- April 19, 2024
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Two women are standing on a wooden stage without a backdrop. One wears a Victorian-era lace dress and the other, a jean jacket and hijab.
Three feet and 175 years separates them.
“Echoes” isn’t about the differences between the actors onstage, however. It’s a play about two parallel stories of female oppression with a narrative that hasn’t changed, despite the nearly two centuries between them.
Urbanite Theatre’s latest production is a 70-minute play with only two actors and no intermission. Playwright Henry Naylor’s script is a strong feminist text, Director Brendan Ragan says, so he was tasked with finding two powerful female actors to carry it.
“Sometimes I think we don’t look at inequities in our own culture unless people shove them in front of us,” Ragan says. “We get to watch them realize that the deck is stacked against them and we see how audacious women respond to that.”
Mari Vial-Golden plays Samira, a Muslim teenager growing up in 2015 in Ipswich, England. Like any millennial, Samira scrolls through the news on her iPhone and spends her after-school hours in her best friend’s bedroom, chatting about boys.
After said friend confesses her plan to run off to Syria and marry an ISIS fighter, Samira is shocked. But eventually she becomes infatuated with the idea of fulfilling her Muslim duties by marrying a jihadist. Samira’s half of the play follows her experience as the second wife of an abusive radical Muslim whose invisible shackles keep her from the schoolgirl life she yearns for again.
Kate Berg plays Tillie, a Victorian 17-year-old growing up in Ipswich in 1840. She’s an intelligent, well-read girl, and within the first 30 seconds of her opening monologue, it becomes clear that men don’t find this characteristic endearing. Tillie is a devout Christian who, upon deciding there are no fit bachelors in her hometown, willfully ventures to Afghanistan to marry an officer of the British Raj.
Her adventurous spirit falters, however, as Tillie’s husband repeatedly shames her for not being able to fulfill her Christian “duty.” Her enthusiasm is challenged even further after an impactful interaction with an Afghan beggar makes her realize the negative, unspoken effects of British colonialism.
“I was intrigued by the idea of drawing parallels between these women who are from totally different time periods and lived different lives,” Vial-Golden says. “Even though it’s unique to their world and their time, there are so many overlaps.”
Berg agrees, adding that both characters are trying to navigate primarily male-dominated societies and religious structures in which the men don’t have the well-defined moral compass Samira and Tillie do — making their oppression that much more frustrating.
“Tillie doesn’t go out saying she’s going to destroy the patriarchy,” Berg says. “And even when this girl does every single thing right, she still can’t catch a break.”
Even though she doesn’t live in Victorian-era England, Berg says it wasn’t hard to get into her character’s mindset. Within the first few lines of the script, the emotions portrayed were so relatable that Berg drew immediate parallels to her own life.
Vial-Golden had the same experience connecting with her character, and she also realized the conflicting emotions that ensued after pondering how important this play is.
“I look forward to the time when a story like this isn’t as topical as it is,” she says. “All of these things are so relevant, but it doesn’t make me happy that these are such hot topics,” she says.
Vial-Golden says it’s rewarding to engage in this difficult yet important socio-political conversation through a medium with the potential to reach a wide audience: art.
“I think sometimes it takes art to get people from different sides and perspectives in the same room empathizing in the same way — to understand that there’s common ground,” Ragan agrees.
“Echoes” drives home each point in the theatrical equivalent of an echo: alternating monologues. Each ranges from about 15 seconds to three minutes in which both actors are present onstage, but one steps to the side and lets the other tell her story.
Each actor has to play not only her own character but every person in that individual’s world. When talking about her husband, for example, Samira plays narrator and adopts a deeper voice and wider stance to re-enact a conversation between them.
Ragan notes that all of these components are incredibly challenging. Vial-Golden and Berg must juggle being a present listener while still remaining within the world of their character and the other characters within the same story.
That’s why Berg and Vial-Golden say their scene partner is actually the audience. Everything they say is directed at those seated in front of them, not another body onstage, so theatergoers become silent characters in the narrative.
This presents an exciting challenge, Berg says. She loves judging the temperature of the audience every night to see what they’re most impacted by, and what gets the most laughs.
And there are plenty of laugh-inducing moments, they stress.
“It’s not all heavy,” Vial-Golden says. “The themes are and the journeys are, but both the characters find moments of lightness and levity.”
Ragan believes the play finds strength in harnessing comedy as a storytelling tool.
“That’s what makes a good play a great play, in my opinion, is that it can deal with these really impactful themes and content but it gives us the chance to exhale and laugh a few times so we can keep appreciating it.”
Berg says she often forgets “Echoes” was written by a man, because Naylor is so spot-on in his depiction of the female perspective.
“I think it’s a testament to his care and research and talent that as a 40-something white, British male, he’s able to craft multi-dimensional, honest young women,” Vial-Golden says.
Asked if he approached his job as director of this female-driven text any differently because of his gender, Ragan says he was just as respectful as he always is, because working with female actors is no different — and thinking otherwise would sort of defeat the point. He also notes that a male feminist is a powerful asset for this production.
“It’s almost unfortunate, but any effective women’s rights movement needs men’s support,” he says. “I’ve been trying to stay open to women’s journeys and show them as strong as possible.”
And just as Ragan can help empower the actors, the actors empower other women by telling the first-person accounts of female characters who are largely based on real women.
Vial-Golden notes how Naylor could have written this play with more actors, but it’s more powerful having each woman tell her own story on her own terms.
“We get to be our own voices as well as the voices for the people around us. That just runs in such beautifully striking contrast to the fact that within our stories, we’re being silenced,” she says.
