The Shrill Collective is a group of female-identifying artists striving to affect positive change in their community through the performing arts. They seek to create space for women’s voices and issues to be heard while raising funds for charitable organizations through intimate readings and stagings of contemporary, classical, and original works. 

The six founding ladies are Allison Wilkes Bourland, Kristina Geddes, Lynda DeFuria, Chelsea Feltman, Erin Dahl, and Ashley Croce. “We’re all in the same acting studio, Matthew Corozine Studio, and the idea that propelled this collective actually came from a Facebook post. Erin had posted an article about another Republican effort to cut off reproductive health services with a cheeky caption that perhaps we needed to impose a hook-up ban on Republican men until we could get the rights we deserved. Chelsea quickly commented saying that Erin was describing a modern day ‘Lysistrata,’ and Ashley immediately followed up by saying that we could do it as a short play or internet sketch. Allison was wise enough to point out that we had a space at MCS where we could put it up. Soon, Kristina and Lynda were on board and we got our first production rolling!” 

The team met a few weeks later with the intention of doing a staged reading of ‘Lysistrata’ to benefit an organization that fights for women’s rights. “RHAP had been on our radar after our member, Chelsea, attended The Anti Inaugural Ball that helped benefit RHAP. We had a vote and unanimously agreed that RHAP was the best organization for us to raise funds for.” This collective has become a passion project and artistic priority for the group. “We are all politically-minded and active individuals and our art is one of our forms of resistance.” 

Something that disturbs all of the members of The Shrill Collective is “…the effort to cut off access to women’s health services. RHAP’s commitment to training primary care physicians so that all women can have access to these vital services is important work, especially in our current political climate. We don’t need men in suits playing politics with our lives and bodies.”

On June 3rd, The Shrill Collective kicked off their new series called “Netflix and Shrill” with a live read of the screenplay of “9-5.” The purpose of this series is to raise funds for rehearsal spaces and other expenses so that money from The Shrill Collective’s main projects can go to the organizations they support. These readings are casual, affordable ($5), and are cast the night-of from the audience. To learn more about future events in this series, and The Shrill Collective’s other works, you can find them on Facebook as “The Shrill Collective” and Instagram @theshrillcollective.