By Jenna Doherty
In her new play, Adele in Berlin, Lydia Nightingale grapples
with the issue of sexual assault. The play is a sequel to another of her works,
Tinted Red. In Tinted Red, Adele, a German woman, is trapped in a prison camp
during World War II. Adele in Berlin continues the story postwar, and post
Adele’s escape to freedom. The story,
inspired by the experiences of Nightingale’s
grandmother, examines the dynamic between the soldiers both American and
Russianoccupying the country and the German women who they lived among them.
The lives of these women were fraught with sexual harassment, as a variety of
war traumatized men exerted power over them through sexual violence. For
Nightingale, the project started as an exploration of her biological
grandmother’s story during a historical period of particular interest to her.
As she researched, Nightingale was
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| Lydia Nightingale |
struck by the reality of how powerless the
women in this context were to refuse sex. Her focus shifted. She began to
wonder “What did she [Nightingale’s grandmother] and the women who'd shared her
situation need me to tell people? What kind of reconciliation did I need to make
with the volatile heritage she represents? It's been both a sobering and a
rewarding journey.” While some would like to pretend that the rampant sexual
exploitation these women faced is a result of the tumult of the time and the
war they lived through, Nightingale acknowledges that her piece is timely
because the issues these characters dealt with are very alive, and an extremely
real part of the fabric of our contemporary society.
Sexual violence is an issue for people of all backgrounds, and a
multitude of factors including but not limited to sexuality, gender,
socioeconomic class, race, homelessness, and citizenship status affect the
circumstances surrounding and frequency of assault. Half of all transgender
people experience sexual assault, and they are six times more likely to suffer
further violence from the police, making reporting assault and hate crimes less
of a viable option for transgender survivors. Often overlooked and
misunderstood, 3% of men have experienced sexual assault or an attempted assault.
One in six women experience an attempted or completed sexual assault, and as a
college aged woman, the fact that one in four women are sexually assaulted
during college has been branded in my mind. During my first college tour, when
I first walked into the school’s main building, I remember seeing a huge banner
with those words on it. Young and naive at the time, that number, 25%, seemed
incomprehensible. Statistics like these reveal just how
terrifyingly prevalent
rape is in our culture, and how we are not as a collective doing enough to
prevent these attacks. There are so many reports of sexual assaults during
which no bystander interfere to help those who are assaulted. In the case of
assaults that occur on campuses and are handled through a university’s
administration, often the school does little to nothing to discipline the
perpetrator, protecting the name of the school and the perpetrator over the
survivor. Think for example of Emma Sulkowicz, of the “Carry that Weight
(Mattress Performance)” performance art piece, who survived sexual assault only
to have to live on a campus with the perpetrator for the rest of her college
experience. I have stopped being shocked by the atrocities recounted in
survivor’s stories of sexual assault. Early in high school, I remember feeling
shaken when I first heard about the quarter of women who would have been
sexually assaulted by the time they finished school, I remember being shocked
by the Steubenville case and the way numerous people members of that community,
news anchors, and more were willing to defend the perpetrators. Now, not so
many years, I’m never surprised when hearing about cases of sexual assault.
I’ve learned that it’s everywhere and that we as a society don’t do enough to
prevent perpetrators from committing or attempting to commit this crime, and
that a large portion of the population all too often places blame on the victim
rather than the perpetrator. This knowledge makes adds a bit of fear to the way
I navigate the world. I don’t like being alone in unfamiliar places or being
alone with people I don’t know well. At the same time, I know that those fears
are hollow, because perpetrators of sexual assault are often people that the
victim knows well, and even trusts.
I once had
a friend instruct all our other friends to “please always watch out for your
other friends when you go out at night. When we hang out together, I’ll never
let anything bad happen to you”. The friend in question is very caring and
wonderful, but the truth is we should not place the focus on “not getting
raped”. We live within this rape culture where the responsibility to not be
attacked is put on the victims, when really we should be raising people to not
rape, and should be firmer in punishing those who commit sexual assault. In the
case of attacks on female bodies, this rape culture is enabled by the sexism
that is engrained in our society. More visible and universally unacceptable
actions like rape, relationship violence, and murder are supported by a larger
network of cultural norms that people take less offense to, including
catcalling, dress codes, sexist humor, and the hypersexualization of female
bodies. Nightingale, with her play, is contributing to the growing movement to
break the silence about assault and the way that our culture supports its
existence. Says the playwright, “sexual violence in war and as a daily
demonstration of power is as prevalent in this time as it was midcentury. In
terms of degrading and damaging experiences a human being can go through, rape
is one of the worst, and it needs to be recognized and fought against with all
of our resources on all fronts. I believe that no matter what historical period
you set it in, presenting the truth of that type of violence and control in
theatre where the action is only feet from you, where you can’t just change
the channel, where it forces you to confront your own feelings on it in real
time can be a very effective way to jolt people and get them to join that
fight . . . In terms of handling material like this, I think that instances of
sexual assault in drama have to be used sparingly, and only if they’re
absolutely essential to the plot and theme of the play. I am not a fan of rape
being portrayed for pure shock value or used as a cheap plot device just because
the writers need a dramatic scene. Sexual abuse was a very real and very
horrific part of the post WWII era in Germany, and if people are going to
attain more than just an academic understanding of that, I believe they need to
see it happen.”
Artists have always been inclined to
use their work to address the serious problems of their societies. Do you think
that in the case of sexual assault theatre can be a successful medium for
raising awareness about the varied, insidious expressions of rape culture? How
do we go about breaking down the notions about sex and assault that have been
socialized in us for centuries? Let us know what you think by commenting below
or tweeting us @RiantTheatre. Be sure
to see Adele in Berlin during Series B of the Strawberry One
Act Festival on Wednesday, August 5th at 9pm or Sunday, August 9th at 7pm at the TATO LAVIERA THEATRE, 240 East 123rd St, NYC. For tickets go to www.therianttheatre.com.
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