Hard-Headed Women - actress Rhodessa Jones' play 'Big-Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women' about women prison inmates

American Visions, April-May, 1994

Actress Rhodessa Jones has been teaching aerobics and physical theater to San Francisco-area women inmates since 1988, encouraging them to discuss their experiences in the penal system. "There has got to be an educational component to rehabilitation," explains Jones, whose experiences as a physical theater instructor compelled her to write the play Big-Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women.

Based on four women with whom she worked, Big-Butt Girls is Jones' response to the futility of their lives. After officials of County jail 7 saw her perform the work in 1990, they asked her to create a workshop for women inmates. What resulted was the Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women, of which Jones is co-artistic director. Since 1992 the Medea Project has generated an average of one play per year.

Jones performs Big-Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., April 15 to 16. She then takes it to Manchester, England, before returning stateside to the Center Stage in Baltimore, May 20 to 21.

During the African-American Performance Art Festival, in San Francisco June 4 to 11, Jones will perform The Blue Stories: Black Erotica on Letting Go, which examines the prison system. The piece "explores death, dying and looking back as a means of moving forward," she says. Other artists scheduled to appear at the festival include Laurie Carlos, Robbie MacCauley, Pomo Afro Homos, Roger Guenveur Smith, and Sekou Sundiata and the Circle Unbroken is a Hard-Bop.