Out in the Mountains

Behind the Scenes at a Lesbian Festival

     

Photo by Sage Russell

WOW Productions-Aliza Ansell (l) & Diane Morgan (r)

Sage Russell

The first Northampton/Amherst Lesbian
Festival was an accident. It came about
because Aliza (Zizi) Ansell, a North-
ampton weaver, wanted to organize a
crafts fair that would feature the work of
local lesbian craftspeople. She enlisted
Diane Morgan and. another friend to help,
and from there it just took off. Before
they knew it, they had produced a full-
scale festival: 30 performers, 40 crafts-
women, 30 helpers and the active support
of the Northampton lesbian community.
More than 1,000 people attended, and
Zizi and Diane ended up with an or-
ganization: WOW Productions.

That first year they were barely able to
keep up with the festival's demands. As
Diane remembers it, "The fact that it hap-
pened as an accident and the fact that we
were running to keep up with its mo-
mentum gave us the courage to go ahead
and take each step and do all these things
that we had never done before, basically
because there wasn't time to think about
being afraid. We just had to jump in and
do it."

This year's festival has been an entirely
different experience. In the year between
the two festivals, they have come to think
of WOW Productions as a business, one
which they want to continue full-time.
Zizi says, "Because this year was a de-
liberate choice, we've been up against our

doubts and fears as women much more
than last year...This year it's been much
more about the sense of empowennent
and the sense of choice, to choose a busi-
ness, and the amount of choice that wom-
en have. There have been a lot of issues
that we've talked about that have made
this year far more challenging on the per-
sonal level than last year. And I think
that because we want to do this full-time,
we want to eventually just be WOW Pro-
ductions, it's been about believing in our-
selves. There are days when we look at
each other and we say, ‘Are we doing
mis?IIl

The festival celebrates the strong North-
ampton women's community by featuring
local performers and craftswomen. It is
entirely produced, performed, and crafted
by women who are willing to ac-
knowledge themselves publicly as les-
bians. This year there are about 20 per-
fonners, 45 craftswomen, 4-5 food
vendors, and even two political can-
didates on the scene. Locating and hiring
an eclectic mix of local and outside per-
formers is the job of Zoe Lewis, herself a
performer at the festival, who gets "a free
rein and a confusing budget.”

Not all the food vendors are lesbians be-

cause Diane and Zizi were unable to find
enough lesbians who wanted to sell food

6

at the festival and had the required Mas-
sachusetts food vendor's license, a situa-
tion they want to rectify for next year.

As a one-day event held in a public place,
this festival is different from an event like
NEWMR (North East Women's Musical
Retreat) or Michigan. It is for lesbians,
friends, and allies, so you don't have to be
a lesbian, or even female, to attend. Zizi
and Diane see this as one of its major
strengths: a powerful opporttmity to in-
crease lesbian visibility and pride and ed-
ucate straight people. Says Zizi: "Last
year there was a feeling like when you're
at a Gay Pride March - people just happy
to be visible and not scared of who they
were. But this time it wasn't about
marching for their rights. It was about
their art and their culture, which is some-
thing the straight world really doesn't
have access to. It was right out there, and
people were invited in to see what we
were about.”

Diane adds, "There's definitely a strong
dyke presence, but we're not turning any-
body away. Anybody who wants to learn
can come...(This is not) to undermine the
power of an all-lesbian event, an all-
women's event. Those are crucial and
needed and very important. But this be-
ing a one-day festival, we thought, 'Well,
OK, this is the place. Another day a year
when they're going to see the dykes.'
Rather than just the Pride March once a
year. This is another day that this can
happen-"

Last year, the festival was held on the
Amherst town common; this year it's at
UMass. While Diane and Zizi are sorry
to lose the extra visibility that being right
in the center of town provided, UMass of-
fers lots of advantages. Chief among
them is a rain location. The festival is so
tightly budgeted, at about $15,000, that
they can't afford to cancel.

The UMass campus is also accessible,
and this is another of the festival's major
themes. Ensuring accessibility has been
Diane's special project. "Last year we
learned a lot about accessibility, and part
of what UMass has to offer is a lot of ac-
cessible things. The land is flat. There
are going to be interpreters all day.
We're going to have the program guide
available in large print, Braille, and on
tape. We're trying to be sensitive to en-
vironmental illness issues, and we're