{"title":"Global Feminism from Page to Stage: Teaching Half the Sky and Seven","authors":"B. W. Capo","doi":"10.5406/FEMTEACHER.23.1.0017","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Imagine a dark stage with, one by one, seven women stepping forward to declare their name and country of origin. They then sit and interweave seven monologues of their individual struggles for gender justice in Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Russia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Guatemala. “What can I do?” asks Farida, an Afghani woman who feels powerless; “Maybe I can help the women of my country,” Mukhtar Mai from Pakistan realizes later in the play (Cizmar et al. 14, 27). These voices intersect, themes overlapping from speaker to speaker even as the seven stories belong to different places and times. Each woman begins by telling her story directly to the audience; but by the end, the actresses include each other in their gazes and respond to each other’s words, a symbol of their joint suffering, shared strength, and the solidarity necessary for lasting change. At the play’s conclusion, Guatemalan Congresswoman Anabella De Leon’s declaration “No more silence!” is a call to the entire audience (37). Women’s voices are heard, individually and collectively, throwing a spotlight on global gender issues and women’s crucial role in social change. What I have briefly described is the documentary play Seven, the collaboration of seven female playwrights with seven women activists connected in 2006 by the Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nonprofit nongovernmental organization supporting the development of female leaders (Vital).1 The stated mission of Vital Voices, to “identify, invest in and bring visibility to extraordinary women around the world by unleashing their leadership potential to transform lives and accelerate peace and prosperity in their communities,” is well served by the creative drama Seven (Vital). Like the more well-known Vagina Monologues, Seven is an ensemble piece of documentary theatre based on interviews. Also like Vagina Monologues, the play has minimal staging—usually just seven women, scripts in hand, on a stage devoid of props or sets. Anna Deavere Smith, an actress and writer known for her “journalism-based theatre” (Pressley), interviewed Nigerian activist Hafsat Abiola, and is perhaps the best known of the playwrights attached to the project, who also include Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol K. Mack, Ruth Margraff, and Susan Yankowitz. Each playwright interviewed","PeriodicalId":287450,"journal":{"name":"Feminist Teacher","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2013-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Feminist Teacher","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5406/FEMTEACHER.23.1.0017","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Imagine a dark stage with, one by one, seven women stepping forward to declare their name and country of origin. They then sit and interweave seven monologues of their individual struggles for gender justice in Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Russia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Guatemala. “What can I do?” asks Farida, an Afghani woman who feels powerless; “Maybe I can help the women of my country,” Mukhtar Mai from Pakistan realizes later in the play (Cizmar et al. 14, 27). These voices intersect, themes overlapping from speaker to speaker even as the seven stories belong to different places and times. Each woman begins by telling her story directly to the audience; but by the end, the actresses include each other in their gazes and respond to each other’s words, a symbol of their joint suffering, shared strength, and the solidarity necessary for lasting change. At the play’s conclusion, Guatemalan Congresswoman Anabella De Leon’s declaration “No more silence!” is a call to the entire audience (37). Women’s voices are heard, individually and collectively, throwing a spotlight on global gender issues and women’s crucial role in social change. What I have briefly described is the documentary play Seven, the collaboration of seven female playwrights with seven women activists connected in 2006 by the Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nonprofit nongovernmental organization supporting the development of female leaders (Vital).1 The stated mission of Vital Voices, to “identify, invest in and bring visibility to extraordinary women around the world by unleashing their leadership potential to transform lives and accelerate peace and prosperity in their communities,” is well served by the creative drama Seven (Vital). Like the more well-known Vagina Monologues, Seven is an ensemble piece of documentary theatre based on interviews. Also like Vagina Monologues, the play has minimal staging—usually just seven women, scripts in hand, on a stage devoid of props or sets. Anna Deavere Smith, an actress and writer known for her “journalism-based theatre” (Pressley), interviewed Nigerian activist Hafsat Abiola, and is perhaps the best known of the playwrights attached to the project, who also include Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol K. Mack, Ruth Margraff, and Susan Yankowitz. Each playwright interviewed
想象一下,在一个黑暗的舞台上,七个女人一个接一个地走上前来,宣布她们的名字和原籍国。然后,她们坐在一起,讲述她们在柬埔寨、北爱尔兰、俄罗斯、尼日利亚、巴基斯坦、阿富汗和危地马拉为性别正义而奋斗的七段独白。“我能做什么?”感到无能为力的阿富汗妇女法里达问道;“也许我可以帮助我们国家的女性,”来自巴基斯坦的Mukhtar Mai在剧中后来意识到(Cizmar et al. 14,27)。这些声音相互交叉,尽管七个故事属于不同的地点和时代,但演讲者之间的主题重叠。每个女人都以直接向观众讲述自己的故事开始;但到最后,女演员们互相凝视,互相回应,这象征着她们共同的痛苦,共同的力量,以及持久变革所必需的团结。在戏剧的结尾,危地马拉国会女议员安娜贝拉·德莱昂(Anabella De Leon)的宣言“不要再沉默了!”是对全体听众的号召(37)。无论是个人还是集体,妇女的声音都能得到倾听,使全球性别问题和妇女在社会变革中的关键作用成为人们关注的焦点。我所简要介绍的是纪录片《七》(Seven),由七位女剧作家与七位女性活动家在2006年通过支持女性领导者发展的非营利性非政府组织“生命之声全球伙伴关系”(Vital)联系在一起“生命之声”的使命是“发掘、投资世界各地的杰出女性,释放她们的领导潜力,改变她们的生活,加速她们所在社区的和平与繁荣,从而提高她们的知名度”。这部创意剧《生命之声》很好地体现了这一使命。和更著名的《阴道独白》一样,《七》是一部基于访谈的纪录片合奏剧。和《阴道独白》一样,这部剧的舞台布景也很少——通常只有七个女人,手里拿着剧本,舞台上没有道具或布景。安娜·迪弗尔·史密斯,一位以“以新闻为基础的戏剧”(Pressley)而闻名的女演员兼作家,采访了尼日利亚活动家哈夫萨特·阿比奥拉,她可能是该项目中最知名的剧作家,其他剧作家还包括保拉·奇兹玛、凯瑟琳·菲洛克斯、盖尔·克里格尔、卡罗尔·k·麦克、露丝·玛格拉夫和苏珊·扬科维茨。每一位接受采访的剧作家