Today we’d like to introduce you to Kathrynne Wolf.
Kathrynne, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
The theatre company has its origins in a showcase devised by Dawn “Sam” Alden in early 1997. She wanted to invite all of the casting directors, agents, artistic directors, etc. in Chicago to see “An Evening of Women Wielding Weapons”, to address the dearth of fighting roles for women in the theatre community. It was an evening of scenes in which the characters were all female, and all fought, with various weapons, in various styles, for a variety of reasons. The showcase was planned for two nights, at Footsteps Theatre in Andersonville. When announced, it sold out immediately, so they added 2 more nights, which sold out immediately, as well. She got the theatre to agree to a full run of performances in the fall of 1997.
I met Dawn after performing in “Fefu and her Friends” at Footsteps, which they produced immediately after the showcase, and before the full run. It remains the only time I’ve ever written my phone number on a bar napkin for anyone. I was so excited to hear about the possibility of using this skill I’d learned over my years of theatrical training, but never really gotten to use in performance. One of the fighters from the showcase (Rachel Rasinski Pergl) needed a new scene partner for the full run, and she called me. We devised a scene, and I joined the ranks of the Babes. Over the next years, we performed 6 more full runs of the fight-scene format, plus we took a core group, with a selection of the fights from the first few runs, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the summer of 1998.
In mid-2003, Dawn broached the idea of forming the loose collective of actresses who had participated in the showcases into a theatre company. All of us who were interested met in December, 2003 to begin the process. We took a break from producing full shows to file for 501(c)3 status, draft a mission, form committees, and fundraise. We did some showcases, workshops, and special appearances to maintain a public profile, and offered free quarterly self-defense classes, run by a local Kempo instructor.
2005 saw us return to producing, with the final ‘fight scene’ format show we would produce, as we had decided that the way to make a real difference in the breadth of roles available to women would be to encourage the development of new plays with fighting roles for women. We started a new plays development program, where we offer a series of developmental readings for plays submitted, and also established a biennial play writing competition, sponsored by local SAFD Fightmaster David Woolley, with a $1000 cash prize and full production for the winning submission.
2005 is also the year I married Tony Wolf (a stage combat instructor/violence designer/former stuntman from New Zealand) and moved with him to Wellington, New Zealand. I remained an active company member for the two years abroad, maintaining the website and assisting with marketing efforts. When my work visa expired at the end of 2007, Tony and I moved to Chicago, and I dove back in to more active participation behind the scenes, including helming the marketing committee. At this point, we decided to take a page from our origins at Footsteps Theatre (now long disbanded). They used to produce an all-female-cast Shakespeare every season. We decided to give all-female Shakespeare the BWBTC treatment, and chose Macbeth for our first production. It was so successful that we decided to make it a regular occurrence, producing all-female-cast Shakespeare every other season. All part of our ongoing effort to broaden the perception of what kinds of roles are ‘appropriate’ for women to play, and to afford actresses the opportunity to play the richest of characters in the theatrical canon.
I stayed active in the company until the end of 2010, when I left active status to pursue some projects of my own, producing a web series, and actively courting more work outside of the company. I still worked with them from time to time, appearing in one of their shows in 2011, and another in 2014, shooting footage of shows for archive purposes, sometimes, and attending all of their shows and fundraisers, etc., as possible. Then, in 2015, then-Artistic Director Leigh Barrett emailed me that she was planning to step down, and wondered if I’d have an interest in throwing my hat in the ring to replace her. I told her she should talk to ensemble member Elyse Dawson, who I thought would be perfect. She said she had, and Elyse had said that she should ask me.
I went to the next company meeting, to talk to everyone about it. I told them I didn’t think I could devote the time necessary. Elyse pulled me aside and asked if I’d consider Co-ADing with her, so that we could share responsibilities, since she had the same concern, but we both strongly believe in the company’s mission and its continued necessity and relevance. We decided to move forward like that, offering our services as co-Artistic Directors, if the company and board would have us. Both votes were unanimous, and we started transitioning duties from Leigh to us.
