Beyond Borders Feb 2012 :: Amy Wheeler
14 February 2012
Tania De Rozario
In this month's issue of Beyond Borders, we are happy to have had the opportunity to interview Amy Wheeler, playwright and Executive Director of Hedgebrook. Hedgebrook supports a growing global community of women writers from all over the world with residencies at its retreat on Whidbey Island, and programs to connect their work with readers and audiences of all ages. Having provided 1,300 women writers from all over the world with time, space, solitude and as Virginia Woolf once called it, rooms of their own since 1984, we ask Amy a couple of questions about her relationship to the retreat as well as about her personal practice.
(The following images were shot on the Hedgebrook premises.)
Name, Age, Occupation, Location
Amy Wheeler, 40’s, Executive Director at Hedgebrook, Whidbey Island, WA USA
Thanks for doing this Amy! Perhaps you can start by telling us a little about how you ended up being the Executive Director of Hedgebrook.
I came to Hedgebrook first as a playwright. I was selected for a Hedgebrook residency in 2002, then joined the Board in 2003. Changes were afoot, and I felt a writer whose life had been changed by this place and its mission needed to be at the table and in the conversation about the future vision of the organization. I served on the Board until mid-2006, when I threw my hat in the ring, interviewed and was hired as Executive Director. I had not done this work before; I was supporting myself as a writer and teacher. But it felt like a calling, and answering it has been one of the most rewarding decisions I’ve ever made.
So it has been six years already! Perhaps you could tell us what some of the ideologies that underscore the workings of Hedgebrook are? And do they overlap with any of the ideologies that underscore your personal creative practice?
My plays and my work at Hedgebrook are in perfect harmony right now. I feel like everything I am doing to helm this organization is also at the heart of everything I am trying to say through my writing.
There is a planetary shift happening…we sense it, we see it, we feel it…it’s happening in the environment and it manifests in our politics, economics, spiritual practices, science...everything. We are waking up to the fact that Mother Earth is not happy about how we’re treating her.
It is critical that women’s voices are heard and heeded during this time. Women need to nurture ourselves, our children and each other; and we need to help men learn to be nurturers. The paradigm is shifting, necessarily and urgently, from a warring culture to a compassionate one. The “radical h
ospitality” we show women writers at Hedgebrook has a profound impact on them, their writing and their voices. They leave this place as transformed beings. One alumna summed it up this way: “I’ve always written, but after being at Hedgebrook, I can call myself a writer.” Her words are echoed by each of the 1,300 who have come here over the past 24 years; because they have been just that, and only that, their full time with us. Women spend so much time taking care of other’s needs, fulfilling their desires, making room for their work and visions. We cannot underestimate the profound effect on a woman of having her needs met, and getting the message that the only thing she needs to focus on is what she has to say.
I totally agree that there is a planetary shift happening and that we need to start listening to what women have to say. Speaking of which, we hear you have some interesting ideas about calling out non-inclusive theatre companies by “throwing a better party”? Tell us more about this?
We’ve adopted a mantra from our friend and colleague Rick Ingrasci, a writer and doctor in our Whidbey Island community, who says, “If you want to change the culture, throw a better party.” I love the idea of being more inclusive, and finding more joy, in order to do the challenging work of creating change. Everybody loves a party, right? So if we focus on throwing a really good party, we make our cause sexy and inviting and fun. I would say the Occupy Movement is, in many ways, a “better party.”
Last Fall, we partnered with the Lark Play Development Center in New York to host a conversation about creating more opportunities for women playwrights work to be developed and produced. Currently, only 16-17% of the plays produced on American stages each year are by women, and there is a national movement called “50/50 in 2020” to bring that % equal by the year 2020. We invited playwrights, Artistic Directors, Literary Managers, directors, dramaturges, agents and others into the room to talk about we can do – what actions we can take – to bring about change that will impact those numbers. Morgan Jenness (agent, dramaturg, woman-of-the-theatre-extraordinaire) said something great like, “I don’t know about you all, but I’m getting tired of asking Daddy to borrow the keys to the car” - which spurred a lively conversation about how we could get our own car, and bring the “better party” mindset to this conversation. Some really fun ideas flowed out of the evening that I’m not at liberty to share because they’re still “in process.” But expect some fun and provocative theatrical events to be happening this year!
