Anarchy in High Heels is not a state of dress; it’s a state of mind.A San Francisco porno theater might be the last place you’d expect to plant the seed of a feminist troupe, but truth is stranger than fiction.In 1972, access to birth control and a burn-your-bra ethos were leading young women to repudiate their 1950s conservative upbringing and embrace a new liberation. Denise Larson was a timid … timid twenty-four-year-old actress wannabe when, at an after-hours countercultural event, The People’s Nickelodeon, she accidentally created Les Nickelettes. This banding together of ¬¬like-minded women with an anything-goes spirit unlocked a deeply hidden female humor. For the first time, Denise allowed the suppressed satirical thoughts dancing through her head to come out in the open. Together with Les Nickelettes, which quickly became a brazen women’s lib troupe, she presented a series of feminist skits, stunts, and musical comedy plays. In 1980, The Bay Guardian described the group as “nutty, messy, flashy, trashy, and very funny.”With sisterhood providing the moxie, Denise took on leadership positions not common for women at the time: playwright, stage director, producer, and administrative/artistic director. But, in the end, the most important thing she learned was the power of female friendship.
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Lively, irreverent memoir of a brazen theatrical sisterhood
As a woman of a certain age and a connoisseur of all things theatrical, I loved this memoir. In it, the author finds strength, artistic relevance, and sheer fun in Les Nickelettes, a ground-breaking all-female comedy troupe in the 1970s and 1980s. With poignant, amusing details, she pulls you back to a time when women still had to blaze their way into the underground theatre scene, even in avant-garde cities like in San Francisco and New York.
The stories are fun, the photos are charming, and the artistic quest is real. As a reader, you get the authentic scoop on the jokes and the trials, the successes and the humiliations. I loved reading about the bravery, audacity, and creativity this struggling sisterhood showed. Let this snappy history of Les Nickelettes remind you of how much women’s liberation accomplished, how subversive it was, and how much remains to be done. It’s a great read—fun, informative, and witty.
Captures 70s feminist theater in all its heady exuberance!
Denise Larson’s exuberant tale of the birth and life of a feminist theater troupe in San Francisco in the 70s and 80s captures the ethos of an era in which feminism, alternative arts in San Francisco, and women’s power were all growing in joyful fits and sometimes conflicting starts, making it up as they went. As the founder, director, scriptwriter, and heart and soul of Les Nickelettes, Larson traces the thrilling, high-spirited, scary, and brave steps taken by this scrappy, irreverent improv group and herself, a shy twenty-something, to create one of the most ground-breaking and bold feminist (and feminine) all-women’s theater groups ever seen. Les Nickelettes challenged not only conventional women’s images in society and in the theater world, but those of standard feminist narratives as well, and Larson’s attention to the nuances of these cross-currents illuminates what a disruptive force they represented. Their hopes for becoming a more recognized theatre group and the resistance they encountered in the mainstream theater world reflected both the state of feminism and its backlash, and explained why they were alternately praised, belittled, and misunderstood by alternative and mainstream press.
Larson brings us into the world of the 70s and 80s in San Francisco with clear eyes and an open heart. She shows us what it felt like to be creating this type of theater art as they went, and makes those of us who missed it not only wish we’d seen a performance, but wish we’d been in the group. In addition to skillfully bringing us into the world of feminist iconoclastic theater, Larson has a gift for deftly describing the larger culture context throughout the story—how baby boomers, especially girls, came of age in the 60s, why the 70s offered such freedom for women, what a chilling effect Reaganomics had in the 80s—and how those times shaped the foundation, strength, and growth of herself and Les Nickelettes. Above all, it’s a celebration of women’s friendship forged in a powerful feminist endeavor that is thankfully preserved in this book for all of us to witness.