The Body Speaks

-- By Tom Phillips

Midway through "Unwanted," a woman steps forward and begins to sing "Ave Maria," in a sweet, clear soprano -- then suddenly rips the name of Mary into a horrific shriek. It's a heart-stopping moment that encapsulates the theme of this piece: the trauma of women raped in war, and the horror they experience bearing the children of their tormentors.

"Unwanted" is the work of Dorothee Munyaneza, a pastor's daughter who was 12 during the genocidal civil war in Rwanda, in 1994. She escaped the war with her family, but years later went back to interview the women who were among its victims -- who carried the unwanted children, often the offspring of men who had murdered their fathers and brothers. These mothers instinctively nursed their babies, against the wishes of their relatives. One recounts a conversation with an aunt who advised her to kill the child before it opened its eyes. "Look," said her auntie, "your child resembles a hyena. How can you nurse a hyena?"  Munyaneza, writhing and recoiling, embodies the emotions of the mother as she kept the boy, nursed the hyena, hid her face from her own kin.  



Munyaneza and her American collaborator Holland Andrews have channeled the rage and despair of these women in shrieks and convulsions, teeth-chattering wails and sobs, and violence -- culminating as they pound long sticks into wooden pots, re-enacting the violation of rape and howling curses against the violators. By this point in the show, some people had walked out of the Baryshnikov Arts Center, but they left too soon. The anger and despair continue, but mixed with resilience, resignation, the stubbornness of the human spirit. The last interview we hear is a woman who says she is an orphan, she lives alone like a beast. But, she says, she can take care of herself, she can do everything for herself. And she gives herself "some kind of peace of mind."

"Unwanted" ends with a song, a recording of a woman singing to herself, a simple, lilting folk tune. Munyaneza sings along, harmonizing, and two voices become one.

Holland Andrews, Dorothee Munyaneza

Munyaneza's training is in music, but she moves with the grace and power of one who can't separate song from movement. Her performing partner is unlikely -- Holland Andrews, a young American punk-rocker (AKA Like a Villain) with a voice that can alternately charm and freeze the listener, and an arsenal of electronics that amplify and distort those effects.

In a post-performance chat, Munyaneza said she felt a more open response to this piece from American audiences than in Europe. A British citizen who now lives in Marseilles, she sees the subject of rape as a last taboo of western civilization.  Actually, here in America it's been emerging as a public topic since the 1970s, when Susan Brownmiller used female rape victims as witnesses in her groundbreaking study, "Against Our Will:  Men, Women, and Rape."  The issue is reaching a new crescendo now, with recent studies of rape in colleges, and the Trump administration's push-back to defend accused rapists on campus.
    
This isn't to say there's no news in "Unwanted." These voices are the kind that never get near the historical record -- whether in Africa, Yugoslavia, Korea, Syria, anywhere. They are human voices -- used, abused, wounded and broken, but still speaking, singing. Munyaneza has done a prodigious service by finding and recording them, then using her own body and voice to interpret their stories. Attention must be paid.  

-- Copyright 2017 by Tom Phillips
Photos by Maria Baranova