The members of Drama Ensemble, accompanied by six actors from the drama department, completed their five shows of It’s a Girl on Mar. 19. Interim performing arts instructor and director Lizi Watt wrote the play along with assistant director Parke Haskell ’10 and a writing team of Drama Ensemble members. The play also included many quotes from famous women and many of its characters were based on feminists through history. Watt staged the show in the front part of Caswell Hall instead of the intimate theater to create a more intimate, circular space to bring the audience into the conversation.

Drama Ensemble picked the topic of womanhood last spring and for the past year, have researched women’s history and interviewed women in their lives to form characters and find perspective. Watt became involved in the play as a scriptwriter in the fall and then took over production from former Performing Arts Department Head and instructor Anne Scarborough.

“I feel actually less that it’s a play about feminism and more that it’s a play about being a woman,” Watt said. “I would say the play says there are as many ways to be a woman as there are women who exist and have existed and the important thing is it to listen to each other’s stories and try to grow through that listening.”

Lauren Yoon ’19, who appears in the play as the historian and narrator, defined the three waves of feminism along with other terms including womanism, (a form of feminism that focuses on the different experiences of women from all races and sexualities) throughout the play. Brianna Turner ’19 played “The Warrior,” a character who identifies as a womanist and is based partially off of her grandmother.

“Before [the play] I was kind of confused how my character believed that in order to be a feminist women need to realize our differences and not our similarities and I thought that was really interesting because I always thought that what made us feminists is that we’re all women,” Turner said.

Audience members like Imogene Wolodarsky ’20 say the piece stimulated their ideas of feminism and womanhood.

“It’s a Girl gave me a better perspective on many different sides of feminism; I understand now that it is not a one sided subject,” Wolodarsky said.