The 4th Annual GiRL FeST Hawaii, 2007: Opening Night

By George D’range

(Published, December issue, The 808 Scene Zine)

Girl Fest is an event organized around a group of very talented women and men whose common cause is the fight to ”prevent violence against women and girls through education and art.” It is a collection of artists, dancers, musicians, poets, writers and films presented from across the nation, but is mainly based in the Bay Area, New York City, and Hawaii, and the proceeds of the annual festivities go to the cause.
For those of you who were lucky enough to take place in any of the week’s events, you know how socially important this yearly fundraiser is. For those of you unfamiliar, you’re going to want to make time next year for you, your friends and family to attend this very special event. Some guys out there might think they’d be uncomfortable and suspicious that this might be a kind of Vagina Monologues affair. But that’s not it at all. It’s not just about anonymous victims of rape and abuse. This is about our mothers and our sisters, our aunties and nieces, and our friends and neighbors. The more men attend, the more it says about us as people, and the progress we are capable of making. As Kealoha, a local poetry slam trail blazer and founder of Hawaii Slam, summed up so eloquently with a stirring poem about abuse and equality, the misconceptions about feminism, and the aforementioned connection we all share with the women we love and respect so much in our everyday lives. Find him at: www.kealohapoetry.com.
But this is also about all those talented and dedicated souls who make this event worth attending! This year’s festivities were dedicated to former coordinator Alex T. Handler, who passed away in July of this year. There are many other crucial people who deserve honorable mention, but I regret due to article constraints, some may go unmentioned. I will do my best to rectify this through web references and in my unabridged version.
The night opened with the Taiko Center of The Pacific. Currently under the direction of Gabriel Ishida, this highly disciplined style of Japanese drumming is part dance, part rhythmic performance. Each performance has a story and a dedicated ceremony from which the tune was derived. Taiko is a complicated art form, so for more information on this group of performers, please visit: www.taikoarts.com.
The spoken word and poetry slam segment of the evening involved the amazing talents of several performers who all have a high profile on the internet, so I will give each a short review, followed by their URLs.
When youth speaks Hawaii took the stage, their words were so powerful, it hit me with the unrelenting force of a Gatling gun! It is very fortunate that I was also invited to cover the 3rd annual Interscholastic Youth Speaks Hawaii Slam competition, so that I might have a chance to get to know these great young people and their work better. I will therefore reserve further judgment until that time, but I can say that I don’t anticipate being any less impressed! (www.youthspeakshawaii.org)
Mindy Nettifee moved things along in her oddly slow paced and methodical style, lulling us all into a false sense of security! After delivering some of the funnier poetry of the evening, she decided to move on to “some serious stuff”, such as a poem called, “Dear Guardian Angel”, which began, “Dear Guardian Angel: BACK OFF!” You get the idea. Mindy’ myspace page is: myspace.com/thecultofmindy.
Amber Tamblyn is better known as TV’s Joan of Arcadia, but there is much more than meets the eye about this multi-faceted performer. She is at once emotionally accessible, wickedly funny, well balanced, and delivers pointedly cathartic slams, which lent a wonderfully complementary chemistry to her fellow performers. myspace.com/ambertablyn
Andrea Gibson comes on like a freight train masquerading as a VW. Although Andrea admits to spitting in her furor as she recites, this reviewer would scarcely be able to differentiate the saliva flying from Andrea’s lips from my own emotional reaction to her concerto of venomous verbal justice. In person, I found Andrea to be a delightfully amiable and friendly individual. It was a pleasure to make her acquaintance, and you too can do so at: myspace/andreagibson
Derrick Brown was described in Rolling Stone Magazine as being the “Darker side of Jude Law. Whatever that means, Derrick is both a bit surreal, and hysterically brilliant. He was followed by comic Ali Wong, who probably grows tired of any comparisons to Margaret Cho, other than to say she is gut wrenchingly funny! Closing out the evening was the musical talent of Emily Wells, who also accompanied Derrick during his set. myspace.com/brownpoetry
Ali Wong: www.ALIWONG.com
Emily Wells: myspace.com/emilywells