ABSTRACT

Interest in alternatives to institutions seen as male-dominated or patriarchal was an important constituent of feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s because the alternatives were to function as resistances and challenges. The introduction to Feminism, Culture, and Politics notes that a “major form of feminist cultural politics is the construction of alternatives. This involves not only changes in the cultural ‘product,’ like books, films, and theater, but more importantly in the establishment of different ways of working.”1 This activity was not unique to cultural production. Indeed, Alice Echols observed that the establishment of alternatives was a hallmark of the women’s movement as a whole. “Women’s liberationists created an amazing panoply of counterinstitutions, including health clinics, abortion referral services, rape crisis centers and credit unions.”2 The valorization of counter-institutions, indeed, of a counter-culture, opened new opportunities for feminists because both dramatic texts and theatrical event had to be transformed.