Goddess Herstory

In the beginning there was a play that had been sent all the way from England. It was a funny play that invented it's own genre ... the "sapphic sudsaga." The play was called Coming Soon and it was written by a Brit named Debbie Klein. Trouble was ... not everyone thought the play was funny or "commercial" enough to risk producing it.   It was shopped around to various community theaters in the Boulder area, but noone saw the vision. So, in 1990, Dylan Yates decided to create a theater company to produce the play, and thus, Goddess Theatre was born.

 The name Goddess Theatre was chosen as a tribute to the coming "era of the Goddess" that the media of the early 90's was proclaiming. The company name is also indicative of the Goddess's inherent "creative fertility" and the pagan ritual that was one of the earliest forms of theater.

Dylan found a performance space in the beautiful Old Main Theater, a renovated theater space on the CU-Boulder Campus that was originally used as the campus chapel at the turn of the century. One by one, the women who would later serve as the technical and production crew for Coming Soon, began to present themselves.

Each year, in March, the CU-Boulder Campus hosts an International Women's Week that hosts many speakers, workshops and women-oriented events. Goddess Theatre was invited to perform as a part of the 1990 events for Women's Week. This was the first time a full-length play was produced as a part of this yearly event.

Dylan Yates, in her production attendance forecast had expected perhaps a grand total of two hundred people that might attend performances of the play during Women's Week.  During that time, over 2,000 people came to see the production which was directed by the gifted director, Rachel Corday. The play was a huge success and on closing night, the audience began to chant..."More Goddess Theatre...More Goddess Theatre...."  We knew we had found our audience!  We announced that a grander plan was beginning to formulate for the women involved in the production. We were going to create a permanent company that devoted itself to the production of plays that involved women.  We would be back!