Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again

Available Light Theatre's current season was created, in large part, as a response to the political moment. We chose plays and projects for voices that need to be heard and amplified, conversations that are important for us and our audiences to have, and for the ways those conversations can help us continue to create community, kindness, and action.

Reading Alice Birch's "Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again." for the first time was exciting. The dialogue was exceptional. The play cut to the bone and it was both abstract and ambiguous. "Revolt" offered a combination that gave AVLT a lot of room to explore and create.

Birch was commissioned to wrote the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company's Midsummer Mischief responding to the statement "well-behaved women rarely make history." Her play calls women to revolt on many fronts: sex, work, marriage, motherhood, the notion of gender, and most of all language and the way culture and historical organizations of power use language to frame and subvert the way we see women and gender.

Working on this production has been empowering, thrilling, and eye opening. Birch's feminist and non-traditional play breaks many "rules." There is no set nor characters, the dialogue is not attributed to any specific person, and the narratives break down and become chaotic. Yet the playwright only demands one thing: "Above all this play should not be well-behaved."

Every night of this process I have left rehearsal inspired and buzzing from the conversations and theatrical work created by this wonderful ensemble. While the play offers no answers, I do find strength and hope in the questions and the conversations this play provokes and I hope those conversations refuel and inspire us to continue to do the hard work.

Underground Review

Dispatch Review

Dispatch Preview

Revolt is an implosive new play about the conundrums of being female in the 21st century. Alice Birch has created a series of unsettling vignettes that ask how to revolutionize language, relationships, work, and life in general.

This wildly experimental and inventive new play will not be well behaved, because the revolution will not be performed for us as we sit passively by.