The Women’s History Month Speakers Series at the Malibu Public Library covers all three topics.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
Three professional women artists and storytellers are speaking at the Malibu Public Library Saturdays this month about what it means to be a woman in America today. It is part of the library’s 10th annual celebration of Women’s History Month Speakers Series.
The Immigrant Experience
Actor/playwright Stephanie Satie kicked off the series on Saturday with her self-penned “Coming to America,” a project that grew from her experiences teaching English as a second language at Cal State Northridge.
“No, this isn’t the Eddie Murphy movie,” Satie said, laughing. “It’s a piece that follows another one I wrote about the immigrant experience called ‘Refugees.’ Teaching ESL is an eye-opening experience. I wanted to put that dynamic onstage.”
Most of Satie’s first students were Russian and Iranian immigrants, and their stories as both women and cultural neophytes resonated with her.
“Some of the play came from interviews I did and some from news stories I read,” Satie said. “But there are universal overtones. After seeing the play, immigrant women would come up to me and say, ‘That’s my sister’s story.’
“Even though we share life experiences, we want to hear about other women’s cultures,” Satie continued. “I got an amazing story from an Afghan woman and another from a Cambodian dancer who survived Pol Pot. She taught me a prayer dance that I use with the piece.”
Satie grew up in Brooklyn but came to California for her master’s in fine arts, while continuing her performing career. She plans to continue chronicling women’s stories in performance pieces. “We honor women’s history with just one short month,” she said. “But it’s enough to be reminded of just how rich our history is.”
On Isadora Duncan
Speakers Series veteran Kres Mersky will bring another of her one-woman plays to life this coming Saturday.
“I wrote, ‘This is Isadora Duncan-A Unique Recital’ a long time ago,” Mersky said of her piece about the early 20th century dancer who many consider to be the mother of modern dance.
“This piece is set toward the end of her life when she was no longer dancing,” Mersky said. “Her children had died in an accident, her theatrical star had passed and she was struggling just to make it. I think women can relate to that.” [Duncan died in 1927 in a freak automobile accident when the scarf she was wearing caught in the wheels of a sports car and she was strangled. She was 49 years old.]
Mersky came to California as a child and became a playwright and actress, performing in television and onstage, including at the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre.
“But I took a break from show biz to raise my kids,” she said. “And my muse turned to writing and painting.”
Isadora Duncan’s important legacy drew Mersky to write the piece about the dancer.
“I was attracted to Isadora because she was a woman so ahead of her time,” Mersky said. “On women’s rights and artistic freedom, she was outspoken and uncompromising. I don’t know that there is a woman artist on the scene today who is as fearless as she was.”
On Love
On March 15, Barbara H. Clark returns to the library series with ruminations in the piece titled, “What is Love?”
“How did I become a storyteller? I retired,” Clark, a former librarian, said laughing. “Storytelling is a tradition in my culture [Clark is African American] and a good part of my growing up was listening to stories my family would tell. It’s a heck of a lot more interesting than what’s on TV nowadays.”
Clark grew up outside of Washington DC. “But black people were not encouraged to go into politics then,” she said.
So Clark studied to become a librarian and before retirement, managed 13 Los Angeles libraries.
Now, she teaches workshops to seniors on the art of storytelling. “Older people have a lifetime of stories, it’s just a question of teaching them the format,” Clark said.
In “What is Love?” Clark explores the big subject in all its permutations.
“Sometimes, love isn’t so rosy,” she said. “And there are many kinds of love: parental, spousal, sibling. Things don’t always come out the way we want, but we try to remember the good parts. It’s like the old saying, ‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.'”
The Malibu Public Library Speakers series is free to the public and will run Saturdays at 3 p.m. through March 15.