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(7 votes, average: 4.29 out of 5)

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5 Reviews for Invocation to Free Women

1. An absolutely amazing performance! This was an incredibly talented ensemble - the actors and musicians were obviously professionals. The singing, choreography, text and music all came together to create an intense yet intimate experience. I was truly moved…feeling several different emotions throughout, including fear, grief, pleasure, and hope. While the Spirit in the House festival is incredible, I really hope to see this show continue outside of the festival. The show and talent are simply too powerful to restrict to so few performances.

   Comment by Julie Mitchell — May 25, 2008 @ 3:28 am

2. As the venue tech for the Chapel, I’ve seen every show in it and a lot of the other venue’s shows. Invocation is by far one of the best. They are the most professional group I’ve had the pleasure to work with at the festival, always prepared and prompt. Their show reflects that same professionalism and adds a healthy dose of incredible creativity with layers of prose, movement, music, and song which ends up being a highly moving, wonderfully spiritual, and above all else entertaining piece of art and theatre.

   Comment by Phillip Rudy — May 26, 2008 @ 5:19 am

3. This show was amazing. I was mesmerized the entire hour. I would highly recommend that everyone in town see this show. The acting was incredible, very moving, the singing superb. Just one constructive criticism, The second to the last song should be cut, just does not work.If this were done I could have believed I was sitting in the Ordway, well, minus the pews. Kudos women!!!

   Comment by Trisha Campbell — May 26, 2008 @ 8:43 pm

4. Twenty years is a long time. When this CD first came out I was a new mother. But even then I think there were more subtle and nuanced understandings of how Western patriarchical religion suppressed and co-opted the goddess. Revisionist history always swings the pendulum a little too far in the other direction for me. Even when I see the need for revision. That said, the music is gorgeous, and the company performs it with skill and passion. I wish my twenty year old daughter were here to tell me what she thought of it. The fact that she’s over in Africa now studying feminism and Islam suggests to me that we’d have a pretty interesting conversation.

   Comment by Paula — May 28, 2008 @ 7:38 pm

5. I was fortunate enough to see both the first and second performances of this astonishing production.
   (Full disclosure: i have worked with its director on stage in the past.)
   I can gladly confess that i was moved to tears both times.
   The array of Goddesses invoked — from a lithe and powerful young Artemis; a beautiful Yemaya undulating through the waves; a frightening and joyous Medusa; a solid and lovely Mother who wants her son off the cross, at long last (and whose song i defy you to hear without weeping); and a Crone, whose acceptance and welcoming of what is now and what is to come touched my spirit to its very core.
   The ensemble is just one note short of perfection as they blend and weave and tell us the tale. Moment after moment after moment, each a richness in and of itself, like a slice of apple dipped in honey, or a glance into the Goddess who is in us all, recognized or not. Deep truths, being spoken beautifully.
   The three musicians add a perfect background of sound and silence to that which is unfolding. And the actors themselves use incidental rhythm on an astonishing variety of found objects within their movement and play and dance and song and story, all to a wondrous effect. It is spell-binding in its cumulative effect, haunting in the finest sense of that word.
   I must congratulate (and most heartfeltedly thank) my former colleague Ms. Givens for what she has inspired and birthed, and her cast and musicians and techs for the great joy, energy, and inspiritedness they brought to fruition in the performances i saw.
   It was a Chinese-food experience: an hour later, i was wanting more.
   I still am.

   Comment by Sierra Volk — May 29, 2008 @ 3:30 pm

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