Storytelling: Figuring out adulthood in “The Female Gaze”

“The Female Gaze,” a web series created by Shefali Vasudevan, is a twist on the classic romantic comedy genre that has always favored a man’s point of view. Produced and written by Vasudevan, an Emerson College graduate, “The Female Gaze” is directed by women and features a female-majority cast. It is her hope and wish that this series resonates with young women who are trying to figure out adulthood. 

Shefali Vasudevan

During a recent interview with Vasudevan and series co-star Camra Godwin, I was interested to learn about what inspired the creation of “The Female Gaze” and how it grew into a web series. The first season, which aired earlier this year via YouTube in seven weekly installments, is available for streaming. A successful Indiegogo campaign recently wrapped up to help provide backing for a second season that’s already in the works.

“A lot of the film and television I saw growing up was very male-centric,” says Vasudevan. “When I went to film school and realized how heavily male the industry was, I knew I really wanted to create something of my own to combat it. 

“The term ‘The Female Gaze’ is a twist on the term ‘Male Gaze,’ where everything in art, entertainment and news has been told strictly from the male perspective up until recent years. We wanted to flip that and make the narrative about women and how they view the world.”

Vasudevan approached Godwin, her Emerson classmate with whom she shared an improv class, with her idea of telling their stories in a unique way and she was instantly on board. “I had worked with Shefali before, and have always respected and trusted her vision,” says Godwin. “I was also excited about being involved with a web series that honestly portrayed a variety of stories about men and women that I could relate to.”

Camra Godwin 

Asked if it’s easy to relate to the situations her character, Jen, has found herself in, Godwin said that while her character “is not directly based on myself, she is in a lot of situations that I’ve also found myself in.

“For example, figuring out where she stands in a relationship versus being single and navigating jobs. I feel like I’ve been able to relate to every part of Jen, even if I haven’t been in her exact scenario. I still feel the same emotions and make the same discoveries that she does.

“For me, it was pretty easy to get inside Jen’s head, as a lot of what she experiences is similar to what I’ve gone through as I navigate my 20s. It’s a release for me to be able to bring my current awareness from personal situations and go back into that situation as Jen who’s experiencing it for the first time.

“Shefali has a really great honest writing style, but she also loves when actors make the role their own. During the rehearsals she encouraged us to improvise, which we sometimes added lines from, and tweak the dialogue to sound a little more like how our character would say it. It’s such a great experience to work with Shefali, because she puts so much into her work and then opens it up for collaboration to make the best product possible. That’s the ultimate dream!”

When Vasudevan started creating “The Female Gaze,” she was writing from her own perspective and personal experiences as a 24-year-old (she just turned 25 this month) and with an 18-to-30-year-old audience in mind. She said, “I think a lot of the themes are universal. 

“The characters deal with love and find themselves, and I don’t think anyone ever stops learning about themselves!”

Godwin, 25, agrees, saying “I think a lot of people 18-30 would relate directly to what each character is going through, but the emotions that our characters feel transcend age groups.

“Everyone has an idea of what heartbreak, excitement, love and confusion (to name a few) feels like!”

In developing “The Female Gaze,” Vasudevan, who earned a BFA in Film Production from Emerson College in Boston, originally hoped to learn more about filmmaking. She also became a central character in her own web series. The first series run of seven episodes included titles such as “First Time,” “F**kboy,” “Damsel,” and “Best Friends.”

In the fourth episode, “Damsel,” Vasudevan’s character, Priya, shares an intimate on-the-mouth kiss with her friend, Silvia (played by Avery Richardson). When asked if there was any sense of awkwardness, or if it was about Priya’s empowerment, acting upon her desires – perhaps figuring out her sexuality – she expressed, “I was writing this scene based on the experience of some of my friends and myself. What a lot of people today don’t really understand is that sexuality can be a little more complicated to navigate and not all black and white. It can also be something that is repressed in a lot of us because for so long in our lives we were told we had to think a certain way. Older generations tend to think that you can only like men or you can only like women. But I think for some people the attraction is based on person to person and relationship to relationship.”

Vasudevan suggested that Priya’s character “has entertained the thought of being with a girl, but until this moment in her life she has never met a girl in real life that she was attracted to. So, in the previous episode, she was with a man she felt attracted to,” but then “she feels so strongly toward Silvia that she has to act on it! I think by the end of the series, Priya realizes she has to explore this about herself before she can be in an open and honest relationship with either a man or a woman.”

