Annette Bening on Giving a Voice To Things That Matter in the Benefit Reading of Griswold

Annette Bening is no stranger to the spotlight, and now the acclaimed stage and screen star is getting ready to shine the light on civil rights activist Estelle Griswold. On November 11, Bening will star in a one-night-only benefit reading of Griswold, a new play by Angela J. Davis that tells the story of Griswold's legacy fighting for the establishment of the constitutional right to privacy in 1965. In a recent episode of The Broadway Show with Tamsen Fadal, Bening spoke with the host about the importance of the piece and why she's giving a voice to the things that matter.

It's been 35 years since Bening took her Broadway debut bow in Tina Howe's Coastal Disturbances, and starring in this benefit reading of Davis' play is the perfect celebration of the her career. "This play dramatizes the life and the work of Estelle Griswold, who I have the honor of playing," she told Fadal. "I've really learned a lot, even just working on the play so far. She engineered her own criminal arrest, which then resulted in the landmark Supreme Court case which established the right for sexual privacy. It directly paves the way for all the other guarantees of liberty, including the right of same-sex couples to marry. It's this amazing woman, an incredibly important case, and, it's the coming together of these two organizations, 'A is For' and the Playhouse Creatures Theater Company, who are dedicated to activism and art activism." 

For Bening, Griswold holds an unexpected personal connection. "There's so much stigma around women and aging and all of it is really created by a culture," Bening said of Griswold's legacy. "And we, as women, who have our voices and have our professional and personal experience, need to remember that it isn't necessarily true for us. We can feel this great sense of empowerment, and, in a way, one becomes more free as one gets older. Maybe because you're not kind of saddled with a lot of the same concerns that you had when you were younger. It's so important that we not take on that message of feeling somehow ashamed for our age. It's a myth. It's just such nonsense. Now we have that opportunity more than ever as women to just dump that garbage and live our lives in the way that we feel is authentic, and give voice to things that matter to us."

Check out the full interview below and head here to check your local listings for The Broadway Show. Hosted by Emmy-winning anchor Tamsen Fadal, it is the only nationally syndicated weekly theater news program.