The fall theater season includes several plays that incorporate narratives centered on violence against women and how they deal with that trauma. But how do these shows break away from using those stories in exploitative ways? Freelancer Kaylen Ralph (who writes frequently about feminist issues and the performing arts) and Reader theater and dance editor Kerry Reid discussed their experiences with a few of these productions.
Reid: Yes. And I also thought, as I noted in the review, that the lip-synching helped embody the physical dissociation that people who have been through profound trauma like Dana’s talk about. Yet at the same time, we the audience are aware the entire time that we are hearing not just Dana’s own words, but her actual voice. Not that we should require such things as “proof” of the trauma, but it reified that this was a real story.
Reid: Also relevant that Dana asked him to do this play. I’ve interviewed him in the past and I know he’s rather reticent about discussing where the ideas for his plays come from, but this one is from a direct request. I wonder how different—if at all—it would be if he were a woman writing about his mother’s experiences instead.
What I appreciated is that this show is the closest to someone onstage telling their own truth, but she’s still finding different narrative/character approaches. At one point, she’s re-creating being at a party with a guy who tries to give her an open beer and he’s insulted that she won’t accept it. She gives him the thumbnail version of what happened and he keeps pressing for more information and she finally tells him, “I don’t owe you any details.” And that really hit home with me. From a dramatic standpoint, we always talk about how details strengthen the narrative, yet we’re also wrestling with a great deal of unknowability in these stories. Liz doesn’t remember everything—particularly how she got away. But she knows it happened, and by doing this show, she’s claiming the narrative but also recasting it in voices and in an order that makes sense to her.
Ralph: Yes, and I think there’s something to be said about using art, and for the purposes of our conversation, theater, specifically, to give a “voice to the voiceless.” As cliched as that phrase is, I think it’s very applicable to The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon. The Indigenous women Paulina was trying to champion did not have the “privilege,” albeit a dangerous and fraught one, that she had as a journalist, and which Rebeca has as a playwright. The through line there really struck me, particularly in the way you already mentioned—Rebeca’s willingness to carry all of that and put herself in danger as she attempts to spread this nearly true story. She’s showing the production in Mexico next year, the epicenter of this violence!
I think we’re seeing this happen in literature too, right now, with the same slight lag time. She Said, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh, and Chanel Miller’s Know My Name were all released in the past month, and they all center women’s lived experiences, told by women and reported by women.
Dana H., through 10/6, goodmantheatre.org; Tiny Beautiful Things, through 10/20, victorygardens.org; The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon, through 10/13, steppenwolf.org; Traumarama, through 10/6, thedentheatre.com; The Color Purple, through 11/3, drurylanetheatre.com
