She Was A Conquistawhore

Overview

A woman and her vagina, a cowboy named Pete, find themselves brawling over control of their shared body. They try to reconcile their differences while sharing stories with the audience. Their trials and tribulations weave together a legend. A story of manifest destiny. A divine calling to take the land back, one cis-white man at a time. But they discover it’s hard to move forward when you’re stuck in the past.

Their wanderings leave them wondering what the future could look like if we’re able to face our truths, what possibilities emerge beyond binaries, and what lines must be crossed on a journey toward wholeness.

An absurd, radical, and deeply personal exploration of gender identity, intergenerational trauma, and healing. She Was A Conquistawhore takes audiences into a world where the Wild West is a wild night out, where humor is the best tool to examine wounds, and where sometimes vaginas grow up to be cowboys.

Directed by Cat Ramirez, written and performed by Rachel O’Hanlon-Rodriguez, with artistic support provided by Die-Cast, She Was A Conquistawhore collides comedy and poetry with theatricality for a self-reflective queer story to be shared in non-traditional performance spaces. The show explores harsh themes in soft and delicate ways to find laughter in the absurd cruelty of circumstance because sometimes life writes itself, and maybe we ought to laugh at our demons, if only, to gently hold them up to the light.

About the Artist

She Was A Conquistawhore was born over 3 years, and was the wild dreaming of Rachel O’Hanlon-Rodriguez is a multidisciplinary performance-based artist, organizer, and trauma informed facilitator. Rachel’s work explores generational cycles, boundaries, borders, and liberation. They have spent a decade working as a theater artist across the region with groups such as Spiral Q, Del Shakes, Theatre Exile, the Wilma Theatre – and their poetry was just published in the Philly Inquirer.

Rachel brought in director, Cat Ramirez, to help make their solo vision into reality. Cat Ramirez is a Philly-based director and producer who specializes in new plays, devised work, multidisciplinary performance, and event production. They create stunning theatrical worlds with clarity and curiosity. As a director-producer they’ve worked throughout Philadelphia with companies like Tiny Dynamite, Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists, Temple University, Obvious Agency, and The Bearded Ladies Cabaret.

Rachel and Cat have collaborated in multiple artistic projects over the years. She Was A Conquistawhore is this team’s second solo project following their first solo experiment which explored drinking culture in the United States called I Will Not Dance which premiered in the 2017 SoLow Festival.

She Was A Conquistawhore first came to life with a developmental sharing in Theatre Philadelphia’s 2023 Philly Theatre Week at Quig’s Pub at Plays & Players Theatre where it received sold out audiences and excitement for a continued future. Rachel and Cat decided to bring another artistic collaborator into the mix: Die-Cast.

Die-Cast was founded by Brenna Geffers and Thom Weaver to explore new relationships between audience members and story through immersive performances in non-traditional performance spaces. Die-Cast has created 24 pieces since their founding in 2017.

Credits