While the final product of each six-to-seven minute episode comes off as a very smooth viewing experience, there’s plenty that goes into the creation and production. “We shot everything episode to episode,” said Vasudevan. The music heard in each episode comes from a variety of Emerson alumni (GUPPY, Pool Boys, Love Under the Sun) and Vasudevan said each were kind and gracious about contributing their music to the series.

“Learning how to self-produce my own work outside of college was difficult,” Vasudevan admits, “but I started to form a community and creat a good work flow this project.”

Road trippin’ with “The Female Gaze.” 

Within this community, which includes some of her former Emerson classmates and other Emerson alumnae residing in the Los Angeles area, Vasudevan decided to use an all female production crew for “The Female Gaze.” She said that most of the crews she’s work with have been majority male. “I would hear from the crew members things like, ‘Oh well, no women came out for the job,’ or ‘We’ve worked with this guy forever so we trust him.’ I thought this was insane because I know so many female crew members in different departments (such as lighting, camera team, production design) who are constantly not getting work. So, I wanted this set to be an opportunity for some of these female crew members.”

Indeed, Vasudevan changed the dynamic, and in doing so, she confesses that having a majority female crew also brings a different energy to the set. “There is a lot less ego involved – and a lot of creativity,” she said. “I have been on some really great male-run sets, but in general, on female-run sets everyone is just there to work and do a good job.”

When she was asked if there have been an production obstacles, Vasudevan said, “PLENTY! But I love it. My background from school is directing and writing, but more recently I decided to learn more about producing and acting.

“Producing has been such a fun way to use my problem solving skills. For the cafe episode (shot in a Le Pain Quotidien in Studio City), I actually talked to a few different cafes and Le Pain Quotidien was just the most responsive, affordable and flexible to work with! Lunch was also included in our space rental fee, which was incredible. I’m still dreaming about their chocolate hazelnut spread.

“The biggest obstacle was definitely the final episode of the first season and coordinating everyone on that set. I had a lot of help from my good friend and co-director on that episode, Caroline Ullman. The main issues came with coordinating actors and making sure we got through all of the scenes we needed to film in such a short amount of time. But the team of filmmakers we worked with were so incredible and patient with us! We ended up eating everything we needed and then some.”

Asked what the reaction from friends and family has been, Vasudevan said her family has been extremely supportive of the entire process. “I told my mom about what the story was going to be about a long time ago,” she recalled, “and when I started making the project I felt so insecure about it.

“There was one day when I was on the phone with her talking about how nervous I was, and she told me, ‘This is so incredible what you’re doing. You’re creating a body of work for yourself, of what you’re like right now, of what your friends are like, of what you’re experiencing, and you’re always going to remember it because you have this series.’ And that made me really happy and more confident about the project because yeah, maybe not a lot of people will see it, but it is such a truly vulnerable expression of my life right now and I’m excited to have that.” 

Godwin added, “When we first put it out, there’s always a sense of anxiousness because you want people to be able to connect with it like you did, and all that anxiousness has melted away for me now!”

With “The Female Gaze,” Vasudevan is emphasizing storytelling from a woman’s perspective. “I want people to see that women are messy and complicated and annoying and beautiful and weird, and that’s okay!

“I also hope that the stories resonate with people. Getting responses from people telling me that they related to the characters was incredible and more than what I thought I would get out of this experience initially.”

Find “The Female Gaze” on social media:
On Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/thefemalegazeseries/
On Twitter @TFGSeries
On Instagram @thefemalegazeseries

Credits: “The Female Gaze” videos, courtesy of YouTube. Individual photos of Shefali Vasudevan and Camra Godwin by Lauren Cabanas. Cover photo and Road Trip episode photos by Zachary Shea Mills. Behind the Scenes of the final episode “This Is Not A Party” photo by Ariel Skovera.

A Tuesday Night Memo: Thoughts on turning seven

Michael Dickens / A selfie. 

I've been interested in writing, reporting and storytelling for a long time. So, it's only natural that I turned to blog writing because it gave me an opportunity to hone my writing skills and a forum for writing about things of interest and importance.

