Magic Time!: Gloria Steinem Talks About ‘Sovereignty’ at Arena Stage (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

“What Mary Kathryn Nagle has given us on stage tonight is the history we don’t learn,” said renowned feminist author and activist Gloria Steinem during one of the most buzzed-about talkbacks of the theater season. The occasion was a  Sunday night performance of Nagle’s Sovereignty, the electrifyingly illuminating new play now at Arena Stage directed by Artistic Director Molly Smith as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival.

Gloria Steinem, Director/Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith, and Playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle during a post-show conversation on the set of Sovereignty at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, January 28, 2018. Photo by Ryan Maxwell Photography.

At the heart of Nagle’s Sovereignty is a profound parallel between a woman’s fundamental right to control of her own body and the supreme right to self-governance of a nation. That connection—presented in the script as material not just metaphorical—prompted Arena to program a riveting post-show panel moderated by Smith with the feminist icon and the playwright.

One of Arena’s series of Power Plays, Sovereignty tracks the determination of a character named Sarah—who like playwright is a lawyer and citizen of the Cherokee Nation—to overturn the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe that disallows an Indian nation from bringing to justice any non-Indian who commits a crime on its land. As a direct consequence of the legal immunity this reprehensible ruling grants, outsiders perpetrate sexual violence against Indian women and children at shocking rates. They know they can get away with it and they do.

In the play Sarah is beaten and raped by her non-Indian husband. Deciding to charge him, she says:

If he can erase my sovereignty over my body, he can erase sovereignty over my nation.

Many in the audience had come specifically to stay for the panel, and during the performance, there was a pronounced commonality of audible responses. At one point a forceful line spoken by Sarah (played with grit and grace by Kyla García) got a reaction akin to a zinger at a rally speech. The crowd had come to be wowed and they were.

READ Elizabeth Ballou’s interview with Kyla García.

Nagle began her remarks talking about the history of colonial rape against Native women. Violence against women, she said, was “one of the first and longest-used tactics in the conquest of tribal nations.” One of the first things Christopher Columbus and his men did when they “got lost” and arrived here was to rape Native women.

“Women are the fabric of our nations,” Nagle said, “not just because we give birth to the next generation but we’re a matrilineal society,” meaning that “citizenship and identity within a nation is tied to a mother.” Thus the tactic used historically to destroy the sovereignty of Indian nations by assaulting the sovereignty of Native women’s bodies: “If you want to wipe out a nation, you wipe out the women.”

Gloria Steinem during a post-show conversation about Sovereignty at Arena Stage. Photo by Ryan Maxwell Photography.

Steinem then elaborated, stating that a woman’s right to govern her body is “where democracy starts—either we govern our own physical selves or we don’t.” Controlling women’s bodies in order to control reproduction was “the beginning of patriarchy,”  which was “the beginning of all hierarchy.”

Then with her characteristic wry wit, Steinem said to much laughter: “It happens that women have wombs. If we did not have wombs, we’d be fine.”

Underscoring the strength and importance of Sovereignty in performance, Steinem said, “What we have seen tonight is so revelatory for what our concept of democracy is and what our human rights are.”

Nagle’s play turns dramatically on the fact that the rates of sexual assault and murdered and missing women in the U.S. are highest against Native women, the majority of those crimes are committed by non-Indian men on tribal land, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that tribes no longer have jurisdiction over those perpetrators. There is only one exception, built into the 2013 Violence Against Women Act, which grants tribes jurisdiction in cases of domestic violence and dating violence. But if a non-Native man comes on to tribal land and rapes or murders a Native woman, VAWA doesn’t cover it.

READ Ravelle Brickman’s review of Sovereignty.

Nagle and Steinem co-wrote an op-ed in September 2016 titled Sexual Assault on the Pipeline, in which they discussed the Dakota Access Pipeline and the accompanying “man camps” where construction workers live.

“This is a global problem,” Steinem said. In extractive industries, in Canada and many other countries, men are shipped “where the law isn’t looking.” Mineral-rich areas are often where indigenous people live. And the extractive industries engage in sex trafficking, shipping in women and very young girls for the men to abuse.

Kyla Garcia in Sovereignty. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.
Kyla García as Sarah Ridge Polson in Sovereignty. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.

Sovereignty is indeed “the history we don’t learn,” as I myself found. It is packed with unsettling things I was not aware of. I did not know it was the economic interests of the Southern owning class the government was serving when the U.S. expelled the Cherokee and other tribes from Georgia and sent them packing on the “Trail of Tears” to live on land that’s now Oklahoma. I did not know that “Cherokee removal” had been Andrew Jackson’s campaign promise. I did not know that Thomas Jefferson had inscribed in the Declaration of Independence a reference to indigenous peoples as “merciless Indian Savages.” The parallels in Sovereignty to the GOP’s allegiance to the one percent and Trump’s racist wall obsession were unspoken but unmistakable.

 SEE my take on Jefferson’s Garden at Ford’s Theatre, which deals with Thomas Jefferson’s similarly shameful treatment of former slaves.

“How can a play like this serve the discussion?” asked Smith. “How can a play like this move people into thinking a different way?”

Without hesitation, Steinem addressed the house directly: “Well, don’t you feel that you’ve learned more per square minute—?” At which point the audience erupted in applause.

Continuing, Steinem said, “I can’t think of anything that has been so informationally, emotionally, historically, democratically revelatory as what we’ve just seen.” More applause.

“We in this room are never going to behave the same again, right? We are going to understand things we’ve never understood before. And we are going to act on it… It’s going to affect all of our actions and consciousness forever more.”

Sovereignty is playing through February 18, 2018, as part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival at Arena Stage – 1101 Sixth Street SW, in Washington, D.C. For tickets call (202) 488-3300 or go online.

Mary Kathryn Nagle (Playwright)

Mary Kathryn Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She currently serves as the executive director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program. She is also a partner at Pipestem Law, P.C., where she works to protect tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Indian Nations to protect their women and children from domestic violence and sexual assault. She has authored numerous briefs in federal appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court. She has received commissions from Arena Stage, The Rose Theater in Omaha, Nebraska, Portland Center Stage, and Denver Center. Her other plays include Manahatta, Diamonds, Waaxe’s Law, Sliver of a Full Moon, My Father’s Bones, Miss Lead, and Fairly Traceable.

Previous articleReview: ‘The Very Last Days of the First Colored Circus’ at Restoration Stage
Next articleMagic Time!: Katie Kleiger on Bonding and Being a Warrior in ‘The Wolves’ at Studio Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)
John Stoltenberg
John Stoltenberg is executive editor of DC Theater Arts. He writes both reviews and his Magic Time! column, which he named after that magical moment between life and art just before a show begins. In it, he explores how art makes sense of life—and vice versa—as he reflects on meanings that matter in the theater he sees. Decades ago, in college, John began writing, producing, directing, and acting in plays. He continued through grad school—earning an M.F.A. in theater arts from Columbia University School of the Arts—then lucked into a job as writer-in-residence and administrative director with the influential experimental theater company The Open Theatre, whose legendary artistic director was Joseph Chaikin. Meanwhile, his own plays were produced off-off-Broadway, and he won a New York State Arts Council grant to write plays. Then John’s life changed course: He turned to writing nonfiction essays, articles, and books and had a distinguished career as a magazine editor. But he kept going to the theater, the art form that for him has always been the most transcendent and transporting and best illuminates the acts and ethics that connect us. He tweets at @JohnStoltenberg. Member, American Theatre Critics Association.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here