The complex woman

    Amy Pinney, the new assistant professor in the Department of Music and Theatre, wrote and performed “Like A Virgin, Love A Whore” on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007 to a sold out crowd.             Focusing on consequential femininities, Pinney told the stories of assorted women and displayed the differentiations of their morals, attitudes and prospects.
    With the use of a stair stepper, other small props and her body, Pinney managed to convey all her points to her audience.
     “This is an oral performance therefore I am working fanatically,” Pinney said in the play.
    Kicking off the show, Pinney names all the words held to the identity of women such as “spinster, bimbo, old hag, queen, princess or hooker.” Corresponding with the use of these words she climbs, swings on, and eventually runs on the stair stepper. Pinney shows the weary, burdensome nature of these words on the feminine character parallel to running on the stair stepper. 
 “The show discusses stereotypes, typecasting and archetypes put on women,” Pinney said.
    Evaluating these stereotypes of women and their role in society, Pinney dives into the various characterizations of females in history. She uses famous faces such as Tallulah Bankhead, Dolly Parton and Yvette Paris. Yet, she also acts out other women that are more archetypal than realistic in most cases.
 “In my class we are studying movement, and she portrayed the importance of every move very well,” said Kristyn Iodice, a freshman in Pinney’s Acting I class. “She also jumps to characters suitably, showing how broad she is and how well she acts.”
    Exquisitely and with great poise, Pinney acted out these different women while also probing concepts in the audience’s heads.
    “I chose these stories because I knew I wanted to discuss performance, autobiography and type,” Pinney said.
    The idea of “type” was meant to be a “symbolic representation of a thing not yet come into being” to encompass the archetypes and stereotypes of femininity. “Performance” was meant to exhibit the characteristics of women whom do or make. Finally, “autobiography” was used in the disposition of Dolly Parton’s story. Overall, these three ideas were significant points used in the execution of her show.
    Pinney says her inspiration for writing the play was “reading those women’s autobiographies and finding similar themes throughout.” The lives of those women seemed to portray a central message.
    “This show is generally for woman more than men, but men can certainly get something out of it,” Pinney said.
    Proving her point, Warren Johnson, freshman at GCSU, said, “It was thought provoking.”
    Along those lines, Paul Raymond, freshman in Bell Hall, said, “It was a different experience for me, but was very interesting.”
    Although this was Pinney’s first time performing her “Like a Virgin, Love a Whore” theatrical production in its full-length solo, she has performed pieces of it before all over the country.     Pinney performed it first at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Later she also performed pieces of it at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in Champagne, Ill., and the National Communication Association in 2005.
    Pinney explains how a mixture of life and her readings enabled her to write her script.
    “It took me thirty-five years to write this play,” Pinney said, implying it took her life to prepare her for it.
    Overall, this was an exploratory play into the typecasting of women and their different roles in society. Casting a message of consequential femininities, it also gave new sight into characterizations of various female roles throughout society.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 18 2007. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry