INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2008
Speech written and delivered by Playwright Sharon Pollock
In Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Sunday March 8, 2008
At the International Women’s Day Brunch
A non-partisan event celebrating women as leaders
Sponsored by the Calgary Liberal Women’s Policy Network and the Alberta Liberal Women’s Commission
100 years ago, 1908, 15,000 women marched in New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay, and voting rights.
In 1910 over 100 women from 17 countries came together in support of a proposal to set aside a day, the date undetermined, to celebrate women’s achievements and to promote universal suffrage.
On March 08, 1917 Russian women began a strike for “Bread and Peace” in reaction to the death of 2 million Russian soldiers in WW I. The result? The abdication of the Czar, and the granting of the right to vote for women, plus the setting of March 08th as International Women’s Day.
And so we celebrate the advancement of women’s rights in social, political and economic arenas on March 8th every year. More important perhaps, in honouring progress we instill hope and inspire action locally and globally.
I think of these as the facts, the public information, you can boot up your computer and learn as much or as little of International Women’s day as you choose. But there’re many internal and personal journeys and I’m going to speak briefly of mine in the work that I do.
I write plays. In my early work I wrote no roles for women. I was told I wrote like a man. What’s so strange about that? For centuries, and in too many places today, the lives of women have literally depended on their ability to read men’s minds and interpret their motivations and actions. I could get inside the minds of my male characters better than I could access my own mind and that apparent ability to read the minds of men made for credible characters.
I’m told I write plays about ethical choices as opposed to expedient choices. If I look at the work I think that’s true. But I believe a playwright should never make a moral judgment of a character. You create the character as honestly as you can, making the best case for their actions, and allow the audience to make that moral judgment. And that too created a problem in creating female characters.
I couldn’t write principal roles for women because I did judge women’s actions, often harshly, just as I constantly judged my own actions.
And to make it all more difficult, I’m interested in dramatic action on stage and I did not see women as “action figures”. I saw them more as foils for the action of men. Occasionally female characters did creep in the plays out of sheer necessity, but in small supporting roles.
Over time I grew to know myself better and a woman’s story did force its way onto the page and stage. Even then I had to set it in the late 19th century to get some distance from it, and to tell myself that I would never offer the play for production as it was just an exercise. The play was “Blood Relations” my take on Lizzie Borden and on myself in a way. It’s thought Lizzie murdered her step mother and father in 1892 mistakenly believing financial freedom would lead to personal freedom. At one time I contemplated murdering a husband under the same illusion. Fortunately I didn’t act on it.
Two more plays followed with women in lead roles. But then I looked at them and thought, mmn, that’s strange. I’m not interested in writing “role models” for women but in these plays one female lead chooses murder, one suicide, and one goes crazy rather than submit to the roles assigned to them by their time and place. Surely there’re other choices a woman might make. Maybe I could write about them.
I wanted women characters to triumph. But how could I do that without cooking the books? Women, in order to fully realize themselves, struggle against powerful forces. How can I write a play about a woman who wins without trivializing the nature and strength of the opposition?
Truth be told, I don’t know how. I don’t want to lessen the dimensions of the struggle. But what I’ve discovered over time and experience is that small victories count, and that there is nobility in the struggle no matter what is achieved.
I’ve theatrically celebrated women warriors in plays springing from the life of Zelda Fitzgerald and of silent film actor, screenwriter and producer Nell Shipman. But another woman warrior engages me now. A paragraph in some article caught my eye a while ago. It referred to a woman described as
“one of the most significant women of the 20th century, a flamboyant journalist, feminist and political activist who made historic contributions to letters and politics on three continents.”
The final phrase “But nowadays she is largely forgotten.”
How can that be? I searched her out. Her life is a trajectory from poverty and the coal country of Colorado; to Berkeley and Greenwich Village; to Berlin, Moscow, and China. Fueled by a fury at injustice, she threw herself headlong into the crucial issues of the time.
Among a host of other things, she was jailed for distributing birth control information in New York; she set up the first birth control clinic in Berlin; her 1929 autobiographical novel Daughter of the Earth is described as the first feminist proletarian novel, while her Battle Hymn of China, published in 1943, is considered one of the best works of war reporting of the Second World War.
She worked as a journalist for the British, German and Chinese newspapers, she marched with the Red Army, covered the Japanese invasion in WW II, was put on the FBI’s watch list for her opposition to segregation; helped form a civil rights group committed to defending Hollywood artists accused of communist sympathies. In poor health she died in 1952. The House of Un-American Activities Committee held a posthumous hearing on her, and her books were burned by U.S. Information Agency libraries around the world.
She was called an evil villainess and an immoral hussy, accused of racing horses, cross dressing and offering lessons on birth control, western dance and romantic love. Her refusal to marry and bear children was stated as un-American and evidence of her political beliefs.
Termed the “Calamity Jane of the Chinese Revolution” it’s said she once danced on a table singing the “Internationale” wearing nothing but a red hat. She shines as the prototype of the 20th-century feminist who is driven not only to claim her own personal, sexual, and political freedom, but to play it out on the international stage.
Her name is Agnes Smedley. How to encompass her life on stage? All I have is a title “Woman at Large”.
I don’t know how many of you knew of Agnes Smedley before today, but now a few more are aware of her and that’s good thing. It’s an inspiring thing. She inspires me and I hope she inspires you.
At the same time let us celebrate all of those women whose names are known and unknown, and who in big and small ways work for opportunity, education and equality for all women.
Thank you.