Donald Trump’s presidency is a cruel joke for many reasons; the fact that it’s occurring simultaneous to and in conversation with the Me Too movement is a particularly dark one. Anyone looking to feel deeply disillusioned at any point during the day can just remind themselves that, for all of the silence breaking and talk of change, our president is still a self-proclaimed pussy grabber who was accused by 19 women around the 2016 election. Those allegations range from sexual harassment to assault; any one of them would, in an ideal world, be disqualifying for the office of the presidency. In this world, Trump’s status as an accused abuser is often lost in the shuffle, drowned out by whatever tweet, comment, or catastrophe is trending that day. The Pussy Grabber Plays seek to continue the work that Trump’s accusers started, amplifying their truth to anyone who’s still listening.
On Monday night, the show premiered for one night only, with proceeds going to the New York Women’s Foundation Fund for the Me Too Movement and Allies. Following the performance, the all-female creative team behind The Pussy Grabber Plays would be making the scripts available royalty-free to any theaters, community groups or colleges that want to produce them.
Co-created by Kate Pines and Sharyn Rothstein, The Pussy Grabber Plays consist of eight short pieces. Writers were inspired by the stories of seven accusers, which were then taken up by professional actors and directors. As the co-creators noted at the start of the show, rehearsals began the day before opening night. But this raw, unvarnished expression fit the material, as actors seemed to reckon onstage with re-opened wounds that still feel fresh. The pieces range from relatively straight retellings of Trump’s predatory behavior to more experimental fare.
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“Miss USA,” written by Sharyn Rothstein and Sharon Kenny and based on the story of Sam Holvey, is a mini-musical starring a former Miss USA contestant, Sam (Zurin Villanueva), who has been hospitalized with an undiagnosed illness, and her heroic night nurse Maureen (Ashlie Atkinson). It touches on Holvey’s experience as an accuser, but is primarily concerned with the relationship between two women, near-strangers, who are both exhausted by the personal and political position they find themselves in. That play ends with Holvey’s character leaning on her nurse, as they urged the audience to join them in a refrain of “we are not afraid to fight.”
While each short was inspiring in its own way, as an homage to the bravery of these women, writers did not shy away from dark feelings and twisted humor. “Jessica,” based on the story of Jessica Leeds and written by Bess Wohl, takes place on an alternate-reality Today Show set. On the morning of her interview Leeds (Kathleen Chalfant), the first Trump accuser, stumbles across Megyn Kelly (Katie Finneran), her soon-to-be interviewer, while looking for a bathroom. Kelly, who is getting ready by repeating her own name over and over again in the mirror, asks if Leeds is an accuser’s mother, and tries to shoo her away to hair and makeup.
After a funny (and very realistic) exchange in which Kelly tries to make Megyn Kelly’s Today Show happen (“I was told I was going to be on the Today Show?”), Leeds realizes that the door she walked in through has disappeared. Kelly introduces her to the horrors of this daytime talk show hellscape—nuns, opioid babies, massive intermittent indoor hail storms, and Matt Lauer. Leeds realizes that the soon-to-be fired Kelly (“when it turns out you’re a racist, which all of us knew anyway,”) is all she’s got. In something vaguely resembling a pep talk, this demonic Megyn Kelly starts screaming about the importance of telling your story no matter what, at one point firing off a confetti canon. Leeds starts talking.
The Pussy Grabber Plays are dotted with “yuge” jokes and fuck yous to the president (the last piece, “The Interview,” which was both inspired and co-written by Natasha Stoynoff, is one long, gorgeous, operatic fuck you). But their strength isn’t in their rage—justified, but easy—or their Resistance humor. Art made in reaction to Donald Trump is only good when it is as imaginative, expansive, and righteous as all art should be. The Pussy Grabber Plays succeed by doing more than just calling us back to these accusers’ stories. They hold our attention and direct us towards nuance, creating exquisite, unexpected windows into the lives of women who were previously reduced to a single trauma.
“Sat Nam,” Karena Virginia’s story, becomes the story of her relationship to her mother, and the suffocating, gendered rulebook that they both inherited. “Credible Women,” described as a play about the women who haven’t come forward, begins with an undisclosed incident involving an anonymous woman and ends with a consideration of the experiences that we all carry with us, the ones that cannot be absolved, made right, or set down.
As a group, The Pussy Grabber Plays more or less approximate the experience of talking with friends about Me Too, Donald Trump, personal trauma, and just how fucked up the world is. There’s laughter, crying, screaming, and, every so often, a musical number. “Five Beauty Queens Walk into a Bar,” based on Tasha Dixon and starring Dixon as herself, is an unrelenting, laugh-out-loud conversation between five former beauty queens. They each weigh the consequences of potentially joining Dixon and coming forward about Trump, while arguing and re-litigating pageant grievances. By the end of the piece, which was written by Julia Brownell, all of the ex-contestants agree that Trump couldn’t possibly win. “He might, though,” one voice rings out.
At the end of the night, the accusers who inspired the plays joined the actors and creators on stage to thunderous applause. It was a triumph that, a year or two ago, might have felt unimaginable.
