Liberation

Liberation is having its Philadelphia premiere at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, running from October 9 through October 25. It's a memory play by Bess Wohl, who wrote it and also composed the score. The production is directed by Taibi Magar and features a cast of eight: Julianna Zinkel, Lizzie, Anna Faye Lieberman, Ciera Gardner, Lee Minora, Campbell O'Hare, Noelle Diane Johnson, and Brett Mack.

The story is set in a small-town Ohio recreation center in the early 1970s. It follows a group of women who gather for a consciousness-raising meeting and trade stories about work, marriage, motherhood, race, desire, and ambition, discovering courage, conflict, and an unexpected solidarity along the way. The play moves between past and present to ask what those gatherings actually changed and what remains unfinished, questioning what freedom truly looks like and what we inherit from the generations who came before us. It draws on second-wave feminism, the movement that took hold in the early 1960s.

Bess Wohl is a playwright and filmmaker; her feature debut Baby Ruby premiered at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival, and she wrote for the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations. Liberation made its Broadway debut at the James Earl Jones Theatre and won the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. This is its first run in Philadelphia, and it runs about two and a half hours.

Tickets are $32 to $72, and the show runs through October 25 at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad Street.