Interview with Joy Briggs, project participant and retired director of Family Crisis Support Services at Hope House, and Tamara Coffey, company member

By Ann Kilkelly

Ann Kilkelly: I want to invite you to introduce yourself, and give me a little information about your engagement with Hope House and Roadside.

Joy Briggs: When we went into the partnership with Roadside Theater I was the director of Family Crisis Support Services, which is a domestic-violence and sexual-assault program. At the time Roadside’s office was down the hall from my office. Donna and I were chatting. She realized that I was interested in the arts, and had been involved in the arts. She proposed that we might be able to do something together, particularly with women – all of whom had stories to tell and really didn’t feel like their stories were worth telling. The women that come to a domestic violence shelter have low to no self-esteem. They have been told repeatedly that anything they have to say is totally worthless. Donna saw that there was a possibility here to help the women tell their stories, whether it was the story of violence or the story of being Appalachian women. Their stories were valid, and they were worth telling. Someone would be interested in hearing them. So, we discussed getting some funding to do that, and then did, of course.

Donna went into Hope House, the name of our domestic-violence shelter, and conducted story circles with the women and also incorporated the staff into this. Through this effort, we came up with a dramatic presentation, which they called "Voices from the Battlefield." The good part of that was that we performed it. When I say "we," I was a part of that group originally and then I got too busy and we got others involved in it. The original performance was a workshop for the general public and for allied professionals. It was performed at a Ramada Inn in Duffield. It used staff, one volunteer and there was one victim. She had never been sheltered at Hope House, but she had been involved in support groups, which is where Donna conducted the story circles.

That is how we actually got involved. I really believe that Donna would not have approached the director if she was not aware of my interest in the theater, and in the arts, and my awareness of how this could be used. I don’t think the current executive director would have seen the potential for this. Not that I am so wonderful. I think you have to be involved in the arts yourself before you can understand. I mean art is life. You don’t get it if you are not involved in arts yourself. In fact, I went into a staff meeting right after I met with Donna. I was all excited, you know, we’re going to do this, and they are looking at me and looking at each other thinking, "Oh God. What is she doing now?" I mean that was the response I got. We’ll go along with it because the executive director said that we will do this. And they were reluctant to talk to Donna. They were reluctant to tell what they felt. I don’t think she had the same response from the women. They were much more eager to tell what they felt. But the staff felt this was really stupid. It was only when the final product came, and they looked at it, and saw it performed. The first time I actually saw the production I was even moved more than when I was in it. I sat there and I thought, "Wow. This is really good. This is really moving." It was like seeing it for the first time.

Tamara Coffey: When we did the first reading with the staff there was a lot of resistance to moving forward and actually producing the play. They didn’t feel comfortable telling other people’s stories.

JB: There was a certain feeling, too, among the staff, like what is so big about all this. We hear this everyday. Forgetting that the rest of the world doesn’t. When we did it at the Ramada, it was so strange because the two women gave their own personal story first, and then we did the drama. So, many people thought that it was based on what they had said.

TC: Two women tell their personal stories before the play starts.

AK: And the play is fictionalized accounts?

TC: No. It is basically straight from the mouths of the women.

JB: It is straight from the mouths of the women, but not played by themselves.

TC: Donna also took some archetypal mountain stories, like the "Pretty Polly" story and song, and worked it into all these other stories. There is a story from a child’s voice. These three women were survivors and also staff.

AK: I am wondering, especially now that you are retired, in reflecting on that period of time, what things really stand out as memories of things that worked? What would you define, in a play like that, as things working?

JB: The fact that it was put together juxtaposing the old stories with the stories of women today had a tremendous impact. It showed that this is not a new problem. The music added a lot to it.

AK: What was the music?

TC: Some of the traditional songs like "Pretty Polly" and also some new songs. One new song was written by Ron’s cousin Scott. It was about a young girl who was killed by her parents over in Dickenson County, called "Pray for the Children." There was a song written in the old Baptist style called "Wings to Fly." A number of songs that Ron has written over the years.

JB: And the duet that Kim and Ron did about getting married.

TC: Oh. The "Wedding Bell Waltz," which is from "South of the Mountain."

AK: So, the juxtaposition of old stories and true, contemporary stories suggested scope and the history of this issue. How did you see that manifest itself?

JB: Well, we did story circles afterwards. I think it helped people open up. Not just hearing the words of the women, but seeing that broader scope. The ones that I did, people were very eager to tell their own stories and the stories of their families – things that they did not really consider domestic violence.

AK: Can you give me a couple of examples of that?

