Brooke Farmer and Donna Logue are excited to bring monthly production, 'Generation Women', to the Eternity Playhouse.
'Generation Women' is a monthly performance featuring female speakers in their 20s-70s and upward, with the goal of empowering women, and providing a platform to pass wisdom down to the younger generations.
“It provides a space for women to share their stories, and share their experiences which can be quite liberating and quite freeing for a lot of people,” Event Director Brooke Farmer says.
“Some of the speakers we get along to our shows are amazing public speakers, they do that for a job, that’s their career. But they’ll come and they’ll speak at 'Generation Women' and it’s an entirely personal story that they’ve never shared before, so being able to tell that story to a room of strangers in a welcoming environment is something that’s really powerful.”
'Generation Women' was started in New York by Australian author, Georgia Clark, after having a conversation with her mother where she confessed that in her older age, she felt a loss of her identity.
“I think for older women, and this is something that’s really common in Australia in particular, is the older generation just being forgotten about, and not feeling like they have a place to talk and meet, and share stories with people.”
While the experience is empowering for women of older generations to hear, younger women also have much to gain from hearing these stories.
“It just comes down to experience, everyone has that memory of sitting listening to their grandparents tell a story when they’re a kid, and hearing about their experiences, and you’re just filled with so much awe because they've seen so much more of the world than you have, so you take that wisdom on and it’s something that sticks with you.”
After a year of running the show in New York, Georgia decided to test the waters in Australia, where Brooke was first exposed to 'Generation Women'.
“At the end of the show Georgia explained the situation and said ‘look, if anyone’s interested in helping out and producing shows here in Sydney, please get in touch’. So she consequently linked a woman named Donna Logue and myself up on the email. We went on a few first dates and managed to get together and decided that this was something we wanted to do. We took over the show in the end of 2018 and have been running monthly shows ever since.”
'Generation Women' will be featuring a showcase of their best speakers at this year's Sydney Fringe Festival, where the production will be moving to Darlinghurst's Eternity Playhouse, instead of their usual venue, Giant Dwarf.
“It’s basically a best-of show, so people can take a guess at who we might have back on the show but it’s a chance for us to showcase some of the favourites from the year, some of the most powerful stories in our humble opinions as producers and bring them back to the stage for a bit of a showcase.”
