Women celebrate with art, poetry in Ladyfest

Katie Mitchell
Published: Friday, November 8, 2002

In the early 1900s, a woman could not attend a show at the Downtown Palace Theatre without a male escort.

This weekend, from Nov. 8 to Nov. 11, L.A. women will unite at the Downtown Palace Theatre and the Spring Tower to celebrate and exhibit creativity at Ladyfest Los Angeles where 800 to 1,000 attendees are expected.

The four-day festival, organized entirely by 40 women, will offer visual art displays, theatrical performances, music, film screenings, spoken word, poetry, and workshops by and about women in society. All profits from the event benefit the East L.A. Women’s Center.

“This is an opportunity for girls to meet other girls with common interests and share and learn from each other,” said Brooke Olsen, film coordinator for the event. “We want to form a sense of community in Los Angeles, let women mingle and be aware of what other women do.”

Ladyfest presents a variety of performance with acts like Penny Arcade and emerging musicians like the Young People who are scheduled to take the stage. The “Sex Workers’ Art Show” is a cabaret combination of music, spoken word, striptease, poetry and fire dance that reflect issues in the sex industry.

Ladyfest Los Angeles is the sister event to Ladyfest Olympia, Washington. Last Christmas, Christine King, an L.A. organizer, returned from the celebration in Washington with the inspiration to kindle the spirit she experienced farther north in Los Angeles.

King, Olsen and eight other women tabled at Milk, a local club, on Valentine’s Day and enlisted 30 other women to help with the project.

Olsen lauded the women’s enthusiasm as well as the enthusiasm of the potential participants, reflected in the enormous number of submissions.

“Five people had to help me carry all the submissions from the post office. They filled up the back of my car,” Olsen said.

In fact, women are still submitting their work. Olsen said two weeks would not be sufficient to showcase all the women who responded and all the women they wanted to invite to participate.

Kristina Wong, a UCLA graduate with dual degrees in English and world arts and cultures, was one of the women the organizers asked to perform.

“Ladyfest is about women creating a positive space for other women to show their work,” Wong said. “It’s about supporting a world that we can change together through ambitious thinking and action.”

The former UCLA student will perform her piece, a theater/visual/movement show, titled, “Miss Chinatown 2nd Runner Up” Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Spring Tower. Wong created the work to investigate the process through which women discover their bodies, a process she sees as fraught with “shame, guilt, and lack of information.”

“I want (the audience) to identify with the part of them that is ‘the second runner up,’” Wong said. “I want them to cheer for me and for themselves, at the end feeling that we all can make awkwardness sexy.”

Wong is just one of many who will use the opportunity to celebrate women in the arts in a venue where just 100 years ago, the law demanded male accompaniment.

“Ladyfest has the potential to attract and create empowered women who feel they are given permission to create and explore their lives through art. I want to be part of that process,” Wong said.

For more information, visit www.ladyfestlosangeles.org. Full passes cost $65 for admission to both venues for the entire weekend. A pass for a single day, both venues costs $25, and admission to one venue for one day is $15.