Cooney Lumber Mill’s secretarial pool isn’t your average band of typists. Yes, there’s gossiping and Slim Fast, but there’s also the systematic destruction of Big Bone, Oregon, as the secretaries eliminate one lumberjack at a time - with their own chainsaws.
Crowded Fire brings us campy, irreverent feminist satire for a higher purpose. (Not sure what purpose could be higher than funny women wielding large-scale power tools, but Princeton and equality are getting involved here, so...fine.) Princeton researchers discovered that theaters around the country have a dreadfully off-kilter ratio of male to female playwrights produced - six to one, if you care. Crowded Fire certainly does, and aims to shift that balance back toward center via bawdy social commentary from feminist icons The Five Lesbian Brothers. A product of underground theater twenty years ago, The Secretaries is their 1994 offering - a premiere that prompted the New York Times to say that “it’s destined to find a cult of its own.”
Through October 9. The Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma Street. Tickets are $15-25 at 415-255-7846 or crowdedfire.org.