JB: One man said that his mother had left him with his father, who was abusive. He never understood, until he saw this, why his mother left him. He was actually safer with the father than if she had taken him. If she had taken him he would have killed the son. He had threatened to kill the son if she took him. Her seeing the son with him, even though that was difficult, at least he lived. She feared that he would be killed if she took him.

TC: Also in some of those circles we heard stories of people who had similar experiences and realized that the mother had to get out. It was the most she could do, to save herself. After years of trying to understand why they had been left by their mother, they finally recognized that.

AK: Did you expect that to come out of it?

JB: No.

AK: That is amazing.

JB: It was also interesting to me that a lot more was revealed by the men in my groups, than the women. This was because the women had a greater awareness to start with. The men were just seeing this in a whole different light.

AK: So, they are having little epiphanies and making connections that they haven’t made before. That must have been pretty emotional.

TC: We did it for the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice. They brought in all of their in-take officers and parole officers from all over the state. We did this as one of their training days.

JB: Actors just totally broke down. Everybody thought it was just part of the show. It wasn’t.

AK: I’m thinking about my experience working with college age women around issues of domestic violence and sexual assault. I am wondering about issues of disclosure and if revealing something on stage increases someone’s vulnerability. Or does it help them with that?

JB: Well, in the story circles Donna explained to them that there would be something written about it and got permission. Nothing was used without permission. With one actor there was a little bit of a concern. But really, what she was telling was really more about her father. In fact I don’t think she really told anything about any current situations.

TC: Both of her stories were about her father.

AK: And it was an issue for her because he was living?

TC: No. She was still living with her abuser. We went back and forth about whether or not to actually have her in the cast for that same reason. Finally we left it up to her to decide what she felt comfortable doing. We talked about it. I think that if we felt it was really unsafe for her we would have said no. She spent a lot of time thinking about it. She was only in one performance.

JB: I think it was cathartic for her.

TC: She wanted to do others but she was working full-time and wasn’t available.

AK:. I am wondering about the staging of stories for a general public. Does that feel dangerous?

JB: No. It didn’t. In the first place there was really no way to link one of the stories to one of these people. It was a composite. It wasn’t like we were telling one person’s story. It was a composite of things that had been said. Very often the identical things were said. I never felt like there was any threat in doing it.

AK: I was thinking about people coming to a certain kind of awareness about their own behavior that they couldn’t handle. I actually think that theater has an important function that I would hesitate to call therapeutic, but I think is therapeutic. Often, in doing interactive theater work around these issues, I’ve been challenged by therapists about making public ... the things you are doing, I think displace that really well. Making it a composite, making it clear from the outset that the stories will be made public, all of those things offer a framework. I didn’t realize that I would say that, but it is so close to my own work life. One woman I know that works with popular theater says that what theater does is give a little ritual box for people, especially people that have been hurt by one form of social injustice, or violence, or another. It allows a lens that is valuable precisely because gives them another framework.

JB: Yeah. What I am hearing you say is that the person is able to take it out and look at it.

AK: And it has a framework around it. It has somebody else’s body and it is slightly distanced physically. Therapists tell me that is dangerous, but I’ve always thought it was somehow more therapeutic than some kind of group session, which is not mediated by art. That is something I’ve thought about a real lot in terms of important work like this that attempts to make art out of peoples’ lives and experiences.

JB: Isn’t that what art is anyway?

AK: Well, yeah. I also think that in general we think of art as something that happens to other people.

JB: I’m sure that there would be some people that would be affected in the wrong way.

AK: But you haven’t seen that?

JB: No.

AK: How would you describe people being affected in the right way? For example the actors.

JB: Even myself, I’ll admit that when I was initially excited about this I thought that maybe I was going overboard just because it was something arty. I thought, well, I could do this at work and it would be arty and fun. In a way, I was really surprised at how well it turned out. I thought the staff would come around and see the value of it, but I was surprised by how much they did get into it. I think they had some apprehensions about telling the stories originally. I was really amazed by the response of the audience. Every time we did it there were always some weepy eyes. The things that people revealed in the story circles indicated that there was a very strong and very positive affect.

TC: One of the goals of the whole workshop was to come out with an advocacy list of needs. Every story circle that was conducted was charged with coming up with a list. We combined all the lists at the end of the day.

AK: Why have a theater involved? What function do the theater techniques and the facilitators provide that you couldn’t have done?

JB: It is funny to me that theater is considered not real, I think the whole thing made it more real. I think it is much more effective than someone standing up-front and lecturing them, telling them that this is what domestic violence is. The people knew that these were the words of victims, these were the stories of the victims. It has a whole different impact than someone saying so-and-so told me. You don’t want to hear statistics. No one remembers them. When I spoke on behalf of the agency, which I did frequently, I gave a few statistics but very, very few. One incident is important enough to be told. I don’t care if it is one incident or 25 or 25,000 incidents of domestic violence, the story ought to be told. The best person to tell it is the person to whom it happened.

