Telling Our Stories of Home

International Performance Pieces By and About Women

Kathy A. Perkins

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781350259782
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350259812
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Drama

What is home? The answer seems obvious. But Telling Our Stories of Home, an international collection of eleven plays by and about women from Lebanon, Haiti, Venezuela, Uganda, Palestine, Brazil, India, UK, and the US, complicates the answer.

The "answer" includes stories as far-ranging as: enslaved women trying to create a home, one by any means necessary, and one in the ocean; siblings wrestling with their differing devotion to home after their mother's death; a family wrestling with the government's refusal to allow the burial of their soldier-son in their hometown; a young scholar attempting to feel at home after studying abroad; a young man fleeing home due to his sexual orientation only to discover the difficulty of creating home elsewhere, and Siddis (Indians of African descent) continuing to struggle for acceptance despite having lived in India for over 600 years.

These are voices seldom represented to a larger audience. The plays and performance pieces range from 20 to 90-minute pieces and include a mix of monologue, duologue, and ensemble plays. Short yet powerful, they allow fantastic performance opportunities particularly in an age of social-distancing with flexible casts that together invite the theme of home to be performed and studied on the page.

The plays include: The House by Arzé Khodr (Lebanon), Happy by Kia Corthron (US), The Blue of the Island by Évelyne Trouillot (Haiti), Nine Lives by Zodwa Nyoni (UK), Leaving, but Can't Let Go by Lupe Gehrenbeck (Venezuela), Questions of Home by Doreen Baingana (Uganda), On the Last Day of Spring by Fidaa Zidan (Palestine) Letting Go and Moving On by Louella Dizon San Juan (US), Antimemories of an Interrupted Trip by Aldri Anunciação (Brazil), So Goes We by Jacqueline E. Lawton (US), and Those Who Live Here, Those Who Live There by Geeta P. Siddi and Girija P. Siddi (India)

So Goes We

Jacqueline E. Lawton

Jacqueline E. Lawton is a playwright, dramaturg, producer, and advocate for access, equity, diversity, and inclusion in the American theater. Her produced plays include Blood-bound and Tongue-tied, Deep Belly Beautiful, Edges of Time, The Hampton Years, Intelligence, Mad Breed, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Her work has been developed and presented at the following venues: Classical Theater of Harlem, Folger Shakespeare Library, The Kennedy Center, Pasadena Playhouse, Rep Stage, Rorschach Theater Company, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Round House Theatre, Theater J, and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company. Lawton has received commissions from Arena Stage, Adventure Theatre & ATMTC Academy, National New Play Network, National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of American History, Round House Theatre, Tantrum Theater, and Theater J. She received her MFA in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a 2012 TCG Young Leaders of Color award recipient and an alum of the National New Play Network, Arena Stage’s Playwrights’ Arena, and Center Stage’s Playwrights Collective. Lawton is an associate professor in the Department of Dramatic Art and co-director of Southern Futures at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a dramaturg for PlayMakers Repertory Company and a proud member of the Dramatist Guild.

Setting

This socio-political performance piece is presented as a choral drama. The story follows the fraught and intersecting journeys of asylum seekers and their legal advocates in post-2016 America as the country draws shut its proverbial “golden door.”

Production History

New Play Development Workshop at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Dramatic Art, December 2019.

Cast

Kervens Jean-Baptiste	Thaddaeus Edwards
Dominique Jean-Baptiste	Rasool Jahan
Josie Lamont-Patterson	Tia James
Kazima Lamont-Patterson	Monèt Marshall
Sarita de la Cruz Snyder	Sarita Ocón

Production Team

Director	JaMeeka Holloway-Burrell
Dramaturg	Jules Odendahl-James
Stage Directions	Takhona Hlatshwako
Stage Manager	Erin Bell

Characters

Josie Lamont-Patterson (black woman, forties), an immigration lawyer.

Kazima Lamont-Patterson (black woman, forties), Josie’s wife, geneticist, community-based activist and organizer.

Dominique Jean-Baptiste (black woman, thirties), ethics professor, political activist, refugee seeking political asylum.

Sarita de la Cruz Snyder (Latinx woman, forties), Josie’s best friend, immigration lawyer.

Kervens Jean-Baptiste (black man, forties), Dominique’s husband, economics professor.

Cast Breakdown

Four women, one man.

Time and Place

July 2018 to May 2019.

Various.

Production Notes

•There are five chairs. By each chair, there are water bottles for the actors.

•There are also various props that will be used throughout the play.

•Larger items, such as a table and sofa, are off to the side. These larger items should have casters on them for ease of mobility.

Notes

•(—) dashes at the end of a sentence are cut-offs by the following line.

•(—) dashes within a sentence are a self-cut-offs, an acceleration into the next thought.

•(…) ellipses at the end of a sentence indicate a character unsure of what to say or how to say what comes next.

•(Pause) is a shared moment of silence.

•(Beat) is a longer pause in which a shift has occurred, this could be an intenti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction by Kathy A. Perkins
• The House by Arzé Khodr (Lebanon)
• Happy by Kia Corthron (USA)
• The Blue of the Island by Évelyne Trouillot (Haiti)
• Nine Lives by Zodwa Nyoni (UK)
• Leaving, but Can’t Let Go by Lupe Gehrenbeck (Venezuela)
• Questions of Home by Doreen Baingana (Uganda)
• On the Last Day of Spring by Fidaa Zidan (Palestine)
• Letting Go and Moving On by Louella Dizon San Juan (USA)
• Antimemories of an Interrupted Trip by Aldri Anunciação (Brazil)
• So Goes We by Jacqueline E. Lawton (USA)
• Those Who Live Here, Those Who Live There by Geeta P. Siddi and Girija P. Siddi (India)
• Copyright