Sisters of No Mercy
Sisters of No Mercy was a feminist theater troupe founded in the early 1980’s. For over three years, the diverse group performed skits, plays, and musical numbers to empower women and used humor, music, and drama to uplift others. (W083)
They appeared at benefits for groups as diverse as the Performing Artists for Nuclear Disarmament and for the Atlanta Women’s Union on International Women’s Day. The Sisters of No Mercy were a diverse group as to lifestyle, sexual preference, work identity, age and political priorities. Despite these differences, they promoted the power of women and used humor, music, and drama to encourage others to affirm their own strengths. The Sisters of No Mercy developed most of their own material, a highlight being The Amazon Broadcasting System, a “fictional feminist network of the future,” which poked fun at the television medium and the society it reflected.
The Sisters of No Mercy Records contains a variety of material. Member-marked scripts, promotional flyers, newspaper advertisement and articles are foldered for the specific event for which they were created, when known. The largest part of the collection is made up of over a dozen events at which the Sisters of No Mercy appeared. Another interesting feature of the collection are the news articles on stories of the day related to women’s issues, collected as research to use as material for story lines for their plays. Additional materials include some performance notes, in many cases handwritten, below are some of these articles used to create themes for their plays such as rape, sexual harassments, fight for equal pay and other inequities.