We took over just in time to select the plays for the 20th Anniversary season, and we’ve been working hard to refine and update the mission, introduce an inclusivity statement, expand the company, and work with the board to grow and increase our diversity and funding. There’s a ton of work ahead of us, but the current state of gender politics, and women’s representation in the media, tell us that the company’s purpose is still vital and relevant.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Producing theatre is a tough proposition. Funding is hard to come by, costs of producing rise each year, there’s a constant need to reevaluate the relevance of the work being produced, and the business is being run, generally, by a group of artistically-minded folks who share a passion. There are always struggles. Over the years, BWBTC has faced funding crises, ego clashes and the normal struggles any theatre company in Chicago faces over an extended existence.
One of the struggles unique to us, however, is the source of our mission: Western society’s continued insistence that women’s primary concerns should be motherhood and attracting a man. It makes it difficult to encourage new works where women fight for king and country, for honor, for sheer-bloody-mindedness, and yes, for love: plays where female characters run the gamut, from victims to villains, heroines to monsters.
We are also experiencing some struggle gaining diversity in the company. We have always tried to attract and retain talented actresses from all walks of life, but the mission doesn’t hold the same intensity of attraction for everyone. We’ve been making some good headway recently, though.
The saving grace is that the mission is so vitally important, and the women who come together to support it believe in it so strongly, that we support each other even when we may not fully agree on some finer points, we may not get the role we wanted, or we need to step back to take some time for ourselves.
There was that time when the theatre at which we were planning to produce Macbeth got shut down by the city about 3 weeks before previews were set to begin. We scrambled to get a new venue, make stickers to cover the old venue’s address (on the already-printed posters) with the new venue’s address, advise all the invited school groups about the change, and completely re-stage the show for the new facility, which was a completely different configuration, and did NOT have the trap door we’d planned on using. “Cursed play,” indeed.
Please tell us about Babes With Blades Theatre Company.
We produce theatre that uses stage combat as a storytelling tool to open minds about what women are capable of, and present stories of women as fully-realized human beings, instead of accessories to the main narrative, or ‘catalysts’ for the hero’s journey. In our theatre, the women are the heroes, the villains, sometimes the sidekicks, too. We do work with male actors, sometimes, but in our stories the women drive the action, and that action includes the full spectrum of human behaviour, from tenderness to violence. There are other theatre companies whose missions focus on telling women’s stories, but none, aside from ours, has a 20 year history of women kicking butt.
Stage combat is a skill taught to actors in most reputable drama programs at the university level. It is the skills of presenting violence on stage or screen in a believable, repeatable, and SAFE manner. It’s a tremendously valuable storytelling device, and many plays feature fights, from unarmed brawls, to swordfights, to gunplay. Regardless of the fact that women have been comprising 50% (sometimes more) of stage combat classes and workshops offered for *decades*, they still do not often get the opportunity to use these skills once they leave the school where they learned them, because of the dearth of fighting roles for women in extant plays (and movie scripts). Despite the existence of a long, storied and historical, martial history of women out there to be drawn from, it’s not part of the collective perception of women and, therefore, doesn’t frequently make it to the page or stage. We have been part of the movement to change that for 20 years.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have put in place a publishing agreement for one of the company-devised scripts we produced years ago, for a children’s show, so that we could have published it right away. This is still on my list of things to do, if I can track down the 7 or so actresses who contributed to the writing of that script, and get them all to agree. I’m also still figuring out how we can work with the various playwrights to publish any unpublished scripts we have helped develop over the years.
I might have formed us into a full company sooner, so that the excellent work we’ve done on developing new scripts could have started earlier.
There are a variety of marketing efforts I would have liked to have gone in a different direction, and a poster or two that I didn’t feel represented our shows in the most effective light, over the years.
And I would have selected a venue for Macbeth that wasn’t in danger of being shut down by the city. To be fair – we had no idea that was a possibility, going in!
Pricing:
- General Admission $25, Students/Seniors $15
- Early Bird (available until opening) $20
- Previews $10
- There are 10 Industry tickets available for each performance: $10 with proof of industry affiliation at the Box Office. Use code or reserve by phone.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.BabesWithBlades.org
- Phone: 773.904.0391
- Email: tickets@BabesWithBlades.org
- Instagram: babeswithbladestheatreco
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bwbtc/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BabesWithBlades
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/babes-with-blades-theatre-company-chicago-2
Image Credit:
Johnny Knight
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