Passport Magazine features Kristen and Leigh of WAM Theatre

Spring Passport Magazine from Lichtfield County Times

Mar 17, 2011|
Theater With A Cause

By Hilary Johnson
Leigh Strimbeck, left, and Kristen van Ginhoven in Pittsfield, Mass. Photo by Walter Kidd.

Kristen van Ginhoven and Leigh Strimbeck are on a mission to make their new venture, WAM Theatre, do double-duty by supporting women in the dramatic arts close to home, and other women around the world.

The two, both accomplished actors and drama teachers, were inspired to start their company, which stands for Women’s Action Movement, after reading Nicholas Kristof’s and Sheryl WuDunn’s 2009 book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.”

The book inspired Ms. van Ginhoven and Ms. Strimbeck, because it shows just how much women can accomplish for themselves, their families, and their communities, given even a modicum of support. Both Ms. Kristof’s and Ms. WuDunn’s are former New York Times correspondents, and Ms. Kristof is still an influential columnist there.

The book highlights women like Edna Adan, a former first lady of Somalia and a World Health Organization official, who used her savings to build a maternity hospital in Somaliland, East Africa, to help save women from death in childbirth and obstetric fistulas, and also to treat infants born at the hospital.

It also shows, as another example, how even a small amount of money can let a battered woman in Pakistan start her own embroidery business and turn her life around.

For Ms. van Ginhoven, “Half the Sky” sounded a call to action.

“The book just came at the right time,” she said from her home in Lee, Mass. “It just spoke to me in a way that made sense. I had always been overwhelmed by the depth and range of women’s issues, and I thought I couldn’t make a difference, so I didn’t do anything. ‘Half the Sky’ really made me think, ‘Well, gosh, even if I can only do a tiny bit, that’s helpful to somebody, and that’s worth doing.’”

“I was also thinking,” she added, “about how to create more opportunity for myself in the theater, and the book is all about creating opportunity. I just put it down and I thought, ‘I want to have my theater be my philanthropy, as opposed to writing a check for an organization. I want to help fellow theater artists have paid work, and, in addition, try to do things for organizations that are in the front lines doing something for oppressed women.’”

She knew that the perfect partner for the venture would be Ms. Strimbeck, whom she had met through theater contacts in 2008, after moving to the Berkshires with her husband, a professor at SUNY Albany. The two women found they had much in common, especially a passion for devised and movement theater, and a broad world view, given that both have traveled extensively.

“I called Leigh and said, ‘Here’s my crazy idea,’ and she paused for a moment and said ‘Yes, let’s do it.’” remembered Ms. van Ginhoven.

Ms. Strimbeck read “Half the Sky” at around the same time as Ms. van Ginhoven, and for her it was more of a confirmation of what she had observed in her travels and in years of participating in women’s rights activism. But she also felt inspired.

“It’s one of those books that I sort of inhaled,” Ms. Strimbeck said in a phone interview from her home in Valatie, N.Y. “The minute it fell into my hands, I couldn’t stop reading it.”

“Each one of these women created opportunity, where there seemed to be none. It’s extremely galvanizing. We need to realize that $2 in the right place at the right time can make a change; imagine what $200 can do, or $2,000. Kristen thought that we could do what we already do as professionals, and take this ability that we have, this skill, and do something else with it.”

Since March 2010, when WAM Theatre first incorporated, Ms. Strimbeck and Ms. van Ginhoven have put on two productions. The first, called “A WAM Welcome,” comprised three readings from plays by women, and a portion of the proceeds benefited Women for Women International, an organization that helps women in war-torn nations repair their lives.

The second production ran for two weekends this past November, and it was a well-received staging of Sarah Ruhl’s “The Melancholy Play,” to benefit the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts.

Each year, the two planned productions will benefit in turn an international women’s charity, and a local one.

In total last year, WAM Theatre donated $2,500 to charities, and also supported regional actors, something important to both Ms. van Ginhoven and Ms. Strimbeck.

In May, WAM Theatre will put on a festival of solo women’s works, called the “Oh Solo Mama Mia” Festival. For that production, a portion of the proceeds (the goal for each production is to donate 25 percent of the box office receipts) will benefit the education of at least one community midwife at Edna’s Hospital in Somaliland.

The two productions a year will often span the Albany, N.Y., capital region and the Berkshires of Massachusetts, with the “Oh Solo Mama Mia” festival being staged in both locations.

An underlying goal for WAM Theatre, equally as important to Ms. Strimbeck and Ms. van Ginhoven as supporting women’s charities, is to support women playwrights and directors, who are underrepresented in the theater arts. They also are intent on providing wages for local talent of both sexes, as a way of helping to support actors in the Berkshires and the capital region.

The subject matter, and likely the playwrights and director, will always be female-centric, however.

“It is our goal to produce theater that allows women theater artists to flourish,” Ms. Strimbeck said. “It doesn’t mean women-only theater, it’s not to the exclusion of men, but we’d like to produce female playwrights, and we’d like to focus on hiring women directors.”

Both Ms. van Ginhoven and Ms. Strimbeck have a wide network of colleagues on whom to draw.

Ms. van Ginhoven, a Canadian by birth, acted for years in her home country, and has also taught at the elementary and college levels. She has master’s in theater education from Emerson College in Boston, and currently teaches there, as well.

Ms. Strimbeck is an actor, director, writer and acting teacher who taught at SUNY Albany for over 10 years, and is currently assistant professor of theater at Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y.

Both women are the type of people who will drop almost anything to go to the theater. “We’re both theater geeks at heart,” said Ms. van Ginhoven. “We love getting together and putting on a show, and talking about all things theater.”

Both women admit it’s a serious challenge to produce shows, and to carve out, on top of all the expenses, a substantial portion of box office receipts for charity, while still ensuring that the actors are paid, but they credit residents of the Berkshires and the capital region with generosity, and true interest in supporting theater arts.

They also both are enthusiastic about harnessing that special feeling, and energy inherent in the live theater experience, whenever an audience comes together, quiets down, and the curtain goes up.

“There’s just something different about everyone gathering together in a theater to see a live performance,” said Ms. van Ginhoven.

“The beauty of it is, every time a group of people come together to see a live performance,” Ms. Strimbeck said, “they’re coming together as a community. The question is how can we take that moment of community, brief as it is, and pay it forward?

How can those communities take that wonderful energy that they have, and give it away to lift up the lives of women and girls?”

Through WAM Theatre, Ms. van Ginhoven and Ms. Strimbeck are striving to provide an answer.

For more information about the upcoming 2011 season for WAM Theatre, visit the Web site at wamtheatre.com, or friend WAM Theatre on Facebook.

Leave a Comment