Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 414/832-6590
For Immediate Release						March 26, 1997

Feminist Playwright Celebrates the Women's Movement in One-Woman Show 
at Lawrence University's Cloak Theatre  
  

	APPLETON, WIS. -- A beatnik in the 1950s, a hippie active in both the
civil rights and peace movements in the '60s, a feminist in the '70s, a
corporate protester in the '80s and an ecological activist in the '90s,
playwright Martha Boesing proudly declares herself a person "who's kind of
ridden the crest of every movement."     

	The energy and excitement that dramatically shaped women's lives during
the 1970s holds a special affection for Boesing.  Inspired by reports from the
1995 International Women's Conference in Beijing that the women's movement --
while having grown somewhat passe in the U.S.-- was still gaining momentum
worldwide, Boesing wrote her own one-woman show, "These Are My Sisters," a
theatrical testament to the gains and lost opportunities of the feminist
movement.   

	Boesing brings "her sisters" to Lawrence University's Cloak Theatre for
one performance Friday, April 11 at 8 p.m. in the Music-Drama Center.  The show
is free and open to the public.

	Combining material that's part autobiographical, part historical,
Boesing offers an imaginative look at the history of the women's movement
through the voices of five distinctly fascinating women.  The five women ÑÊan
aging hippie, a feminist scholar, a suburban housewife, a radical political
activist and a lesbian Ñ come together at a dinner party and wind up discussing
the transforming effects of the '70s.  Each of the five characters represent a
rich composite from the thousands of women Boesing encountered in her own
artistic and political fight for women's rights.

	Boesing has said she wrote "These Are My Sisters" for young women who
have "inherited the gains we made, but don't really know what is was like
before.  I wanted to show what it was like for women living through those
changes."

	Nationally known throughout the feminist and alternative theatre
communities, Boesing founded At the Foot of the Mountain Theatre Company in the
early 1970s in Minneapolis and turned it into the longest-lived women's theatre
in the U.S. before it closed in 1991.  In 1993, she received a Kennedy Center
award for "My Other Heart," a play she wrote about the deep friendship between
the wife of Columbus' navigator and an Arawak slave.

	Boesing's appearance is sponsored by Downer Feminist Council, Lawrence
Arts Umbrella and the Fine Arts Forum.