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“Life Without Parole” Performance

We were very happy that between 60-70 friends and supporters of Free Battered Women in the Bay Area joined us on Friday, July 23rd, for a performance of "Life Without Parole."

As you may know, the play is based on interviews with survivors of domestic violence who are imprisoned at the California Institution for Women in Chino, CA. The vast majority of the play is comprised of the words of survivors in prison. The play is a powerful portrayal of how survivors of battering become trapped in abusive relationships by their partners and by our society. It also poignantly exposes the many injustices of the legal and parole systems' responses to survivors of battering who are convicted of crimes.

We are very grateful to the playwright/director, Warren Doody, and the cast of the play (most of whom traveled from Flagstaff, AZ, in order to perform in San Francisco) for their generous donation of time and proceeds of Friday's performance. These dedicated volunteer artists performed the play in other venues in order to raise money for the trip to San Francisco. We are particularly moved by their willingness to donate the proceeds from the performance to Free Battered Women.

Following the play, we had a lively Question & Answer period involving the director/playwright, the cast, representatives from Free Battered Women, and the audience. Free Battered Women took this opportunity to address the following points about the performance that we felt were important to explore and were also raised by concerned members of the audience.

While the play tells a compelling story and is a powerful public education tool, the casting of all white actors for the performance was not an accurate representation of who is incarcerated – in California, a disproportionately large number of women of color are in prison. In 2003, 30% of all women in California’s prisons were African American, although only seven percent of California residents are African American. Another 25% of women in prison were Latina, which is likely an under-representation of their numbers, 40% of women were identified as white, and five percent were of other racial or ethnic identities. This reality was not reflected in the content of the play.

The omission of women of color from the cast erases women of color's experiences of racism and other forms of oppression that are impossible to separate out from their experiences of surviving battering by their intimate partners. While it is true that women from all racial and ethnic backgrounds are battered by their partners, it is not true that their experiences are the same.

As many of our supporters know, women of color and immigrant women encounter additional barriers when seeking safety because of the institutionalized racism of the organizations and systems they turn to for help: battered women's programs, health care providers, the civil and criminal legal systems, the child welfare system, and many other systems. Women of color who are surviving violence are subjected to additional myths and stereotypes about battered women that place additional blame and responsibility on women of color for the abuse that they experienced from their partners.

By hosting a play that portrays the experiences of incarcerated survivors through a cast of all white actors, we inadvertently perpetuated a system of white supremacy. We sent the very damaging message that white people can represent a "universal" experience (or, worse, that only white people’s experiences matter). Although we were not involved in the casting of the play, we do take responsibility for not checking with the director about the casting before the play was performed. And although we did address the problem during the Question & Answer session afterwards, we should have made a statement before the show acknowledging that the casting was not representative of incarcerated survivors' experiences and explaining how this came to be.

We apologize for our mistake, especially to any audience members who were hurt by or felt erased by the fact that they did not see themselves reflected in the performance. We also apologize to people of color working in the movements for justice for incarcerated people and for survivors of battering, who have been subjected to white activists’ oppressive behaviors and omissions for far too long.

A related issue that emerged during the Q & A session is that the script omitted references to the specific experiences of women of color (one example is that the main character in real life is a Native American/Mexican American woman, yet her references to growing up on a reservation were intentionally left out of the script although they would have been relevant for the play).

Fortunately, Mr. Doody (the playwright) was very open to audience members’ feedback and requests for more descriptions about women of color’s lives in the script, and members of Free Battered Women have offered to work with him to help make this happen.

During the Q & A session, we also briefly addressed how one of the characters in the play refers disparagingly to lesbian/bisexual/queer women in prison. Although we recognize that the character’s comments reflect some incarcerated survivors’ experiences, the comment perpetuated myths about lesbian/bisexual/queer women in prison as “predators.” It also implied that all of the survivors’ whose stories were portrayed in the play were heterosexual women, erasing the experiences of many women in prison who have loving relationships with other women.

Free Battered Women is invested in working with incarcerated survivors and community members to dismantle the various forms of oppression that operate in our culture, including oppression against lesbians, bisexual people, gay men, and transgender people. We also are aware, however, that same-sex battering happens inside prison and we are committed to supporting survivors of such abuse as well.

There were many issues and themes that we did not have time to address during the Q & A period which would have been interesting to explore, including the references to violence and abuse by prison staff that replicate the violence and abuse survivors experienced by their abusive partners. We wish we had more time to explore this and other issues with the cast members, director, and audience.

Free Battered Women is a predominantly white organization that is committed to racial justice. We are actively working to unlearn white supremacist and other oppressive ways of thinking and behaviors that inform our activism. We see the performance of "Life Without Parole" as another learning opportunity for our organization. We are very open to engaging with people about the performance, about the impact of racism and other forms of oppression on survivors' experiences, and on the legacy of white supremacy and other forms of oppression in social justice movements.

Yours in struggle,

Andrea Bible
on behalf of Free Battered Women

Additional resources:

• Understanding the Links Between Violence Against Women and Women's Participation in Illegal Activity, Final Report: By Beth Richie, Ph.D.
• Critical Resistance - Incite Statement: Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex
• Whose Safety? Women of Color and the Violence of Law Enforcement: By Anannya Bhattacharjee
• The Northwest Network of Bi, Trans, Lesbian, and Gay Survivors of Abuse
• Challenging White Supremacy Workshop