Review: ’45 Plays for America’s First Ladies’ by the Neo-Futurists is about an impossible role in an unofficial job
What is the first lady of the United States of America? Definition is not easy, given that it is a job that does not technically exist, an unofficial designation about which every American long has had an opinion. Perchance Abigail Fillmore, wife of 13th president Millard, described it best: “An afterthought and an impossible expectation.”
Right, Melania? Nancy? Hillary? Betty? Edith? Rachel? Barbara?
This fast-paced, chronological trot through the history of first ladies, on offer on your computer right now courtesy of the Neo-Futurists, unearths many other pithy observations about the women who have fulfilled that role, either with zealous relish or profound reluctance, often poorly hidden.
In less than 90 minutes, the Neos unspool 45 adroit and highly original little films, each one dedicated to a first lady, a term these artists have re-cast more in their own liking, part of their resistance, they say, to the reality that the men have typically provided the structure. (This is partly a comment on their own theater, which famously created “plays for presidents” in its past.)
First ladies, after all, don’t always correspond to one per president. Some chief executives had more than one wife; others assigned the role to daughters, or had children who simply grabbed it for themselves. In some cases, as with the administration of Thomas Jefferson, the Neo-Futurists have made their own determination as to who best qualifies for the term. The play dedicated to that particular era at the White House features a story co-told by both Margo Jefferson and Sally Hemings, on the grounds that they both deserved the title.
That interesting and well-argued choice gives you a notion of the progressive perspective of the show, which doesn’t hesitate to point out that 10 of the first 16 first ladies in the line-up “owned another human being" and that, throughout, looks at these women of the past very much through contemporary eyes.
This is entirely within the self-aware, Neo-Futurist aesthetic, as are the numerous pieces that look at the women through the personal lenses of the performers assigned to each piece. (The show includes performances by Brenda Arellano, Hilary Asare, Ida Cuttler, Andie Patterson, Robin Virginie and Vic Wynter and is written by Chloe Johnston, Sharon Greene, Genevra Gallo-Bayiates, Bilal Dardai and Andy Bayiates.) In the case, for example, of Hillary Clinton, the segment goes: “She didn’t aspire to be first lady and I didn’t ask to play this role."
The Clinton piece, actually, is one of the best in that it focuses on all the conspiracy theories that consumed her public identity, forcing that particular first lady to hold “decades of screams” inside. “45 Plays” reveals she hardly was the first.
But much of the benefit of the show, which is consistently creative, inventive and admirably avoidant of the predictable, lies in its discovery of lesser known, or now forgotten, first ladies. As such, it’s a great feminist piece to watch online with a young person, perhaps as part of your home-schooling regimen or maybe from a determination to explore a genre of political history that gets insufficient attention.
One of the main discoveries, and organizing principles, is that first ladies can be split into various binaries.
There are those who bucked the established order openly versus those that worked the system quietly and most likely to the advantage of the nation. There are those who relished political advisership and those who avoided it as if it were a plague. But the show surely posits that a preponderance of these women helped, and in many cases saved, their husbands political careers, even at considerable cost to themselves.
As Florence Harding is quoted as saying: “Our legacy will be we were able to make these men more alive and the irony will cling to us like silk.”
Live-streamed performances of “45 Plays for America’s First Ladies” runs through Nov. 2; tickets $15. For more information, visit neofuturists.org.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
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