Since the start of her time at NYU, Tisch senior Sam Del Rio has been an active political organizer on campus. She advocated with NYU’s Young Democratic Socialists of America for the NYU Student Health Center to provide free abortions, and helped establish Students of Color for Change, a political activism group. But as a Drama major, Del Rio struggled to express this same passion in her own field of interest.
“I felt that, especially in the theater community, there was a lack of conversation with politics,” Del Rio said.
But after taking the Drama course Feminism & Theatre taught by professor Gwendolyn Alker, Del Rio was compelled to create a theater space that was explicitly political.
“I can start pushing to create those spaces,” she said. “There’s no reason for me to wait for someone.”
Del Rio, along with Tisch senior and fellow Drama major Kendall Scott, founded the Feminist Theatre Company in the fall of 2024. The club creates shows based on women-written scripts, with women and queer students making up the casts and crews. The productions are completely student-led, Del Rio said, starting on pitch day, when members bring and vote on scripts they’re interested in producing.
After Kamala Harris lost the presidential election — shortly after the theater company launched — Scott asked herself what she could do as an actor and artist in the wake of disappointment.
“In the moments when you’re down, you need the fuel of art to get up and stay up,” Scott said. “Because if you sit and wallow in those dark moments, you’re not going to have anything. I think that’s what this club is about. It’s about offering that sense of hope and a place to put your anger and frustrations and your dreams.”
The group’s first production — Monica Byrne’s haunting “What Every Girl Should Know” — made a three-show debut in early October at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Based on abortion rights activist Margaret Sanger’s book of the same name, which sought to educate girls on sexuality, menstrual health and reproductive rights, the play follows four girls in a 1914 Catholic reformatory as they navigate the strictures of religion, patriarchy and incarceration.
“It’s important that our shows always have some rooted, grounded thing in our core of being a place to make you think about change,” Scott said. “In theater, you can never make somebody do something, but what you can do is at least give them grounds to think and reflect on themselves.”
Before audiences stepped into the theater, they were greeted by a table lined with free Plan B, as a uterus garland hung above the entrance doors. Both within and beyond the walls of the theater, the company aims to make feminism both an artistic and material practice.
Beyond its productions, the Feminist Theatre Company also gets involved in community organizing — it has held mutual aid distributions of Plan B and pregnancy tests in the Kimmel Center for University Life, along with political education workshops on the artivism of revolutionary Puerto Rican group Young Lords. Its mission is rooted in radical feminism, Del Rio said, recognizing that feminism is inextricably intertwined with other struggles against racism, homelessness and food insecurity.
“The personal is political,” Del Rio said. “We are asking people to come to our shows to come educate themselves — we want to make sure that we are politically engaged and showing up in every way, outside of theater.”
The club is currently recruiting directors and sending out casting calls for its next production this March — Luis Alfaro’s “Mojada” — which explores the experience of migration from the perspective of women. The play follows Medea, a devoted mother and wife who migrates from her home in Zamora with her family and their servant to Los Angeles, in pursuit of her husband Hason’s dream for a new life in the United States.
“Whether that’s quiet or loud, as artists, we have a privilege to be able to put on stories — and due to that privilege, you have a certain duty to use your voice,” Scott said. “But I also think that it’s a constant revolving door. Art is one of the best ways to reach audiences and have them leave with something.”
Contact Nisma Qureshi at culture@nyunews.com.
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