The fish has rotted from the head all the way to the last scale on the tail. The rule of law feels like a joke. Cruelty is the point, as more than one observer has noted of the dominant ethos of the current administration. In light of that dark reality, how do we empathize and still keep ourselves safe? What does “safe” actually mean now?
In How to Defend Yourself, a group of five young college women and two young men come together for self-defense classes after a sorority sister, Susannah, is sexually assaulted. The attack was so brutal that she’s been hospitalized, unable to speak. But as the classes unfold, the play reveals the tensions and desires driving all the participants, as well as their guilt about whether they did enough to protect Susannah. Padilla raises smart poignant questions about the limits of self-defense. “Your body is a weapon,” says class leader Brandi. But training your body can’t always help you overcome what’s in your mind when you’re soaking in rape culture.
As the play unfolds, Sofia (played by Emjoy Gavino) starts using the bastardized semantics of the men who surround her, and laughing at their sexist jokes. (A visual gag called a “piss chart” is talked about, and though we never see exactly what it entails, we can imagine from context that it’s a sadistic misogynistic trope.) Sadieh Rifai’s Eva ends up feeling even more abandoned and betrayed by Sofia’s (well-intentioned) attempts to break through with the men, who don’t seem to think they need any fixing in the first place.
Steph Paul, the movement director for Padilla’s play, has, like Lyons, been with the show since its premiere last March at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Finding the physical keys for the characters was crucial for helping the actors embody them, while also making sure that they were protected, especially while enacting the simulated fights in the play. “I think a lot of the physical expressions and movements in the play are so related to the characters peeling back and revealing additional layers about themselves,” says Paul. “I feel in life, we present ourselves in certain ways. We present ourselves based on the spaces we’re in. We present ourselves in ways that make us feel safe, or in ways that are about ‘I want people to see me as blank.’” She adds, “For me, the movement was an exploration and an opportunity to learn more about the electricity and the energy and the truth that is running through all of these bodies.”
Both plays also end with flashes to different worlds that in their own ways, leave us wondering how we can transform the darkness. Lyons notes that she recently listened to an interview with Peggy Orenstein about her new book, Boys and Sex, in which Orenstein expressed her surprise at how easily the teenage boys she interviewed opened up to her about the subject. “One of the things that I really love about what’s happening in [How to Defend Yourself], in this work that doesn’t propose a solution, is that there is something really powerful in just taking stock in where we’re at.” She adds, “There is something about the ways that the characters also hold space for each other, to the extent that they can with different resolve, and with different success and failure. There are some dangerous things that are expressed, but one of the things that made me so excited about the play is having characters say the things that I feel and that I know other people feel that aren’t being spoken about. How do you address a problem that you can’t even talk about?”
