Whispers, a set of monologues written and performed by Marsha Becker, presented the experience of victims of domestic violence, exploring how such experience crosses lines of social strata and how all too often domestic violence is passed down through families to create new generations of victims.
The monologues were based on more than 100 interviews with domestic violence survivors, observations of batterers who participated in a rehabilitation program, and letters from the adult children of a survivor to a judge. Acted completely by the author, clad in a blue dress, apron, white gloves, lip stick and pearls, the result was a sickeningly sweet, painfully humorous and contemplative show.
The show starts off with a question: what if the stereotypical 1950s mom never existed? The narrator is a proper-looking woman welcoming the audience into her house, but after a few moments it is clear that the only things keeping her from nervous breakdown are the pills that her doctor prescribes. "The character was based off of the kind of mom that was seen on early ??"idyllic' television shows. One night I was really tired, and I was watching Leave it to Beaver, and the way that the mom was chopping up the vegetables was so crazy, if you ever have the chance watch any of those old shows you should just turn off the sound and watch how the women of those shows just move around," said Ms. Becker after the show.
The monologues continue with various stories about women from all social backgrounds, some satirical, some obviously not. Becker pulls the monologues off incredibly well, making full use of the stage, her own costume (mainly her gloves) and lighting to separate the many different characters and their respective stories. It is amazing that she was, as an actress, able to change character so immediately and dramatically, often switching from a tragic female figure stuck in a horrible and shaky situation to a clean housewife in an equally shaky situation. Furthermore, the difficult medium of monologue was perfect for resenting the accounts of the women who have had to endure the burden of domestic violence.
"I made this into a series of monologues because that's what I do," says Becker. "I came up with the idea for the show after I had to do my first assignment for this one character building class, where I had to interview someone who I had thought had a perfect life and then create a monologue from it. So I called this one woman up, we talked, and it sounded like her life really was perfect. When we finished, I had no idea what I was going to make my monologue about, when she actually called me back and told me about how her life actually wasn't so perfect after all."
Becker then decided to turn the topic of domestic violence into her college thesis, out of which Whispers emerged. "It was very easy talking to these women. They all had their stories to share, and many of them just wanted to be heard."
The hardest story to hear was that of a woman who came from Eastern Europe as a mail-order bride. As soon as she got there she was stowed in the cellar, sexually abused and used as the house slave. She was not allowed to use the telephone or go outside. When she tried to escape, her husband found her walking on the road, took her back inside, chained her to the kitchen pipes and made sure that she was beaten repeatedly. When she had had enough, she slit his throat with a knife at the dinner table, and went back down to crouch in her usual spot on the dining room floor. She told her story from jail, and later we hear that she wouldn't be getting out of jail for a long time.
"The hardest part of putting this show together," she explained, "was taking all he stories I had received and pyramiding them into small monologues, because if I had made each one a full twenty minutes, in the exact wording they had used the show would have lasted all night."
The only aspects of domestic violence that this show did not cover, and perhaps didn't need to were the perspectives of women after surviving domestic violence. They all talked about how it was to be with a violent partner, but no mention was made of mistrust in the future towards partners or men in general.
Furthermore, there was no serious discussion of how domestic violence goes on beyond spouses, that often the batterers will carry their aggression to the children as well. And lastly, there were no accounts of female abusers towards children, the only female account given was one involved in a relationship with another violent woman. And one could argue that no proposed answer was given to the audience about how to fix the problem of domestic violence in our society.
However, perhaps this play, and media like it, does provide an answer. The main message from the play is that domestic violence is a serious issue, and that public awareness will lead to preventative measures.
Unfortunately, it may take a while for potential batterers to understand the seriousness of the problem. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see what Marsha Becker does next, as she has the beginnings of a couple new plays that go hand in hand with Whispers that she may produce in the coming years.