AK: I wonder if that happens in a public situation. I am thinking that I have done theater work about sexual harassment, for example, where faculty women tell their stories. They are composite stories. In the presence of people who have actually been harassing them. Not identified. That would be true of an audience for sexual assault, too.

JB: It is almost inevitable, if you think about it.

AK: Do you think that would have an impact on the perpetrator?

JB: Yes. I think it could go either way. Hopefully the perpetrator would think about what he had done, or she.

AK: Are most of the victims in this particular case women?

JB: Yes. We have men who call, but we’ve never sheltered a man. We would shelter a man. We do have a homeless shelter now. He would be sheltered there. Yes. Most of the victims are women. But there are certainly male sexual assault, as well as domestic-violence victims. We, of course, were in the business of working with women. It is a real issue that someone might be in the audience who is a perpetrator. It might affect him to the point of getting violent. The guy is violent already. It is not making him something he is not.

AK: Right. So, you would hope for a greater consciousness by the theatrical form allowing not only the potential victims, but the potential abusers to see themselves from some kind of distance – which is supposed to be what art does, give you some kind of frame. That is interesting. Really interesting. What is the racial mix?

JB: We have very low percentages of minorities here.

AK: In the general population? I am talking about your situation in the shelter.

JB: It pretty much reflects the local racial breakdown. I think it is something like two percent African-American and one percent Hispanic. It is funny because this state always says that we have got to show what we are doing for minorities. Well, you know we have 500 brochures printed in Spanish and use one. We never could convince them that we do not have a large percentage of minorities here.

AK: Do they consider women minorities?

JB: No. I consider women minorities. We can get away with saying that we are working specifically with the elderly.

AK: I want to ask you to recall particular moments that seem like signal events in either the preparation of the play or the performance itself. Something happened, or maybe changed your perspective on something?

JB: The archetypal stories really had a strong affect on me. Of course, they were specific to Appalachia. I grew up in the North, but I came here from the Midwest. You don’t really stop and think about how widespread domestic violence is. You don’t think about how long it has been going on. You tend to think that these people that are living here in the mountains are all peaceable, Bible-belt types. You know, very religious. The male is the head of the household, that is the concept. But you don’t really think about the effect that has on women until you hear these stories. I was very aware about what goes on today. I really hadn’t stopped and thought a lot about what has gone on for eons.

AK: It was actually Roadside, when I saw "Pretty Polly," that first brought my awareness to that.

TC: The song "Pretty Polly" takes on a whole different tone in this play. Even though it is a disturbing song, period, in the play it is just incredible. Then Kim does an old Scottish song.

JB: I was working with some high-school kids this winter. One girl was preparing for an audition at Radford for a vocal scholarship. The song she was doing was an old Japanese song. She was singing this just like it was some love song and a guy broke a girl’s heart. But this is basically how it went: She met this guy, he swept her off her feet and she left with him and went to a foreign land. She says throughout the song that she didn’t know that he was this kind of a person. She was 18 when she left, and three years later, "I am old." I said, "Hey this is about domestic violence. Let’s get some ethos in the way you say it." She had sung the song and didn’t get it until I pointed out that it tells a story.

AK: So, just the act of putting those ballads in that context is a way of revising, or making people come to a different kind of awareness about their meaning. I really think that was a stroke of genius to do that.

TC: I really hope that when people hear "Pretty Polly" on the radio now, they hear it. So many people play it with an upbeat banjo thing. I think so many people sing it without thinking about what that story is.

AK: Also, we can be really foolish about tradition, without being critical. I always loved that song because it did both things. It pointed at the beauty of the tradition, but also at how deadly it can be too.

TC: What I like about the play is that you go through all of this horror, which there is a lot of humor in it so that you don’t feel beaten down by it. Then, at the end, there is this beautiful song of Ron’s, "Wings to Fly," which is about freedom. It is also about the end of your life and freedom. It is about getting beyond what is bringing you down at the moment.

JB: I know it really moved one participant to see it.

TC: I think I know what woman you are talking about. She was at the first show, and she was the one who was so excited to hear her words come back from the stage. She was just overwhelmed by that. She was so excited. She was one who had really been beaten down. Had been told that she was worthless, and no good and that nobody would care about her. I think seeing the show had as big of an effect on her as the original telling of her stories did. Getting to know that people valued her stories.

