Among the long-standing Los Angeles versus New York City rivalries — Dodgers or Yankees, freeway or subway — the great divide between Hollywood and Broadway has fueled many a tabloid tussle. A recent slew of screen and stage synergies may help flip that script, particularly when it comes to telling the stories of girls and women and the fight for gender equality.
No doubt, it is an eclectic mix. This week marks the opening of “Suffs” at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, kicking off its inaugural national tour. The two-time Tony award-winning musical about the women’s suffrage movement takes to the stage as the Trump administration questions publicly the good sense of the 19th Amendment, which included women in the right to vote.
Actor Jennifer Lawrence recently announced a new film project featuring the return of the diva of all divas, Miss Piggy, a character Lawrence frames as “a feminist icon”; writing the script will be 2025 Tony winner Cole Escola, the first out nonbinary person to win best actor in a play, an accolade earned for their role in “Oh, Mary” (the funniest, campiest, gayest play Broadway has seen in years).
Earlier this year, the Broadway smash “John Proctor Is the Villain” — a whip-smart reflection on what it means to be a young woman in Trump’s America — featured Sadie Sink, one of the breakout teen stars of the wildly popular Netflix series “Stranger Things,” which is about to begin its long-awaited series finale.
And the conclusion of the saga of the best female frenemies in all of Oz, the second part of the big-screen adaptation of Broadway’s “Wicked,” is breaking box office records.
And finally, joining this bicoastal stage-and-screen cultural moment comes the Broadway blockbuster “Liberation,” a play about a 1970s women’s consciousness-raising group. Its clear catalyst? L.A.’s own Ms. magazine, the historic feminist publication begun in that era by Gloria Steinem. Today, it continues to publish as a nonprofit based in Beverly Hills.
“Liberation” toggles between the aspirations of a group of second-wave feminists and the present-day reality of one of their daughters. Playwright Bess Wohl’s mother, Lisa Cronin Wohl, was a writer for the magazine in its early days. Ms. is also baked directly into the plotline and character arc: When one of the members waves an article encouraging “naked consciousness raising,” the group strips down and bares all as the women discuss how they feel about their bodies. (Audience members’ phones remain locked away in signal-blocking pouches.) It is a scene that has been covered breathlessly in the media — not only for its raw vulnerability, but also for its next-level discourse and artistic direction that are at once revelatory and heartbreaking.
As is the entire production. It has earned rave reviews across the board — hardly a predictable response to a two-hour-plus play that forgoes name-brand celebrity firepower and that is about feminism, of all things — praised as “necessary, messy, and bitingly funny” and “cosmically immense.”
The truth is that the opportunity to witness a group of women refusing to accept the status quo and grappling with how to forge a more equal future is indeed immense. We would all be wise to better understand their mindset and playbook in the here and now.
Except for the painful part about watching this bold act of imagination set in the ‘70s: We already know the epilogue. These same women who won the right to abortion also lost it in their own lifetime. Donald Trump has been elected president twice, carrying the majority of white women’s votes every time he ran. A fresh round of policy rollbacks confronts us every day, coming not just from the White House but also from statehouses across the country.
As a culture of regressive talking heads proliferates on podcasts and social media — tradwives and toxic masculinity and the manosphere, oh my! — too many of the institutions we might have assumed would be a bulwark seem more toothless than ever. (A recent viral headline that has since been changed originally posed the query, “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” Et tu, New York Times? Indeed.)
Which is why it is vital that Broadway and Hollywood lead the way with thoughtful, provocative fodder that meets this moment. It is not merely a “nice to have” or an outlet for escape, but a necessity for the future of democracy. The ideas to which we are exposed in the theater and on screen can be a gauge of our collective potential and a glimpse into how much further forward we might propel — or how far backward we might fall.
As for “Liberation,” while it does not attempt to answer what any one of us can or should do to ignite our activism, it does direct us to a crucial inflection. As one of the characters asks: “Why are you asking what we did wrong? Instead of asking what’s wrong with the world?” (Echoing the same, when asked on the red carpet about advice to LGBTQ+ youth, Escola advised: “You’re right. Everyone else is wrong.”)
Continuing to bridge the bicoastal divide, Ms. recently paid tribute to “Liberation” at the Skirball Cultural Center, calling out the show’s service as both a work of art and a call to action. It is a call the industry would be wise to follow. These are the stories that will shape what happens next.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is the executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at New York University School of Law.
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