Seventies’ Changebringers: Circle of the Witch Feminist Theatre Collective

Join TruthToTell this week for a rebroadcast of a popular 2013 two-part series on the collectivist Circle of the Witch Feminist Theatre troupe. A premiere change agent of early 1970s Minnesota, the collective presented homegrown plays and dealt out lessons in women’s social and economic change. These were plays, sketches and multimedia presentations that jerked a tear or two or took a good bite out of conscience and traditional sensibilities about the roles and pigeonholes to which women were so often assigned back then. Most say the change to real equity has, like the issue of race in America, been far slower than it should have been. Comedy and tragedy shared the stage. The “ouch” musical satire of “Sexpot Follies” was met with the occupational hazards for women and the internalized conflicts between mothers and daughters of “Lady in a Corner,” or the history-tracing and often sad “Time is Passing” and the abstractions of the “The Changebringers.” Many of the women that formed the collective and shared all its original playwriting, composing and performing duties also lived communally with other women, and some men as well, including Tom O’Connell, who produced the series with Civic Media founder Andy Driscoll. Four of the founding seven members joined Andy in the studio. They formed the core in what would become a company of some 24 rotating cast members and creators, and as you will hear, took their often biting and pointed satirical sketches to college campuses across the state.