Discontent Pulls Women Back to ‘A . . .’ : ‘Still Alice’: A decade later, musical points out steps still not taken.

“A . . . My Name Is Still Alice” was born of frustration.

Julianne Boyd called Joan Micklin Silver last year and said: “I’m upset, things aren’t going so well. Look at what happened to women who feel they can’t combine career and family, look at the women who are having careers who can’t get pregnant at age 40, look at the Senate hearings with Anita Hill, look at the glass ceiling and what is happening to women in middle management.”

Silver agreed. They decided they should do something about it. They decided to do what two directors do best.

Put on a show.

The result is the world premiere of “A . . . My Name Is Still Alice,” which opens tonight at the Old Globe Theatre. Co-conceived and co-directed by Silver and Boyd, it is a humorous revue with very serious points to make about the lives of women in the ‘90s.

“We’re not depressed about where women are today,” Boyd stressed, sitting next to Silver in a room at the Old Globe Theatre. “We’re realizing that we have to become more active. We hope that women get excited by some of the things we’re trying to say.”

The work is a sequel to the pair’s last collaboration, “A . . . My Name is Alice,” an Off Broadway success in 1984. It ran for a year in New York and then was produced in regional productions across the country, and it sold out in 1989 when it played the Old Globe under Boyd’s direction.

But in 1983, when Silver and Boyd began working on “A . . . My Name Is Alice,” they had an optimistic take on the state of women in America. Among their reasons for doing the show was to offer an alternative to the endless litany of “He done me wrong” songs and give a glimpse at the achievements and potential of women in the ‘80s.

“In ‘83, it was much more of a celebration,” Boyd said. “The ERA wasn’t voted on yet. We thought Roe vs. Wade couldn’t be overturned. Today we haven’t come as far as we thought we’d come. . . .”

“In fact we’ve gone backward,” Silver said. “I don’t think that any one of us in ’83 imagined that we could be fighting these battles again.”

Silver agreed that it was time for a new show to reflect new realities.

To craft “A . . . My Name Is Still Alice,” Silver and Boyd went back to the same writers they had worked with before--and to some writers who hadn’t found time to work with them on the first show.

Some of the writers will be familiar to local audiences: Amanda McBroom, who wrote the song “The Rose,” and wrote and performed in “Heartbeats” at the Old Globe Theatre is represented in both shows; new to the second show are Randy Courts and Mark St. Germain, who composed the score for Lamb’s Players Theatre’s “Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller.”

Silver and Boyd also returned to their original Off Broadway ensemble, including Randy Graff, who won the 1990 Tony for best featured actress in “City of Angels,” which she reprised at the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles last year. The one substitution is Nancy Ticotin for Charlaine Woodard, in order to provide a Latino presence that was lacking before.

The new show points a finger at how women are held back in the workplace through a satire on musicals of the fifties called “Women Behind Desks.” The song, “My Brother and I” explores the impact of AIDS through a story of a woman whose brother gets the virus. In “Why Doesn’t She Call on Me?” the ensemble questions teachers who tend to call on boys in class rather than girls, building up lifelong issues of insecurity and self-doubt.

Both Silver and Boyd say this show does not mandate what choices a woman should make. Instead they aim to support individual choice in every area of life. It’s pro-women who work--if that’s what they want to do. It’s pro-women who stay home--if that’s what they want to do.

“The best that I could hope could happen to my daughter is that she will make choices that she can believe in. There isn’t such a thing as a single path,” Silver said.

Both women are New York-based (Silver is originally from Omaha and Boyd from Easton, Pa.), and have daughters and long marriages. Silver, 56, has been married 35 years. She has three daughters, ages 34, 32 and 28, and two grandchildren, a girl, 3 1/2 and a boy, 1 1/2. Boyd, 47, has been married 25 years and has two daughters, ages 22 and 7, and a son, 18.

Both know about juggling families and careers.

Silver is widely acclaimed for directing the 1988 film “Crossing Delancey” and the 1975 “Hester Street.” She has a new movie, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” that has just been released and a movie for HBO, “A Private Matter,” with Sissy Spacek and Aidan Quinn that will air in June.

Boyd directed “Eubie!” on Broadway, but is better known in San Diego for directing Old Globe productions of “Tea,” “A . . . My Name is Alice,” “Necessities” and “As You Like It.”

She is currently working on “Sweet & Hot: The Music of Harold Arlen,” a show she has both conceived and will direct at the Asolo Theatre Company in Sarasota, Fla. in mid-January and at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J., in mid-March.

Boyd said she has made trade-offs in her career, limiting her out-of-town directing assignments because of her children.

“If I didn’t have my three children, I wouldn’t be as happy, but I would be pushing my career harder. Still, my family keeps me sane.”

Both also know what it is like to be told they can’t do certain jobs because they are women. When each began their careers, they didn’t find any role models. Silver did not know any female film directors when she directed “Hester Street” in 1975. Boyd didn’t know any female stage directors when she directed “Eubie!” in 1978.

Silver said that it was a tough fight to direct her first feature film, the acclaimed “Hester Street.” And it only came about after her husband got involved as a producer.

“The best comment I ever got on that was that theater films are expensive to make and women directors are one more problem that I don’t need,” Silver said, shaking her head.

Boyd recalled being discouraged from directing her first Broadway musical, “Eubie!,” which she had conceived and created.

“With ‘Eubie!,’ you’ll never be able to deal with the stagehands, they told me,” Boyd said.

“Yes,” Silver said. “They are always asking me how do I manage with the crews.”

For the record, both say they have never had any problems with stagehands or movie crews.

But they have faced a challenge in getting this particular “Alice” where they want it. Most revues share the link of a common composer, or lyricist or both. The only link here is the theme of women in 1992. By last Sunday, four days before opening night, Silver and Boyd were still cutting numbers, shaping and focusing the piece. They had just gotten the show down to two hours and 20 minutes.

“It’s very difficult to do (a show like this) in this amount of time,” Boyd said.

“You’re trying to get audience reaction and make changes as quickly as possible. We’ve been in rehearsal since April 10, which gave us three weeks to rehearse, including techs.

“After it opens, we’ll look at the material again. It’s an evolving process. Every single day the actresses are flying and discovering new things.”

Boyd and Silver hope that this new “Alice” will eventually go to New York. They also hope that this will be just the second “Alice” in a series.

“Who knows what will happen with Roe v. Wade?,” Boyd asked.

“We hope to continue to chronicle the times.”

Performances of “A . . . My Name Is Still Alice” are at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through June 21. Tickets are $21-$29.50. At the Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, 239-2255.