A Bittersweet Satire on the State of Texas Law Against Women

Nature abhors a vacuum. The theme of Calm Your T!ts, a 50-minute comedy, reflects on what is happening in the Texas legislative cult-like body that has reversed women’s/human rights to their bodies and health. The show is singing to the choir through entertaining and bittersweet songs, dances, and routines. The 90% female audience came here to applaud and see onstage that which they already know and loathe: the Texas government’s invasion of women’s freedom, aka The Handmaid’s Tale.

Presented by The Weird Sisters, a women’s theater collaborative, the show was written by Christa French and directed by Rachel Molad. Laura Freeman wrote the songs.

The audience was asked to sing along to these lyrics which is the crust of the biscuit:

Radical Feminist Tits (yeah! Repeat 2x)

Celebrating Freedom with my Radical Feminist Tits

Down with the patriarchy

You can’t control me.

Take your gender roles

And shove them where the sun don’t shine!

My mind, my body, my tits –

They’re mine, all mine!

(repeat refrain)

One of the quotes presented in a skit by a group of protesting women defined by their boob shape and size and then classified: as acceptable/pretty, mastectomy, non-binary, trans, feminist, and more went like this, “labels don’t define us, they empower us.”

The macabre and frighteningly Middle Aged and draconian laws surrounding childbirth and women’s health in Texas, such as allowing women to die in case of needing an abortion or defining a woman’s life by her ability to be a baby-making machine, is hard to laugh it but somehow the director succeeded.

In another skit, a bunch of Texas male legislators came out kicking and jauntily dancing onstage, singing the all too true (and I paraphrase) We don’t care about you, we care about us. Women in Texas, their sorry and dangerous state of affairs with needless suffering, all on the part of the Christine Caliphate that drives these draconian laws against women in the same manner as is done in Iran to women.

The show runs again on September 6 and 7 at the Trinity Street Playhouse. Get your tickets at www.weirdsisterscollective.com 

By Elise Krentzel

Elise Krentzel is an author, bestselling memoirist, narrative nonfiction writer, ghostwriter, and narrative IP architect whose work explores the intersection of place, identity, culture, history, and lived experience. She is the author of Rogue Entrepreneur: Building a Life the World Didn’t Have a Name For and Under My Skin: Drama, Trauma & Rock ’n’ Roll, a bestselling memoir. Her forthcoming Hydra: The Human Atlas launches a new body of work examining how place shapes who we are, what we remember, and how we transform. A former Tokyo Bureau Chief for Billboard Magazine, Krentzel spent more than two decades living and working internationally, including five years in Japan, and has reported on music, art, culture, food, travel, and the people and places that shape them. Today, she works selectively with authors, leaders, and other high-level professionals on books and narrative projects, bringing editorial rigor, lived global perspective, and a deep understanding of story architecture to work intended for serious publication and potential adaptation across film, television, and other media. She is also the founder of the Human Atlas Institute, an emerging cultural initiative built around conversation across difference and the exploration of geography, identity, culture, history, and beauty as forces that shape human experience. Krentzel's home base is in Austin, Texas, with one foot in France, and continues to write, travel, research, and develop new books and cultural projects. Find her at https://elisekrentzel.com, LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/elisekrentzel. Facebook www.facebook.com/OfficiallyElise Instagram www.instagram.com/elisekrentzel.