Femme power takes center stage in Women in Time, a bill of seven short plays produced, written, acted and directed by women. All the one-acts deal, naturally, with women’s issues. The same three actresses, Joanna Miles, Julie Janney and Kimberly Alexander, appear in each of the plays, taking on different characters in a variety of settings. Their skillful, tour de force performances are a joy to behold.
The plays range in time: Suffrage (by Styron) is set in 1917, and the other plays proceed from there up through the 20th century into the present (Pearl’s Invaluable takes place in a glossy corporate board room). The numerous set and costume changes are handled deftly by the cast and crew, with all transitions aided greatly by Thomas Meleck’s set & lighting design and by Fritz Davis’s period video projections.
The tone of each play depends on its content: Flight School (by Garvin), about a 1992 stewardess trying to cope with a pilot’s sexual harassment, has an angry, rebellious edge to it. To Bra Or Not to Bra (McCauley), set in a 1962 department-store lingerie department, is bawdily comic. Defining Moments (Howard), set in 1955, deals with an illegal abortion in a graphically dramatic way.
Most of the plays focus on women battling for freedom and equality in a male world, except for Invaluable, which allows that women in the corporate world can be just as driven and ruthless as the guys.
