aua comes your way

The 13th May

This year, 13 young, strong people would have visited us with the production Passing the Bechdel Test. They would have taken us through a century of feminist literature, from Virginia Woolf to Susan Sontag, from Toni Morrison to Maggie Nelson. They quoted letters, fragments from diaries and lines from lyrics. They would have lent their voice to the authors of these works. Because they cannot do this live on stage, they sent us video messages individually from their home, which we collected for our subscribers. We were very impressed by how the young people talk about feminist literature, how they connect the texts with their own lives and what thoughts they think about gender and feminism. And not just us, because many subscribers were present in the Zoom Festival Center in the evening and showed the performers and the choreographer Jan Martens a lot of appreciation and curiosity. And again we were impressed and touched by these young people who gave us honest insights into the Passing the Bechdel Test project.

Bye the way: The Bechdel test was developed in 1985 by the cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It is a short exam that asks about the representation of women in the film. The criteria of the test are: 1. Are there at least two female roles with names? 2. Do they speak to each other? 3. Are they talking about something other than a man?