As A Tuesday Night Memo turns seven today, here's a little history about it:

I started writing A Tuesday Night Memo on January 26, 2010, as a means for sharing musings about my life filled with music, sport, and urban travel, and to foster community with my friends, family and Facebook acquaintances. People who know me well know that I'm passionate about music, sport, and urban travel. Additionally, I have used my blog as a vehicle for writing about art, food, fashion, religion and gardening – and, more recently, about politics. Sharing news and photos about our flower gardens at home always seem to generate great interest and enthusiasm. Maybe, it's the pretty shapes and colors of our flowers that others find appealing.

Up to now, I have "blogged" 358 entries for A Tuesday Night Memo, which collectively have received  nearly 108,000 page views. Among the many subjects I have written about include: my appreciation of tennis champion Roger Federer, how the city of Seattle fosters community through international cinema, a history of the world as seen through 100 objects, classical music conductor Gustavo Dudamel, Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, my love affair with Pink Martini, validating our travel through our photographs, and Jerry Seinfeld's Internet comedy Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. My most recent post focused on the importance of the Women's March held last weekend in Washington, D.C, and across America and the world. I have shared my interest in digital photography within my blog, which has enabled me to illustrate many if not all of my posts with nice visuals to match the words I've written.

The feedback many have shared is not only very much appreciated, but I also find it very useful. Much of it has been positive, but sometimes it's also been critical. Whether good or bad, I've found the feedback you provide to be a valuable learning tool. From time to time, I like to sneak a peek at my blog's statistics, which are the key indicators that show how many total "hits" my blog has received, which stories have been read the most, and what countries comprise the blog's readership. The numbers are modest but nevertheless interesting.

Here are a few fun facts about A Tuesday Night Memo I thought you might enjoy:

* Since the debut of my blog, it has been read in dozens of different countries, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, France, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey and Hong Kong – even Brazil, India, Vietnam, and Australia. The top five countries reading my blog include the U.S, Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. I hope Russia's interest in my blog has nothing to do with wanting to hack me because of my occasional forays into writing about Donald Trump.

* The most widely-read blog entry in terms of "hits" remains one I wrote back in December 2010 about "CNN International: Connecting the world," in which I explored the intelligent – albeit sometimes irreverent – manner that CNN International delivers the news and how it differs from it's American cousin that's based in Atlanta. Other top "hits" include musings about the artist Pablo Picasso and the British comedian Ricky Gervais. (I'm still trying to figure that one out!)

Looking ahead, I suspect the Trump presidency will continue to garner my interest and attention from time to time. How can it not? However, among things that I look forward to exploring, include: the effect digital music and media have in connecting our world, and my ongoing interest in exploring museums – and what we can learn from them.

In the meantime, I've thoroughly enjoyed sharing my writing with you throughout the past seven years, and I look forward to sharing more of my words and thoughts in what is shaping up to be another exciting year awaiting all of us.

Stay tuned!

In support of English literacy and a love of learning

In support of English literacy /
Students benefiting from the Morocco Library Project.

During a recent walk through Town & Country Village, an upscale outdoor shopping mall in Palo Alto, California, near Stanford University, I crossed paths with a most interesting window display at independent bookseller Books, Inc., that immediately captured my attention.

Instead of witnessing a display of current New York Times best-selling books, I glimpsed a colorful collection of young adult books, including Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, The Major Poetry of Ralph Waldo Emerson and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Books, Inc. window display /
Promoting awareness of the Morocco Library Project. 

In the center of the window display were a pair of signs. One read: Morocco Library Project. The other: Support the Morocco Library Project with Books Inc.! A similar display featuring children's literature awaited customers inside the bookstore, too.

What I learned is this: The Morocco Library Project is Americans and Moroccans building libraries together in support of English learners in Morocco. The group has a Facebook page and you can also find them via LinkedIn.

The mission of the Morocco Library Project is simple: It is designed to inspire and support English literacy and a love of learning in Morocco, and to build a lasting bridge of friendship and peace between East and West. In Morocco, most students learn to speak English as their third language -- yes, third -- after their native Arabic and French.

According to the organization's website, I learned: "We strive to work with underserved communities, where a single library will make a huge difference. For each location, we work with teachers to understand the particular need and to curate a collection of books and other materials for the students and community. The students do a lot of the work putting the library together. This is truly a partnership."

