Millennia of Women was a devised show based on stories from interviews taken with survivors of sexual assault and abuse. It was originally produced at North Dakota State University in cooperation with the Department of Performing Arts on November 4th, 2018. It was created and directed by Natalie Dulka. It featured Elyssa Bickford, Michaela Burns, and C.C. Manstrom. The following is a cutting from the opening scene.
ELYSSA
According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, three women are murdered by a current or former male partner in the U.S. every day, amounting to a body count of
ALL
Eighteen Thousand Women
ELYSSA
In the last fifteen years.
The chairs are rearranged into a car by MICHAELA
ELYSSA sits in the SR chair, as if driving a car.
CC
A McDonald’s drive-thru. A Monday night. 2018. Waiting for my nuggets. The couple in the car behind me screaming at each other. The woman in the driver’s seat.
CC sits in the other chair.
The following happens simultaneously
ELYSSA
Can we just talk about this at home?
I’m not even doing anything.
This is why we don’t go out!
She needs to eat
She calls you “dad”
CC
You’re not convincing me.
Get out of my fucking face.
No fuck the food we’re going home
She’s your kid you figure it out.
Don’t use your kid as an excuse
CC stands back up, ELYSSA stays seated.
CC
Over the running of our engines and through the pauses in their attacks, I could hear the desperate wails of an unseen girl.
MICHAELA sits, facing away from the audience, behind ELYSSA.
CC
When I called the dispatcher to report the dispute and give their license plate number, she asked how old the child looked and I told her I never saw her. Just heard her.It felt a little… ironic. Children should be seen and not heard. And here was this girl, never to be seen. She sounded about two.
ELYSSA rises from her seat.
ELYSSA
They say women are a commodity in China since the abolition of the one-child rule.
CC, MICHAELA
A seller’s market.
ELYSSA
Too many men, not enough women for them to marry. When you could only have one child, you got rid of the runts.The girls.The weaker sex.
The following happens simultaneously
MICHEALA
They cost more money.
They don’t make as much once they’re grown.
You only get one.It’s the logical choice to just start fresh.
CC
Bound feet and concubines
Babies torn from their mothers’ hands
Celebrate this shift in gender dynamic because women are now in “the demographic driver’s seat”
MICHAELA
A blind eye turned to the 2000 years of history of mothers drowning and burying their daughters.
ELYSSA
Look at the world you live in. Would you raise your daughter in it? Do you fault these women for running away from a world where their daughters might be killed by the man they marry or – more likely by almost three hundred percent –
ALL
In the birth of her own daughter.
A pause.
A shift.
MICHAELA brings the wash bin and dishes out for the next interludes.
ELYSSA
So... About that decision.
CC
That one not to take lightly.
ELYSSA
Taking up so much space you can hardly breathe.
CC
Binding you to the lives of women gone long before you.
ELYSSA
A mother, a worker.
CC
A commodity, a victim.
ALL
Less than.
ELYSSA
Weighing you down like shackles, too tight around your will to live.
CC
Tying ropes around your wrists to a pyre lit with rage and violence.
MICHEALA ties aprons around CC and ELYSSA'S waists,
then ties one around her own.
ELYSSA
Madonna in blue flame.
CC
Burning at the stake, no air in, no air out.
BOTH
Only heat.
ELYSSA
Filling your lungs, your ears, your stomach
CC
Burning the tips of your fingers, your toes, your eyes
BOTH
Your lips.
CC
But it doesn’t matter.
ELYSSA
You don’t need them.
CC
Your hands.
ELYSSA
Your feet.
BOTH
Your words.
CC
He’ll take the driver’s seat. He’ll take care of it.
ELYSSA
Hopefully, he’ll take care of you.
CC
A Lavinia of the modern era.
ELYSSA
Bound feet, roped wrists, broken body
CC
No room to breathe.
ELYSSA
Connected in constriction to millennia of women.