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Warming up to middle age
Menopause, according to Rhodessa Jones, brings women its own kind of beauty, plus wisdom, more chances to read - and a private, internal heat source.
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 14, 2002
[Publicity photo]
Rhodessa Jones calls Hot Flashes, Power Surges & Private Summers a celebration of having survived.
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Three years ago, when Rhodessa Jones turned 50, she threw a birthday party for herself by putting on a show. It was Hot Flashes, Power Surges & Private Summers, which has three performances this weekend in Tampa.
"This piece is a celebration -- a celebration of having survived," she says. "It's also a celebration of the wisdom that has been gathered. Instead of always apologizing about not being young, it's about taking center stage to say this is what I know, this is what I've learned. Every line, every wrinkle on my body, on my face, is the road map to my becoming my grandmother, my great grandmother, and that's a good thing."
Jones' show is also about menopause, with the title referring to hormonal changes that can leave middle-age women suddenly flushed and drenched in perspiration.
"I can sit somewhere, and I'm like a furnace," she says. "What are we going to do with all that heat? It's an amazing metaphor. I tell the young people in my office, 'I'm having hot flashes today. That doesn't make me pitiful. It makes me dangerous'."
"Hot flashes" is a familiar term, and "power surges" is what they're called in California, says Jones, who lives in San Francisco. But "private summers"?
" 'Private summers' is a Southern term for menopause among grand Southern ladies," she says. "It's your own private summer when you're dripping wet."
Hot Flashes marks the fifth Tampa Bay appearance by Jones, whose previous shows include Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women and I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine. She is one of 12 children born to migrant farmworkers in Florida. A brother and sometime collaborator is New York choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones. In San Francisco, she is co-artistic director of the Medea Project, which seeks to promote incarcerated women's self-esteem through theater, movement and storytelling.
A source of inspiration for her current show was a visit to Jamaica, which she calls "the wise old crone of the Caribbean." It's where she came to grips with not being a "hot babe" anymore.
"I'm at an age where, you know, men are cute, they're delicious, but I've been there, done that," she says. "I like being able to trade flirtations with men knowing that I'm going to end up in my room, reading a book, and that's okay. I don't need for you to love me, love me, love me. That's really a part of ovulating. If you're lucky, you get to a point where it's not important.
"When you get older, things should become easier in a lot of ways, to be free of the shackles of youth. You're not young for very long. You're old for much longer."
Preview
Rhodessa Jones performs Hot Flashes, Power Surges & Private Summers at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday in the Shimberg Playhouse of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tickets: $15.50. (813) 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045 or online at www.tbpac.org.
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