Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Feminism comes down home to roost with 'Girls'
At the back of the stage was a trellised front porch, under which might be kept gardening implements-or a surfboard, a sunfish-or all of the above. There might be a case of Pepsi-Cola, or even Jack Daniels under there. It's too hard to tell from outside what-all is under a porch.
As the audience in the Kitty Hawk Elementary School studied the guitars, drums and other instruments set on the porch, a commotion arose from the doors to the gymnasium, and a group of women burst in, as if they had just put in a hard shift at the plant and were bent on liberating a bowling alley.
After greeting audience members loudly and familiarly, they collected on the stage. In front of the porch were six folding chairs, three floor microphones and another guitar on a stand.
The women were of all shapes and sizes, and quite attractive. They swarmed around brave Bill Teague of the Outer Banks Forum for the Lively Arts as he thanked the friends of the Forum and the underwriters of the evening's performance, Albemarle Eye Center, Regional Medical Center and Mollie Fearing & Associates, and greeted their representatives.
Jodi Beck, Amanda Blackburn, Bianca Carragher, Julie Oliver, Katherine Rogers and Meme Simmons were dressed casually, as women might dress to shop for groceries anywhere from Manhattan to Manteo. There was no big hair tonight, although they expressed their willingness to wear it, and a philosophy of it, to wit, with your hair piled up you feel closer to God.
The front porch had filled with musicians, who were prepared for an evening of pickin' and plenty of grinnin'. Nathan Logan, Pete Lucey, Don Raleigh, Byron Settle and Mark Simonson wielded drums, piano, an upright bass and guitars respectively.
The women began to talk and sing, alone, in pairs, in groups; at times the whole ensemble stood at the mics. Their funny, tragic stories concerned living as females in the South, but they were ecumenical stories in that northerners and other foreigners could understand, empathise and laugh along, too.
The tales were adapted from the stories of Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, punctuated by the songs of Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman. They encompassed everything from black eyes in Johnson City to revenge fantasies dreamed in BMWs driving around the New South.
But there was an appreciation of all that makes life wonderful, too, from perfect mates to the glory of childbirth, dissaproving mamas notwithstanding.
The other end of life was also covered. "When the kids are gone, they're gone like fog from the mountain." A woman, with her younger self, complains in a nursing home, and a beautician has to make up the corpse of her mother.
The music ranged from Applachian-style ballads to blues, country and even a little calypso: all the music of the South. The expert performances were full of space and light.
The ensemble went from strength to strength; the stories were marvelous, and the music was terrific. These strong, emblematic women reprised the first songs of the two acts, "Good Ol' Girl" and "All I Want is Everything," for the raucous end of the show, but this time the audience was on their feet.
©2003 Womack Newspapers Inc.
As the audience in the Kitty Hawk Elementary School studied the guitars, drums and other instruments set on the porch, a commotion arose from the doors to the gymnasium, and a group of women burst in, as if they had just put in a hard shift at the plant and were bent on liberating a bowling alley.
After greeting audience members loudly and familiarly, they collected on the stage. In front of the porch were six folding chairs, three floor microphones and another guitar on a stand.
The women were of all shapes and sizes, and quite attractive. They swarmed around brave Bill Teague of the Outer Banks Forum for the Lively Arts as he thanked the friends of the Forum and the underwriters of the evening's performance, Albemarle Eye Center, Regional Medical Center and Mollie Fearing & Associates, and greeted their representatives.
Jodi Beck, Amanda Blackburn, Bianca Carragher, Julie Oliver, Katherine Rogers and Meme Simmons were dressed casually, as women might dress to shop for groceries anywhere from Manhattan to Manteo. There was no big hair tonight, although they expressed their willingness to wear it, and a philosophy of it, to wit, with your hair piled up you feel closer to God.
The front porch had filled with musicians, who were prepared for an evening of pickin' and plenty of grinnin'. Nathan Logan, Pete Lucey, Don Raleigh, Byron Settle and Mark Simonson wielded drums, piano, an upright bass and guitars respectively.
The women began to talk and sing, alone, in pairs, in groups; at times the whole ensemble stood at the mics. Their funny, tragic stories concerned living as females in the South, but they were ecumenical stories in that northerners and other foreigners could understand, empathise and laugh along, too.
The tales were adapted from the stories of Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, punctuated by the songs of Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman. They encompassed everything from black eyes in Johnson City to revenge fantasies dreamed in BMWs driving around the New South.
But there was an appreciation of all that makes life wonderful, too, from perfect mates to the glory of childbirth, dissaproving mamas notwithstanding.
The other end of life was also covered. "When the kids are gone, they're gone like fog from the mountain." A woman, with her younger self, complains in a nursing home, and a beautician has to make up the corpse of her mother.
The music ranged from Applachian-style ballads to blues, country and even a little calypso: all the music of the South. The expert performances were full of space and light.
The ensemble went from strength to strength; the stories were marvelous, and the music was terrific. These strong, emblematic women reprised the first songs of the two acts, "Good Ol' Girl" and "All I Want is Everything," for the raucous end of the show, but this time the audience was on their feet.
©2003 Womack Newspapers Inc.
