Women’s History Month: Hurricane Diane

Something strange and beautiful grew within Rock Springs’ old downtown area through March’s rain and sunshine: an homage to Mother Nature, headed by the queer disaster Dionysus (or Diane, in this case) herself. 

 Actors and actresses gathered at Club Elite to put on a show that draw attention to very real, interlocking issues of femineity and the Earth Both are hemmed in by curbs, those clean, artificial edges that separate what is wild from what is acceptable. In the same way that grass is cut back and contained, so too is the whimsy of girls, trimmed into something presentable. 

Penned by Madeleine George, Hurricane Diane is a play brought to Rock Springs by director Kenny Starling to bring awareness to these modern issues. Femininity and the exploitation of the Earth are deeply intertwined; both are shaped and restricted by systems that value control over natural expression. 

Diane’s plan to recover Earth’s health and beauty was to start with four suburban women in New Jersey, eventually scaling up her transformation to cover the entire continent. Carol Fleischer is stubborn and focused on maintaining suburban comforts; Beth Wann, vulnerable and lonely, is left with nothing to her name in her husband’s departure; Renee Shapiro-Epps is a magazine editor with a massive character arc from acting as a compliant magazine editor to embracing her inner self; and Pam Annunziata is a housewife prone to doomsday preparations. 

Every woman represents different aspects of femineity that has been disciplined into place—loneliness, perfection, control, fear—leaving little room for the kind of wild, imaginative whimsy they may have once known. 

And that is exactly why Diane chooses them to cultivate Earth -- because what has been most carefully controlled is often what is most ready to grow back.  

This global awakening stems from the same systems that take from the Earth until it is depleted. It asks women to give until there is nothing left, leaving both controlled and slowly eroding. 

Hurricane Diane lingers because it reminds people that control is never as permanent as it seems. Beneath the pavement, something is always growing. Beneath expectation, something is always resisting. 

The play ends with a call to action: the storm of total destruction is impending, and humanity must draw back the hands of the doomsday clock. 

Just as Starling’s production opened with: “the time is 11:45.” For women and Earth alike, facing destruction of autonomy and free will. But even an hourglass can be flipped upside-down.