Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner to Executive Produce Documentary “Acting Like Women” Tracing Late-1970s Female Performance Art

Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner have signed on as executive producers for Acting Like Women, a documentary by filmmaker Cheri Gaulke about the rise of female performance artists in the late 1970s, according to Deadline. The project’s trailer has been released as the film prepares for additional screenings following earlier festival appearances.

Deadline reports that the documentary held its world premiere last week at the Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas and later screened at Frameline in San Francisco. The Bentonville premiere and the San Francisco screening position the film within major regional festival calendars for audiences interested in independent cinema and performance-centered storytelling.

Acting Like Women focuses on the emergence of women’s performance art during a period when artists were increasingly using live presence, character work, and experimental staging to challenge how audiences and institutions recognized women in the arts. Gaulke’s documentary is presented as a historical look at the shift in performance practice and public visibility for performers who were working outside mainstream theatrical formats.

Deadline describes Tomlin and Wagner as joining Gaulke to executive produce the film. While the report does not detail specific production partners or distribution plans, it frames the involvement of Tomlin and Wagner as a report of institutional and creative support for a project centered on performance artists and their cultural impact.

The film’s festival run suggests a strategy aimed at building early audience awareness through screenings before broader release. Acting Like Women’s appearance at Frameline, which is associated with screening programs that reach audiences beyond traditional art-house circles, indicates the documentary is seeking visibility with viewers who follow work across film, identity, and performance communities.

For viewers, the timing and approach of the documentary align with a recurring question in arts coverage: how new performance forms become legible to the public, and which creators gain access to platforms that can sustain careers. By anchoring the narrative in a past moment and foregrounding performers’ emergence, the film also places emphasis on documentation, archival value, and the record-making functions of documentary cinema.

Next steps for the documentary, as reflected in the reporting, include continued festival and screening activity after its world premiere. Additional casting, release dates, and platform or distributor details were not included in the Deadline report, leaving those items to be confirmed by subsequent announcements from the filmmakers or rights holders.