REVIEW: Gloria: A Life

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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Emily Mann’s pertinent work of political theatre is a masterful examination of modern feminist activism in America

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To close its first ever Women’s Voices season, the Playground Theatre presents — with a blessing from the woman herself — a reading of Gloria: A Life by playwright Emily Mann, who also directs. The award-winning Mann’s play looks back on the storied life of Gloria Steinem, journalist and icon of the American second-wave feminist movement. Played by Stockard Channing, the play is a collage of the personal memories and political battles that marked Steinem’s life as an activist. Channing recounts these memories with help from a stellar cast of six more women, who play everything from chauvinistic colleagues to political agitators. 

The play is razor sharp in its focus. It’s a work that, though rich in hope, never finds itself wading in misty-eyed nostalgia. We see Steinem not just as the composed public speaker she is now, but also as a driven young journalist with a fear of public speaking in the sixties, a burgeoning political voice of the protest movements of the seventies, the weary lightning rod of conservative ire in the Reagan eighties. Through all this, Stockard Channing delivers her performance with a quiet wit. Her manner, like Steinem’s, is never lofty. Her conversant style is frank — she never shies away from the heavy stuff — but approachable. Her frequent quips are charmingly unshowy, her rolling eyes express their consternation as she shrugs to us, her familiars. 

Mann’s writing is energetic and gripping. We pace briskly through the twentieth century but never grow weary on our march. Like Steinem and other stalwarts of feminist activism, we seem to be always propelling forward, each victory making us more determined. We learn of the remarkable luminaries who inspired Steinem but never earned the same notoriety — much to Steinem’s dismay. Activist Dorothy Pitman Hughes, who encouraged Steinem to speak in public; congresswoman Bella Abzug, who emboldened Steinem’s resolve; Wilma Mankiller, a Cherokee chief who’s knowledge of egalitarian, pre-Columbian politics showed Steinem the restrictions of the Western system. Mann’s play informs us not so much about Steinem alone, rather, it is a heraldic exposition of all women in American activism. Mann is a playwright with a motive to incitement. Through this play, she demonstrates the unguaranteed nature of social equality. That it can only exist and persist as long as we fight for it. That non-intersectionality serves no one. 

The audience, primarily composed of women, is fully rapt. Nodding in agreement, humming approval, sometimes gasping at the ludicrousness of the past. This collaborative atmosphere is especially accentuated in the communal feel of the Playground Theatre itself. The performance space is small, the murmur of passing traffic and thundering downpours on the corrugated roof makes us feel like fugitives in our clandestine headquarters. At the play’s conclusion we are invited by the cast to discuss how the topics of the play make us feel. Women from many backgrounds and age brackets express not just gratefulness for a work like this to be platformed, but also their very real anxieties regarding their liberties and their daughters’ liberties in a misogynistic world. Cast and audience alike join the discussion. We’ve become our own little feminist group, meeting in a church basement in the sixties. There is a feeling of quiet revolution in the air, a feeling of emboldenment. If Gloria could do it, so can I. If Dorothy, or Wilma, or Bella could do it, then so can I. 

Gloria: A Life is an urgent work. With Channing’s captivating rendition and Mann’s brilliant text, it is a work that surely inspires us to keep fighting and hoping in spite of it all.