Also this issue: Come Together The women of Ladyfest Philly reshape the old business model -Patrick Rapa The Root Philly's first lady of hip-hop, Bahamadia, keeps going on. -A.D. Amorosi Exile in Girlville Who's who on the Ladyfest music stages. Picture This Ladyfest artists test their vision. -Lori Hill Mad as Hell Mantua's Yellow Rage is not gonna take it anymore. -Meredith Broussard Girls On Film Ladyfest unleashes the screen queens. -Sam Adams Depth Becomes Her The women of Trace Fury are trained and ready for anything. -John Vettese The Match Indie rock mothers of invention Tsunami are still fighting the good fight and reuniting for Ladyfest. -Patrick Rapa

March 20-26, 2003

cover story

Mixed Medea

HOMEBODIES: Nora Martin (left) and Victoria Hines in The Same Old Story.

Enraged Cow makes friend of Fo.

by Juliet Fletcher

Perhaps it’s the smug-married air that manages to cripple many husband-and-wife collaborators -- in music, at least -- preventing them from achieving cast-iron credibility. (With the distinct exception of acts such as local soul twosome Kindred, most collaborating couples go the way of Paul and Linda: He’s an ex-Beatle; she’s remembered standing on stage with him holding a tambourine.) In theater, the dynamic matches the performance: When the goal of a husband-and-wife artistic effort is to smash societal norms and structures, there’s room for a radical reconsideration of what marriage, itself an institution, can mean.

Now, a group of Philadelphian performers are reassessing some of the work by theater's most esoteric couple, Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Since first meeting in 1951, Rame and Fo, both committed to surrealist satire, have founded three consecutive theater companies to wield art as a tool of social change, been censored and axed from the airwaves in their native Italy and collaborated on the writing, editing and performing of a large number of plays, including "All Home, Bed and Church," a scathing criticism of the Catholic Church's control of female reproductive rights in Italy.

Following this lead, director Reva Fox and the Philadelphia performers collective The Enraged Cow will present an adaptation of works written by the couple, focusing on perceived roles of women in society, a subject the pair returned to again and again in works such as A Woman Alone, Mother and a retelling of Euripedes' Medea.

"What we found [when we adapted their work] was that many issues have moved on since they first wrote about them," stresses Fox. So in preparing the show, titled The Same Old Story, she found there was, in fact, a new story nestled inside. "We went back, adjusted some of the references specifically to Communism. Hopefully, the pieces reflect more contemporary concerns about the treatment of women."

Rollicking through traditional female stereotypes, from single chick to single mother, performers K Richardson, Virginia Loomis, Nora Martin, Kelli Wondra and Victoria Hines use text from Rise and Shine, A Woman Alone and others to explore the moment at which women are shamed and abandoned -- by society, and by other women. These pieces are woven together with excerpts of the original text of Euripides' classical Greek tale of a mother driven to infanticide, Medea. Fox sees a distinct shift between the classical version, wherein Medea chooses her path though warned against it by the chorus, and the one written by Rame and Fo, where the chorus explicitly spells out the social pressure on her to accept her role as a docile wife. It's these women's minds Fox wants to change: "Our aim by the end of the show is for the chorus to offer her their support and care, rather than judging her." Offering that idealistic ending beside Rame and Fo's bleak one places their '70s observation of gender in wider context.

Fox, who moved to Philadelphia from L.A. a year and a half ago, sees Ladyfest as an enlightening opportunity in artistic fields where declaring one's work "female-oriented" can be a double-edged sword. "While training for my MFA [at Indiana University], I was told, ŒOh, it's so good to have a woman in the program.' But I found that they were so busy trying not to treat me any differently, they also ignored what made a female approach different, useful."

If it's too easy to celebrate Rame and Fo for simply managing to create eyebrow-raising work that crosses gender lines, Fox recognizes Rame's significance as a woman whose career in theater pursued freedom of expression -- in the face of censorship and ridicule -- but also the freedom to work away from the spotlight cast on her husband, a Nobel Prize winner in 1997. Says Fox: "It's rather different for female actors, who at least find themselves confined to female roles; as a female director, I feel I should be able to work on whatever I choose."

The Same Old Story, Sun., March 23, noon, price TBD, with Lady, Woman, Miss, Her and Judy Blume Owes Me, The Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St.