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The Story of Holly L. Derr
I was working on a cover letter for an application for a teaching job and having trouble figuring out how to start. “I am writing to apply for your open position …” is not exactly an attention grabber. Plus, it is hard for me to talk about myself with the kind of authority required in…
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What Really Makes a Film Feminist?
Originally published by The Atlantic Last week, Swedish movie theaters created a media foofaraw when they announced that they would begin providing a rating based on the Bechdel test for the films they screen. The test, created by comic artist Alison Bechdel in 1985, asks whether a film has at least two female characters…
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Dispatches from LALA Land: Radar L.A.
Originally published by HowlRound The 2013 Radar L.A. interdisciplinary theater festival brought artists from around the world to perform alongside and in collaboration with Los Angeles theater artists. Presented by REDCAT and CalArts in association with Center Theatre Group, and curated by Mark Murphy of REDCAT, Diane Rodriguez of Center Theatre Group, and Mark Russell of…
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A Feminist Guide to Horror Movies, Part Five: The Blood of Carrie
Originally published by Ms., Sociological Images, and The Huffington Post Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of power, but also what men fear about women and women’s sexuality. Writing the book in 1973 and only three years out of college, I was fully aware of what Women’s Liberation implied for me…
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Ripley: Believe it or Not, It’s About All That
Originally published by Women and Hollywood When Women and Hollywood asked me if I wanted to do a couple of guest posts on horror movies, I jumped at the chance. Like Kerensa Cadenas mentioned in her introduction to the series, I have an abiding fascination with horror movies and the way they manage to articulate…
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Playing Shakespeare’s Men
Originally Published by HowlRound Though Shakespeare created around 798 male characters, his dramatic corpus contains only about 149 female ones. That’s a ratio of roughly sixteen to three. Yet every year the best conservatories accept at least as many women as men—if not more—and every year they graduate both men and women trained to act…
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The LA Femme Film Festival: By Women, For Everyone
Originally published by Women and Hollywood Leslie LaPage launched the LA Femme Film Festival in 2005 after a dispiriting trip to the Sundance Film Festival, where she saw precious few films directed or written by women. The first LA Femme festival featured 40 films and two seminars; this year’s festival screened over 100 films, hosted…
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Overcoming Trauma of the Home: Women Gaining Strength in Light of Abuse
Originally posted at Women and Hollywood Much has been made by media critics of the propensity of horror movies to fetishize the murder of women – to make them victims, suffering at the hands of brutal forces for their sexual sins. The slasher films of the ’70s and ’80s as well as their ’90s sequels…
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Dispatches from LALA Land: California Women Got it On Lock
Originally posted at HowlRound In just one September weekend, Los Angeles theater patrons had at least three totally different productions of Shakespeare plays from which to choose. The Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company‘s all-female Hamlet was running at The Odyssey Theatre; a three-person adaptation of Richard II opened at The Theatre @ Boston Court; and…
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Holly L. Derr 