On Saturday, female creatives gathered to showcase their crafts for the third annual Women Aloud! performance. The event featured poets, comedians, musicians and dancers at Wild Goose Creative and Rumba Café, just two doors down. Women Aloud!, which takes place at the end of Women’s History Month each year, aims to raise money for Grrrls Rock! Columbus, a summer music and creative-arts camp in the summer.
The evening began in Wild Goose with poetry acts before expanding to Rumba later in the night to allow for multiple performances to take place simultaneously. The artwork-covered walls of Wild Goose enclosed a cozy space with merchandise tables and seats for attendees.
Organizer Su Flatt provided enthusiastic and sincere introductions for each performer with buzz phrases like ‘She will blow your mind’ and ‘You’re about to fall in love.’ The poets covered a variety of topics as Alexis Mitchell-Tremain discussed her family and Kentucky roots, Paula J. Lambert ruminated on birds and Sara Trattner danced between love and sex. As a whole, the poets frequently returned to themes of what it’s like to be a woman, detailing both struggles and triumphs.
Women Aloud raised money for Grrrls Rock! Columbus. Credit: Cameron Carr | For the Lantern
Continuing with the night’s diversity, the comedians varied in content and style. Leslie Battle talked about life as a single adult, joking about Tinder, Facebook and living with her 20-something son. Angie Healey made fun of topics ranging from blow jobs to politicians. Sally Jo, joined onstage by Jane, took a totally different route. The pair focused on humorous songs driven by ukulele and washboard.
Entering the music portion of the evening, solo acoustic musicians took the Wild Goose Stage while bands performed at Rumba. A few hours into the event, Wild Goose maintained a sizable and lively audience that happily showed appreciation to each performer. At Rumba, the venue proved appropriate for the smaller but attentive audience.
While not all acts on the Rumba stage were bands, each brought something different to their musical performance. Kate Westfall and Thunder Thighs both manipulated live looping to create full sounds — the former focusing on electronics and the latter blending violin and electric guitar. The band Scout Ripley took on alternative pop with violin and synthesizers aiding a traditional band. Dominique Larue changed pace with a hip hop performance before genre-bending trio Jemntonic finished off the night.
Back at Wild Goose, acoustic musicians Ashleigh Wilson Vig, Sarah Cooperider and Sierra Mollenkopf strummed songs that highlighted their voices and lyrics. The Ooh-La-Las Burlesque closed the event.