The Morocco Library Project launched its first project, the Erfoud Library, at the Lycée Moulay Rachid, in April 2015. It is located in the eastern part of the country near the Algerian border. I learned that this library supports highly motivated students from under-privileged families in an after-school program called English Access, and it's also open to other students in the area. While interest in learning English is rapidly growing, until recently, there were few resources to support it.

A love of learning /
Young students at the Erfoud Library in Morocco.

However, thanks to the effort of the Morocco Library Project, both in the U.S. and abroad, about 650 books for all ages and in a variety of genres, including art, geography, literature, nature, and science -- as well as Kindles, games, puzzles and an extensive collection of National Geographic magazines -- dot the colorful library. The collection includes about 100 children's books, too.

After a successful launch of the Erfoud Library last year, the Morocco Library Project is now starting new libraries in Taroudant and Essmara in the south, and in Tétouan in the north, for a girls' high school, the Lycée Khadija Oum El Mouminine, near Gibraltar. All are in underserved communities with students eager to study English.

Recently, Moroccan author Laila Lalami, who last year won the Arab American Book Award for her most recent novel The Moor's Account, donated autographed copies of her books to the Moroccan Library Project for distribution in its libraries.

Last month, the Minister of Education in Morocco launched a new nationwide program, CIRCLE (Club of Instructional Resources for Culture and Language Enhancement), and the Erfoud Library was selected as one of the first locations.

So, as you can see, good things are happening with this meaningful organization as they strive to turn collections of books into libraries.

The Morocco Library Project is funded entirely by donations from the public. To learn more about this worthwhile project and how to donate, visit their website: http://www.moroccolibraries.org.

Photos: Window display at Books, Inc. by Michael Dickens. Morocco Library Project photos courtesy of their website.

In celebration of reading and writing for a cause, a Berkeley library becomes a literary café for a day

Tomorrow, I'll be participating in the WriterCoach Connection's seventh annual Read-and-Write-a-Thon. Beginning at 8 a.m. and continuing for 10 consecutive hours, volunteers, students and supporters -- including yours truly -- will share their love of the written and spoken word in the Library at Longfellow Middle School in Berkeley. 

Imagine a library transformed into a literary café ... 

This will be my third Read-and-Write-a-Thon.

At around 9:20 a.m. Saturday morning, I'll be reading from The Children of Willesden Lane, a memoir of music, love and survival, written by Mona Golabek, which became a one-woman play that recently enjoyed a successful run at the Berkeley Rep earlier this year. 

A backstory ...

As many of you know, since 2013, I've been involved with WriterCoach Connection, a non-profit program now in its 15th year. I'm one of more than 700 volunteers working one-on-one with middle- and high-school kids. We are now coaching in 11 schools throughout the East Bay. It's a remarkable program, winning rave reviews from teachers as well from kids. 

This year, I have been working individually with a variety of seventh and eighth grade students at Longfellow Middle School in Berkeley. My students represent a microcosm of the school's student body -- black, white, Asian, Hispanic -- and of the city of Berkeley, too. It has been a uniquely rewarding experience to see my students become more critical thinkers and confident writers.

My goal as a writing coach is simple and straight-forward, yet heartfelt: to help strengthen a student's writing skills and help them develop their ideas. And, through the use of positive encouragement and showing care, I believe I am making a difference in each student's educational development.

We believe all students can discover the power and richness of their own voices and learn to communicate their ideas with clarity, confidence and pride. Most important to me is that WCC gives more than 2,200 students undivided, positive attention, and for many of those students, it's the only time they ever get that from an adult.

In my first Read-and-Write-a-Thon experience,
I read an essay by humorist Calvin Trillin.

This year marks my third year to participate in the Read-and-Write-a-Thon. Two years ago, I read from humorist Calvin Trillin and last year I chose a baseball essay by Roger Angell. The Read-and-Write-a-Thon is our major fundraiser of the year and helps bridges the gap between what the program costs and what we can raise from school budgets and grants. And this is where you can help:

I'm writing to ask if you might support me, our readers, and this wonderful program by sponsoring our Read-and-Write-a-Thon.

If you can help, please go to www.writercoachconnection.org, click on the Read-and-Write-a-Thon banner, and you'll land on our fundraising page.

Whatever you can give, thank you so much for keeping us going. Those 2,200 kids, my fellow volunteer coaches, and dozens of sainted English teachers thank you, too.