play two women having a conversation about their marriages. Two play their very proper public selves, while the other two play their inner, candid private selves who tell it like it is.

“What’s really interesting is they sound like they could have been written by some sitcom writer today,” says Loewy. "Let's just laugh at ourselves!"

All of Charenton’s shows are free and take place in non-traditional spaces, Thursday throuh Saturday at 8PM. This tour, dubbed The Inside/Out Tour, opens this week at Ohio City’s Market Avenue Wine Bar, across from the West Side Market “in the half-block of Cleveland that feels like a European city,” says a tongue-in-cheek Loewy. On June 16-18, it moves to the Oakley Party Center, next to the Cedar-Lee Theatre, then to Café Limbo on Larchmere June 23-25. Details at http://www.charenton.org.
from Cool Cleveland contributor Linda Eisenstein, Linda@coolcleveland.com (:divend:)