The Haunting Tragedy of MCT’s “The Way She Spoke”
Photo by Paul Ruffalo.
Some people blame gangs. Some think it’s the police. Or sex traffickers. Or the bus drivers that ferry the young women of Juarez, Mexico, back and forth to their low-paying jobs in local factories. Many blame the government for its unwillingness to address the problem of rampant femicide. But one thing is sure: In what’s been dubbed “one of the most dangerous cities for women,” little girls, teenagers, grandmothers, 30-somethings, wives, girlfriends, and daughters are disappearing, their bodies often discovered dumped in fields after being raped, tortured, and mutilated. Hundreds of them every year are kidnapped and killed, their families left devastated. And there is no sign of this unspeakable violence against women stopping in the Mexican border town. Instead there are only pink crosses and photos on posters that commemorate each life that was ended prematurely, often in the most brutal and sadistic ways.
But now Milwaukee Chamber Theatre asks us to focus our attention on the women of Juarez, by presenting a haunting and visceral look at “las desaparecidas” – the missing ones – in the one-woman, docu-mythologia titled, The Way She Spoke, by Isaac Gomez. A true tour-de-force for the exceedingly gifted actress Michelle Lopez-Rios, Gomez’s semi-autobiographical play is both an essential and an extremely difficult story to watch about a culture of violence, male entitlement, and sexual abuse towards women that has taken thousands of lives.
In many ways, this play is a perfect fit for a virtual, pandemic-era performance. The only performer begins the play as an actor entering an empty theater to read a new piece out loud for her playwright friend, a silent presence who watches, alone in the seats. So little-to-no set, costumes, sound design or audience reactions are needed, at least at first. In the beginning, the lone actress even reads most of her lines from the loose pages of a script she holds in her hands. But over the course of the piece, the actress morphs from a Latinx reader encountering this disturbing material for the first time, to an angry and emotional friend demanding answers about the story from the playwright. She also gradually embodies dozens of people – including the playwright himself – as the script documents Gomez’s trip back to Juarez to learn about the disappearing women and their grieving families, from many, many different angles.
The narration begins on a poetic note, commenting on a freak snowstorm in the border town between two mountains. But it is quickly interrupted by the reality of dead bodies turning up in fields and dry stream beds, and poor people living in simple adobe houses who acknowledge the local hitman and don’t trust the police. It is a community that has adapted to the lurking danger and despair, knowing that women will be kidnapped or assaulted while on their way to work, on their way home, on the bus, at the corner store, while looking for a job, when they are alone, or even when they are out with a friend. If their bodies are ever recovered, they may be scarred, burned, or beaten beyond recognition.
As Lopez-Rios gets caught up in the story, she dissolves more deeply into separate characters, each easily delineated from one another with subtle but precise gestures, postures, and changes in accent and tone of voice. She toggles easily between Spanish, English, and Spanglish, depending on the speaker, and at one point even embodies the Virgin Mary, whose statues litter the houses of desperate families.
Photo by Paul Ruffalo.
And as she sinks into the story, so do we – enveloped by gorgeous projections on the bare brick walls of the Studio Theater (designed by Stephen Hudson-Mairet and Julie Ahlgrim), and poignant sound design by Christie Chiles Twillie. Eventually Lopez-Rios stops reading her script and lets the story come organically pouring out of her body. Director Lisa Portes chooses just the right moments for the actress to dive further into the narrative, as well as halt the play with her own questions about, or rejection of, what she’s saying. As simultaneous actress, characters, and audience member, Lopez-Rios has an enormous amount of heavy lifting to do, and she does it with aplomb.
But while it’s meta enough to watch a play about an actress coming to a theater to read a play, it’s even more meta for Gomez to write himself into the story as the interloper in Juarez. A Latinx American man, he repeats several times that his purpose is to listen. To document the atrocities and let the world know about them. To tell the stories that others want silenced. And while the “I’m just the reporter, I don’t know how else to tell this story” trope is used effectively in both in Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife and Moises Kaufman’s The Laramie Project, in The Way She Spoke, it feels more like an excuse for not working harder. Instead of speaking for the women who were murdered, he has written in his own distance from his subjects, which often feels clumsy.
That is a minor quibble, however, compared to the production as a whole. MCT employs spot on, gorgeous production values, a virtuosic performance, and expert filming by Studio Gear to make this play just as compelling as Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s previous virtual production, The Island. They are both extraordinary stand-outs in the era of pre-recorded, distanced theater.
The Way She Spoke is not uplifting. It is haunting. As the text suggests, the ghosts of the murdered women will follow you around like shadows after you experience the production. But as the play also points out in a final grace note, the siege on women’s bodies and their safety isn’t confined to one country. It’s a story we all need to hear, here too.
Photo by Paul Ruffalo.