GASP (Girls Assembling Something Perpetual) was founded by six female poets in Denver, Colorado in 2011. Most recently, we staged four short plays from Gertrude Stein’s “Geography and Plays,” exploring language, love, feminism, gender roles and play through essential and explosive performances. The plays, which in their original scripts bear no stage directions and little indication for mood, character or moral stance, allowed us to experiment with everything and nothing but LANGUAGE.

We confronted both the challenge and beauty that Stein’s non-linear word plays can offer within the context of a physical performance, allowing for maximum imagination and emphasizing intonation, pause, and silence as well as props and stage art to ground the work. At once embodied reading and masquerade, the audience too was able to taste and mouth some Stein, reading out lines from Tender Buttons between transitions. The plays were developed in small groups but performed as a collective in both private and public venues for the larger Denver arts and writing community.