LOVE the idea of not wanting to borrow the keys to daddy's car! Great company really makes for some great ideas. Speaking of which, having had the opportunity to meet a varied host of women writers from around the world, what are some of the most important things you have learned from this experience?
That diversity is fundamental. It is reflected in nature all around us, in the rhythms of the seasons and cycles of birth, growth, death and regeneration. There is strength in diversity. We’re all different – and our unique perspective given who we are, where we hail from, how much money we have, the color of our skin, our gender, our sexual preference, our religious affiliation, our political stance, our spiritual practice…all of these things can bring us closer, or divide us. But when these things bring us closer, we are reminded again, in a very big way, that were are all connected.
From your experience, would you say that there is any one thing that links all the women who have been accepted into Hedgebrook thus far?
The courage to tell the truth.
We are constantly confronted with appalling statistics pertaining to the visibility (or perhaps, mainstream visibility) of women working in creative fields. For example, in 2010, 86% of books reviewed by the The New York Review of Books reviewed were written by men, with men making up 200 reviewers and women, only 39. Do you think women writers will ever be able to break through the systemic barriers that prevent us from being accorded the same sort of exposure and support as our male contemporaries?
Yes! See all of my answers above! I asked Gloria Steinem (a Hedgebrook alum and dear friend) a couple of years ago if it makes her sad to realize that the full impact of her work probably won’t manifest in her lifetime. And she smiled her beautiful Boddhisattva smile and said, “Absolutely not.” She sees her life’s work reflected in the young women she meets who don’t face the same obstacles to equality that she and women of her generation faced—who maybe aren’t even aware that those obstacles existed—and they give her hope.
I believe we have to trust that change happens incrementally for awhile, then in big tsunami waves, and that there’s always a backlash that makes it feel like we’re losing ground. But in fact, backlashes indicate how much ground we’re gaining. The more an opposing force gets threatened, the more aggressive it gets…sometimes, sadly, the more violent. But all of that is evolution. And the evolution of consciousness is happening, all the time. I am a hopeful person and I believe in the goodness of people. When people do bad things, it’s because they’ve had bad things done to them. It all comes back to love. And what does this have to do with the statistics you shared? Women have to keep telling our stories, truthfully, courageously, joyously – AND, we have to keep working together, as a community, as a village, to create pathways and forums for those stories to be heard. This requires a sort of selflessness: it has to be as important to me that other women’s stories get told as it is that my plays get produced. We have to invest in each other.
How would you sum up your personal feminism/s into three sentences?
I’m writing a letter to my nieces – a bevy of beautiful and amazing girls in my and my wife’s families who range in age from 6 to 17 – and of the ten things I shared with them that I’ve learned about being a woman in this world, the top three are: 1) take your space in the world, and never apologize for taking it; 2) find and use your voice; 3) trust your instincts and follow your intuition.
Amy Wheeler is a playwright and alumna of Hedgebrook and Yaddo artist colonies, whose plays have been seen in New York (including and a special engagement at the Guggenheim Museum), Atlanta and on the West Coast, as well as on film. Amy has also worked at the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the New York Philharmonic, and on faculty at Cornish College of the Arts. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and lives in a 100 year old dance hall with her wife and son and their dog Matilda.
To find out more about Hedgebrook and its writers-in-residence project, visit them online at http://www.hedgebrook.org
Filed under Spotlights | Beyond Borders | Interviews | February 2012
Newer: Beyond Borders Mar/Apr 2012 :: Lina Tan and Rafidah Abdullah | Older: Sugar & Spice || Women Talk About Girlhood
Comments
Hi Amy
Fantastic acticle I really want to come to Hedgebrook and see for myself. I’m still kicking myself for not coming over in was it 2010??
Take care we are all very proud of you downunder.
Love Phillip Annette Tina XX
21 Feb ’12, 11:40am