PORT TOWNSEND — When it comes to healing, you can’t go around; you have to go through — and keep on until you come out on the other side.
So believes Heather Dudley-Nollette, director of one intense production tonight and Sunday.
Its title is “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant and a Prayer,” the author is famed feminist Eve Ensler and the subject is violence, oppression and healing.
They are all of a piece at 7:30 tonight and at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Wheeler Theater, just inside Fort Worden State Park, 200 Battery Way.
Port Townsend Rising, part of the One Billion Rising movement fighting violence against women, presents the staged reading of “A Memory, a Monologue” as a benefit for Dove House Advocacy Services, provider of counseling and shelter for victims and survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and other crimes.
Tickets are $30, or $20 for blocks of five, and can be purchased at Dove House, 1045 10th St., or via www.dovehousejc.eventbrite.com.
Fourteen readers — men, women and girls age 12 to 16 — come together in this production to give readings about growing up in an abusive household, about rape, anger and its aftermath.
Don White of Port Townsend is one of the people Dudley-Nollette asked to be part of “A Memory.”
“It really is an evening of consciousness-raising,” said the veteran actor. His wife, Sylvia White, taught women’s studies for many years at California Polytechnic State University at Pomona.
White’s reading is from the perspective of a man who, amid anger and frustration, strikes his wife in front of their four children.
“He assures the audience she was not injured” physically, and “he asks himself and the audience: Why did this happen? What makes us strike out at women?”
White’s reading, like the rest, offers a perspective on violence in our society.
“For men, I think they learn something about themselves and how they are perceived by women,” he said.
“And how they are perceived by women is always important to men.”
Dudley-Nollette acknowledges that “A Memory” isn’t easy to listen to. She’s mixed some music and choreography, created by Allison Dey of the Madrona MindBody Institute at Fort Worden, into the performance to allow some time for audience members to reflect on and process what they’ve heard.
“One of my goals,” said Dudley-Nollette, “is to bring us all the way through and out the other side, where there is light.”
In addition to White and Dudley-Nollette, the “Memory” cast of readers includes Consuelo Aduviso, Anika Pearl Avelino, Mahina Gelderloos, Ciara Halligan, Michelle Hensel, Camille Hildebrandt, Karen Hogan, Jodie Knowles, Scott Nollette, Sequoyah, Jennifer Sies, Velda Thomas and Patricia Willestoft. Most are from Port Townsend, but Hogan comes from Sequim and Knowles all the way from Edmonds.
Seeing this performance in a theater — in community — gives us a way to face “the reality of abuse in our culture,” Dudley-Nollette said, “and also teach ourselves how to heal.”
These performances of “A Memory” present a chance for people to come together and say: “I am willing to witness this . . . to acknowledge there is a problem here.
“And we can fix it, together.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
