The Women's Street Theater: This Is a Cranky...or rather, it CAN be a cranky
San Francisco: People's Press, [1970]. A unique feminist publication designed to be disassembled and transformed into a miniature cranky, which is described as “a paper movie or cartoon sequence inside a simple wooden frame. The moving paper roll unwinds (is cranked) onto a take-up real, enabling you to tell a story with a minimum number of words and maximum number of strong images.” This cranky tells the story of women’s oppression from pre-history to the imprisonment of Angela Davis. An effective and engaging form of street theater, suggested participants include a narrator, a cranker, and two to six noisemakers as a chorus or orchestra. Illustrations and instructions are included for the cranking process, as well as 54 suggested sound cues.
The cranky was developed by the San Francisco Women’s Street Theater, a group who emerged out of the performative protest movement and the women’s liberation movement. Other women’s street theater groups such as the It’s All Right to be Woman Theatre adapted it for ritualistic consciousness raising performances based on members’ experiences as women rather than the historical research-based performances of the San Francisco group (Flannery, Feminist Literacies, 155). Since the publication was produced to be disassembled, intact copies only emerge occasionally.
Tabloid format printed in color on newsprint, folds out to eight 22” x 16” pages. An about fine copy. Item #12152
Price: $450.00