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Review: ‘Material Witness’ Explores Violence Against Indigenous Women [NYTimes.com]

 

A white-haired woman who says her knees hurt performs the first scene of “Material Witness” at La MaMa. Ominous music plays, followed by sounds of loud exhalation. Or is that the wind? The woman (Gloria Miguel) has just been talking about “each place I leave my voice in the air.”

“Material Witness” — a Spiderwoman Theater, Aanmitaagzi and Loose Change production — can be poetic that way. At other times, it’s rowdy and playful, displaying an enormous sense of energy, strength and good will. Yet its subject is dead serious: the physical abuse of indigenous women in the United States and Canada.

The script, written by the cast (which also includes Cherish Violet Blood, Penny Couchie, Donna Couteau, Ange Loft and Tanis Parenteau) and the director (Muriel Miguel, who is Gloria Miguel’s sister), relies on repetitions that feel like political-demonstration chants. “If he hits you once, he’ll hit you again.” “In a revolution, a woman is equal.” “What did you do to him?” (Meaning: You must have done something to provoke him if he hit you.) The music ranges from “Til It Happens to You,” Lady Gaga’s anthem about sexual assault, to “The Rainbow Connection,” Kermit the Frog’s wistful ballad from “The Muppet Movie.”



[For more of this story, written by Anita Gates, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05...ndigenous-women.html]

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