“When I was in college, we ended up doing a guerrilla production of a show” Amanda took a sip of her latte.

“How do you do that? A clandestine production under the cover of night that no one knew to go see?” Charlie laughed.

“No, to protest that the theater department decided to a show with ten male parts and only one female, we decided to do our own since that excluded most of the people in the theater department from even auditioning.”

“That wouldn’t fly nowadays,” Charlie emphasized his statement with a salute of his coffee. “Hell, today, everyone auditions for everything. Look at Laverne Cox playing Frank N Furter in the Rocky Horror remake.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Amanda rolled her eyes. “That movie did not need a remake.”

“True, but that’s not my point. It’s still progress. To progress then,” Charlie raised his mug.

“To progress!” Amanda clinked her mug with his. “Even if it does leave a ‘bad remakes are bad’ taste in my mouth.”

(This one is sort of autobiographical. We did mount a guerrilla production of Antigone [with three different Antigones trading off the role] when Sam Shepherd’s “City of Angels” was the play. We had a lot of women in the theater department and that play only had one female role. And they weren’t going to gender swap any casting so all the women had to vie for one role.

I didn’t audition. Instead, I assistant directed, and I had a blast. But I do remember that feeling of disappointment in the theater department for choosing something that felt so exclusionary. And the characters are right, I think. I don’t think it would fly nowadays. At least I hope it wouldn’t.)