NEPA SCENE PODCAST: Episode 33 – GRRRLS Night open mic, female artists, and feminism
Professionally recorded every Monday at The Stude in TwentyFiveEight Studios in Scranton and released exclusively on nepascene.com every Tuesday, the NEPA Scene Podcast is a free supplement to the website, expanding on the arts and entertainment stories covered on the site and going beyond them to discuss other news and entertainment topics.
Each week, the unedited and uncensored podcast features Rich Howells, NEPA Scene founder and editor; Mark Dennebaum, president and owner of TwentyFiveEight Studios; Lauren Quirolgico, commercial and content strategist at Lavelle Strategy Group and editor at TwentyFiveEight; and in the control room, Jimmy Reynolds, a musician, teacher, and lead audio engineer at TwentyFiveEight. Every episode streams on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and nepascene.com.
In Episode 33, we discuss the brand new monthly girls-only performance night for local comedians, poets, and musicians in downtown Scranton with event creator Jess Meoni and poet Alicia Kulick. Meoni, who also founded the Scranton Zine Fest and Ruthless Zine, talks about why she started the GRRRLS Night open mic, the need to spotlight female artists, and sexual harassment in the scene, which leads to a conversation about how women on any public stage are perceived; the different types of feminism and the connotation of that term today; sexism, racism, and hashtag activism; and some history behind zines and the feminist punk riot grrrl movement, which the event’s name is derived from. We also get into Meoni and Kulick’s writing and how GRRRLS Night is already garnering praise and controversy from the community.
In The Last Word segment, we read a few readers’ comments about GRRRLS Night and address why an all-male event isn’t quite as necessary as an all-female night.
The first GRRRLS Night is set for Friday, July 31 at 8 p.m. at Ale Mary’s (126 Franklin Ave., Scranton). The next open mic is scheduled for Aug. 28 at the same venue.
For more on GRRRLS Night, read our short Q&A with Meoni here.
Listen on iTunes.
Listen on SoundCloud:
Listen on Stitcher.
Photo by Mark Dennebaum/TwentyFiveEight Studios
