LORDES, a play about Audre Lorde–the African-American, lesbian, poet, feminist, and activist–runs only 70 minutes as part of the Ice Factory festival at the New Ohio Theatre. How did playwrights Gethsemane Herron-Coward and Katherine Wilkinson fit such an iconic, larger-than-life woman into such a short piece? By enlisting a cast of nearly two dozen women of various races and ethnicities to be proxies for the multitudes Lorde contains. Hence, the title LORDES. Multiple Lordes, a plurality of Lordes, a horde of Lordes (if you’ll forgive the rhyme) crowd the stage at different times throughout the play. They dance and chant, cheer and make noise, their red garments filling the space.
The main Lorde, Audre, is powerfully embodied by Giselle Gant, who creates such a commanding presence, she renders the other main character, poet Adrienne Rich (played with a flighty charm by Kathryn Metzger), almost a dilettante in comparison. Like most creative partnerships, their friendship is fraught, forged by being two lesbians who at one point both married men. There is of course mutual respect for each other’s work, however, it often seems a bit one-sided, more worshiping of Audre by Adrienne than the other way around.
But this is not Adrienne’s story, it is completely Audre’s, the spotlight on the black not the white. The friendship in the play serves as a juxtaposition. Audre is more out of the closet, more daring with her writing, more politically active because she can conceive of no other way to be. Her poems are personal, a part of herself, flowing out of her and onto the paper. And womanhood is front and center, not just because she is feminine–it’s that she lives and breathes it. Sisterhood and motherhood–all of it–women feed her soul.
Photo by Shannon Finnell
There is one final Lorde, the one who finally succumbs to cancer at the age of 58, sitting in the back in front of a typewriter. Played by Christine Smith, she is not much of a presence until the bittersweet end, after Audre undergoes treatment for breast cancer, her partner Gloria (Renita Lewis) by her side. Thankfully, LORDES doesn’t focus too much on the tragic ravages of illness. It’s more a celebratory slice of life. It shows that Audre may have lost her life but never her voice.
LORDES is playing at the New Ohio Theatre through August 3. Ice Factory runs through August 10.