AK: I’m sort of trying to chase down the specific function of art and artists in helping deal with community issues and problems. That seems to be one of the things that keeps coming up. It offers a lens that isn’t a habitual response, that isn’t maybe the habitual victim response.

TC: I think you hear it in a different way when it is presented.

JB: Well, I heard it in a different way when I was an observer rather than a participant. It is very different. I’ve been a church organist for 300 years –

AK: Right. I was going to ask you to say what your interest in the arts was.

JB: Well, I’ve been keyboard musician since I was little. My mom sat me up on a piano bench and then started me on knowing the pipe organ when I was very young. Well, I was 13 when I started the pipe organ. I’ve always been involved in choral groups and theater groups. When I lived in Richmond, I was very active in a theater group. I was Abigail in "The Crucible." I did make-up, props, everything. I haven’t done any theater since then except for "Voices from the Battlefield." Really, I didn’t even memorize. We read our parts. I would like to see it with our parts memorized. We could put so much more in it.

AK: And rehearsed?

JB: Oh, we rehearsed.

AK: No, but I mean rehearsed without book and take it to that full production.

JB: I have been a part of the church service for years and years. When I go to church and I am not, it is an entirely different experience. Both are good. I really get more out of it when I am playing.

AK: It has to do with reflection, I think. What an ideal situation, to have people telling their stories as a part of their daily reality. And also experiencing them with another kind of frame on them. One of my thoughts sitting here listening to you is that sexual violence and assault is a result of particular kinds of oppression. Oppression involves depriving people of the pleasure of freedom, the pleasure of their own voice. And pleasure I mean as a really deep thing about the expression of oneself. In this case, sexuality. The suppression of pleasure in oneself is a result of sexual violence. I am wondering if arts, theater, if well done, puts some of that pleasure back. Fills in some of the gaps. The thing you said first about women in shelters having no self-esteem, I see that a lot. I see pleasure as a response to performance, even performance which makes people cry. If it is a safe enough environment, and if it is well done in some way that I am not sure of, then it puts back something to me.

JB: Well, the crying is cathartic. My daughter is deaf. When she went to the Indiana School for the Deaf, she and a couple of other kids got together and decided they were going to form a signing group. She took great pride in being able to make people cry. If people cried during one of her performances, she knew she had been good. It had gotten to them.

AK: The crying, then, is not sadness.

JB: No. It is not the same as when you are dealing with these very emotional subjects. They were moved by the beauty of her performance.

AK: Which is what theater allows, for that to be there as well as the identification with the experience. It is more complicated. I often think that people who are abused desperately need an alternative place to imagine themselves and their lives, emotionally as well.

TC: I’m thinking of when we were in Richmond. Most of the workshops, the story circles had been small. When we went to Richmond, we did a workshop for a 100-some people, which we didn’t know if we could carry off with such an intense subject. What we found was that we had these very stiff, very controlled parole officers and intake officers, and in the first circle around they were not going to show any emotion, and you could see them break down as the circle goes around. The result that I kept hearing was, "I hear these stories all the time, I have to put a wall up or I won’t be able to do my job. This really gave me a chance to respond to how I feel about this. This really makes me want to go back and do my job in a different way."

JB: And look at the people that they were going to go back and work with differently. So many of the juveniles were victims, which is why they were in juvenile detention centers. Their way of seeing them was altered.

AK: Long-term effects of using theater this way, do you have any sense of what they might be?

JB: I would like to think that it would be used more and more in this way. Seeing "Voices" one time, even though it might change a person for those few moments, it may not be a long-lasting change. Hopefully more theater will be developed around the subject. I would be thrilled to death if there would be another grant and more work would happen with Roadside.

AK: Is there anything else you would like to say, any image you want to convey about Hope House and the experience with Roadside?

JB: To me it was a completely positive experience. Once my staff got over the feeling that I had taken complete leave of my senses, I think it very positive and revealing for them. It certainly has been positive within the communities of the people who have seen it. I have not heard one negative thing about the play. That is from the staff, from volunteers who worked in it, from the people that saw it, from the women that contributed to it.

AK: Have you seen anyone change their life? Make different choices because of it?

JB: I’m sure it has happened. I am personally not aware of it. It would have happened within people in the audience and I would never know about it.

Ann Kilkelly is a professor of theater arts and women's studies at Virginia Tech. She is recognized nationally as a scholar and performer of jazz-tap dancing and history, performance studies and interactive performance techniques. She has received Smithsonian Senior Fellowships and a National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant, and performs and gives master classes in jazz tap around the country. At Virginia Tech she served as the director of Women's Studies for six years, she teaches and directs multimedia performance concerts, and she recently created the Diversity Training Laboratory to help students and faculty use performance techniques to examine diversity issues.

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