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“Lasso of Truth”

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Playwright Carson Kreitzer wasn’t allowed to watch much TV growing up in upstate New York in the 70s, but her mother made an exception for the Wonder Woman TV show with Lynda Carter in the title role.

“She was a strong brunette heroine,” Kreitzer says. “She was something really rare to see, and my mom recognized that. I just loved her.”

The show had a feminist message, Kreitzer thinks, portraying Wonder Woman as compassionate and kind as well as strong.

“It’s definitely got some lessons about how to be in the world, and how to be around other people, and how to be a good person,” Kreitzer said. “That’s a lot of what those superhero comics can do—they say right now you feel tiny and powerless, but here’s a fantasy of power, and there’s a big difference between having that fantasy be you can smash everyone versus here’s how to stop the bad guys and help the good people. It’s really about making things right rather than hurting people.”

While doing research on the lie detector for a play, Kreitzer found out the man who had invented the precursor to the device had also created Wonder Woman. After doing further research, the discovery that William Moulton Marston, the psychologist behind her childhood heroine, had lived with both his wife and research assistant—and seemed to have had a pretty strong interest in bondage—floored Kreitzer.

“Looking back on the costumes, the costumes that I had worn to look like her, with the ropes and the cuffs!” she said. “The idea that Wonder Woman, my smart, powerful Wonder Woman, was yet another part of this over-sexualized representation of femaleness that is all we have access to made me so upset.”

Kreitzer’s exploration of Marston’s life, his relationships and his obsession with truth and strong women, became the play Lasso of Truth, which premiered at Mill Valley’s Marin Theatre Company, and will go on to play in Atlanta and Kansas City. Through the characters The Inventor, The Wife, and The Amazon (as well as large comic panels on the wall), Kreitzer imagines the polyamorous relationship between Marston and these two women. The play also has the contemporary characters of The Girl, who wants the rare first Wonder Woman comic, and The Guy, who owns that comic.

Kreitzer was fascinated by what she found about Marston.

“He lived with these two women and had children with them, and after his death, the women continued to live together and raise children and be this amazing, secret family,” she said. “They actually lived in Rye, New York, near where I grew up, which is a straitlaced little community, and that they were living this very progressive, very out-there life under everyone’s noses really just tickled me.”

In the play, The Wife and The Amazon are portrayed as being in love with one another as well as Marston. Kreitzer said she extrapolated the affection between the women from facts she found.

“Elizabeth was the wife and Olive was the research assistant who moved in with them. There were three sons and one daughter, and Elizabeth had the daughter and named her Olive,” she said. “They stayed together their whole lives- Olive lived into the late 80s, and Elizabeth lived to be 100. She went to law school in 1915—this is a tough lady.”

Marston’s admiration and respect for both women he lived with come through in the play, says Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, the director of the documentary Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines.

“It’s giving a lot of credit to women in his life for his vision of Wonder Woman,” said Guevara- Flanagan, who participated in a panel on Lasso of Truth with comics artist Trina Robbins, and Sam Hurwitt, a theater critic who blogs about Wonder Woman. “It’s a nice vehicle to think about gender equity and parity—these issues of feminism are not so black and white.”

What Marston created—with the help of the women in his life—stood out as something special, Guevara-Flanagan says, and like Kreitzer, she recognized the specialness of the Wonder Woman TV show.

“It was liberating,” she said. “You could emulate her, and most models for girls, you can’t really emulate. With a princess, there’s nothing to do but sit there and maybe put on a tiara. So I think Wonder Woman was pretty exciting in that regard.”

Wonder Woman didn’t only inspire little girls, says Lauren English, who played The Girl in Lasso of Truth at MTC.

“My best friend was a totally adorable chubby boy who watched the show all the time, and we played Wonder Woman. He wanted to wear the cuffs and do the bullet deflecting,” she said. “Now he’s a very successful makeup artist in New York who does makeup for Lady Gaga.”

The need for strong women role models and the question of why Wonder Woman hasn’t been featured in a movie, unlike male superheroes, was a topic of conversation at rehearsals, English says. Most agreed they weren’t happy with the choice of Gal Gadot, who will appear in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman, and reportedly could have a standalone movie.

“She seems like a little girl,” she said. “She has to be strong, an Amazon. The fear is she’ll end up being a cute chick.”

Margot Melcon, the director of new play development for Marin Theatre Company, says she thinks Gadot is very talented, but doesn’t know if she’s right for Wonder Woman.

“The thing that was so great about Lynda Carter was she was strong,” she said. “She was 5’10”, and when she ran she was poised and graceful, and she looked like a freaking gazelle. She was a woman; she wasn’t a girl.”

The audience’s response to the play made her realize how much people love Wonder Woman, and how much desire there is for a movie about her, Melcon says.

“She’s absolutely adored as a character and an icon and a role model,” she said. “Everyone who comes to see the play walks out talking about Wonder Woman.”

That’s how it should be, Kreitzer thinks. She says the character of The Girl represented her struggle with finding out who had created Wonder Woman and how that changed her feelings about the icon.

“Can we continue to embrace Wonder Woman, knowing where she comes from? I think the answer is absolutely yes,” Kreitzer said. “We just need to keep her strong and powerful and beautiful, and she is beautiful in all senses of the word—kind and radiant and peace-loving.”

Lasso of Truth will open this month at Synchronicity Theatre in Atlanta.

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This week on WMC Live with Robin Morgan:
Season 3! Robin on Ferguson, MO., Cialis commercials, and news roundup. Guests: comic Lizz Winstead (Daily Show creator); Abeer Ayyoub reports from Gaza; Missouri journalist Mary Kay Blakely on Ferguson and media. Plus Surrealism Corner, News You Can Use, and Fighting Words.



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