“Lady MacBeth And Her Pal, Megan”
The premise for “Lady MacBeth And Her Pal, Megan,” by comedian/playwright/theatre professor, Megan Gogerty, is a friend declaring that she could never play Lady MacBeth because she was “the human equivalent of a golden retriever.”
“If you met me, you’d probably agree,” she said. “I’m very enthusiastic and, dare I say, lovable but also kind of stupid the way golden retrievers are. Plus, I have a glorious mane.”
Still, it’s an observation that drove Gogerty to re-evaluate what it means to be an ambitious woman today, and discovering that not only have certain things remained unchanged since Lady MacBeth’s time but also that so-called “femme fatales” are often misunderstood.
“A fun game I like to play is to do a Google Image search of the top five comics in the country,” she said. “If you do Louis CK or Kevin Hart, you get memes that just contain their own jokes. But if you do Amy Schumer, they’re all about how fat and ugly she is. I find the need to tear women down by their sexuality fascinating. The lens that we look at powerful women is that they’re evil, sexy or crazy, and you can be two out of the three or all three. As I thought about Lady MacBeth, I felt a lot of empathy for her because after reaching a certain ceiling, she was no longer wanted. MacBeth shuts her out, leaving her with nothing to do but wander the castle and go crazy. Cruella DeVille is supposedly the villain, too, but she’s the best character. She has the cigarette holder, the awesome car, and takes no prisoners. Who wouldn’t rather be her than Perdita?”
Being that Gogerty was writing her one-woman show in 2016, which also explores womanhood through the prism of being a female stand-up comic (“It’s just like being a male stand-up comic, only with a side dish of harassment and misogyny; it isn’t the comedian part that’s hard,” she said), the candidacy of Hillary Clinton loomed large in her mind.
“Like many people, I thought she would win,” she said. “I was like, ‘a woman is about to become leader of the free world, so what am I trying to say?’ But now, the play has become that much more relevant to me. If Hillary can’t be president, can any woman?”
“Spy in the House of Men”
Penny Sterling was born Brian Pienkoski, a transgendered woman who lived as a biological man for the first 54 years of his life, until in 2014 he decided to transition. She chronicles her long journey in her comedic one-woman show “Spy in the House of Men.”
“Most of the people I knew were shocked, some were delighted,” Sterling said regarding coming out. “For women, I went from someone who could move their couch to someone they could go shopping with.”
Sterling said she’d known she was a girl since she was a small child but, living in a conservative New York town in the 1970s, had few resources to explore or understand it.
“My only role model was Bugs Bunny when he put on a dress to foil Elmer Fudd’s plans,” she said. “I grew up feeling very unsafe. When I was 14, my mother caught me in a dress and I promised to never do it again, and I didn’t until 40 years later.”
Penny married and had children as a man, but his marriage fell apart “in spectacular fashion” in the late 1990s.
“I would do my best to act like a guy by watching other guys and emulating them,” she said. “Unfortunately, the most noticeable guys were jerks, so I ended up adopting those behaviors. When I finally came out to my ex-wife, she said it was about time.”
Sterling said her coming out was partially due to her own evolution and the generally increased social awareness of transgendered people, and absolutely nothing to do with Caitlyn Jenner.
“There are differences between knowing who you are, admitting who you are, and accepting who you are,” she said. “It took 40 years to go from knowing to admitting, but even that doesn’t solve anything. It just made it easier to deal with myself. Eighteen months after admitting who I was, I got to acceptance.”
Since transitioning, Sterling commented on being targeted by both heterosexual men and radical feminists.
“I’ve been yelled at, propositioned, harassed,” she said. “Some feminists don’t think I should be considered a woman. I understand where they’re coming from, and my response is that I won’t invade their space. But I’m still going to live my life as a woman.”
Sterling has had hormone replacement therapy and an orchiectomy (testicle removal), but has no plans for sexual reassignment surgery.
“That would be like a hermit spending 30 grand to redo his guest bedroom,” she said. “What’s the point if nobody is going to use it? I’m pushing 60 now, and I’m looking for a soulmate. I think I could have a gratifying relationship regardless of gender. I’m not that interested in the genitalia.”
Contact this contributing writer at aaronepple@gmail.com.
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