The Women's Health Collective Table: No Shame Theatre, Arts Center, Carrboro; 2 Aug 2014

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Joe finds he's not welcome at the women's health collective table. Joe suspects it's because he's a man, but not seeing any other men at the table all day, he didn't get to run any controls.

Another cell phone quality video.

Players in order of appearance: Joe

script and video (C) Joseph Mack 2014, released under GPL v3.

• script: The Women's Health Collective Table

  Through being nervous, I left out a paragraph in this piece. I don't tell you who the "hawk" is. She's the woman standing looking over my shoulder.

  After my presentation, I kept finding people who were mystified as to why I cared about women's health. In the hopes of addressing their perplexion, I added another paragraph to the script, that wasn't part of the presentation. I can't imagine it will make any difference; I expect these people will remain mystified.

  This story lay fallow for 40yrs. Women didn't want to hear it. Men just went "haw, haw", but dismissed the details. Eventually, I gave up and put the story away. Then while taking a sketch class at DSI in Chepel Hill, where I was a company member, I realised that the story was perfect for the stage. I wrote it up for the class, but it got such a frosty reception, that I thought I'd done something wrong by even telling it. The only suggestion I got was to fill it with obscene jokes, turn it into a bunch of one liners (standup), play it for laughs and shorten it to the standard 5 minute standup format.

  Playing the piece for laughs completely missed the point. The point is the reception men get, when we pay attention to the things women tell us we're ignoring. Women are even unhappier to find that we do understand the problem. I didn't consider submitting the piece to be performed at DSI. I couldn't understand why no-one at DSI was interested in the message of the piece. I eventually figured out that DSI was just playing for laughs and didn't see humour as a vehicle for making a better world. It wasn't till I discovered No Shame theatre, that I found an audience for this piece.

• mp4 video: womens_health_collective_table.NoShame.20140802.mp4 200MB