Performance of "Currency"

This is a video of a piece I wrote and performed at my friend Sarah Carleton's fundraiser for International Justice Mission and Restore International. It was a really wonderful event...for more details on that, you can visit this site.

Writing and performing a piece about beauty is not easy, if only because it becomes so personal. In working through the process of writing, staging, and performing Currency, I had to become okay with the fact that what the piece says about other people, and what the piece says about me, are both equally apparent. The only way to have the audience experience questions I wanted them to ask was through the medium of my own explorations and insecurities, and my own physical work, presented on stage. That was very scary.

A few years ago I happened upon a quote by CS Lewis, in the novel That Hideous Strength. He writes: “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god.”  I was captivated by this quote, mostly because I have felt its truth myself. It was from this line of thought that I ultimately found the pieces to create Currency. I began to wonder: what if we acknowledged our limitations, and our preferences in the area of beauty? How would it change the way we act, towards ourselves and toward others, if we were honest about the glory and the danger of being instruments that can give and receive pleasure, simply by being embodied?

In a world of extremes, these are dangerous questions. Like C.S. Lewis’s Ghost, in the excerpt quoted from The Great Divorce, it is so impossible to see ourselves without comparison. And perhaps the corruption we experience in this world, right down to the sex trade itself, can be traced back to the impossible task of seeing ourselves not through eyes that weigh, and compare, but through eyes made holy by the grace of God—the grace C.S. Lewis’s Spirit is so tenaciously trying to offer the shabby female Ghost.

In any case, these are questions we have to ask. Questions I had to ask, and I ask you to continue asking. Even at the risk of discovery.

Please forgive the quality of the video. And because the quality is bad, it's difficult to tell what I'm doing at the beginning of the piece. I am mimicking the photographs of women pasted to the wall. The song played at the beginning is "Grace," by the band U2, and the excerpt of dramatic reading in the middle is from "The Great Divorce," by CS Lewis.

~Ruthie

I Met A Woman Yesterday

I met a woman yesterday. Some years ago, her mother-in-law committed suicide and blamed it on her daughter-in-law. This caused her husband to loose face as the local mob boss. Because his lost prestige was blamed on his wife, he took her to the city and sold her to work in a brothel. He came every week to collect his wife's earnings, but she had no freedom or right to leave. Their three children were scattered to the wind. By the time the youngest son was nine years old, he was in a roving countryside gang and already frequently raping young girls. The woman was eventually given an opportunity to leave the brothel and live in a safe house. While there, her husband found her and they both believed in Christ. The safe house searched for and relocated all three children who were reunited with their parents. Their lives have started to change and the parents are being trained vocationally, but recently her husband slipped and beat his wife to a pulp. All of them struggle with deep and harsh anger.

I met a woman yesterday. When she was a young girl, her father sold her into the sex trade in order to pay for a male relative's education. She does not know how old she was, but it is possible she was around the age of nine. Her owners kept her pumped with drugs in order to keep her passive. Everything about her life is a blur, but she is certain she not only worked in her own country, but was sold internationally and worked in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. Eventually she made her way back here where she met a high ranking official in an internet bar. He made her his kept woman even though she continued to work in brothels. They have a son together. She eventually left the brothel and entered a safe house refusing to tell him its location. She openly talks about every person's craving for love and how it is only satisfied by the love of the Heavenly Father.

I met a woman yesterday. She gave birth to the most beautiful and healthy little boy six days ago. She was a prostitute and due to the physical harm it caused her, she should never have been able to have children. Last year, she married and this year she rejoices over the miracle of God redeeming "even down there."

~Hannah

Cambodian Sex Trade

During my vacation, I was unexpectedly stuck in Phnom Penh while waiting for my stolen passport to be replaced. Upon arriving in the city, my roommate and I didn't have a hotel booked and ended up heading to the closest hostel that seemed decent. Everything about it seemed fine - location was great, rooms were big and clean, owners were helpful - until I woke up in the middle of the night to hear English speaking men making a ruckus with Cambodian women. They were audibly very drunk and in the process of the completing the night by getting the women into their hostel rooms. The next morning, I sat outside my room in order to get a better wireless connection and witnessed one of saddest scenes. The two men where young Americans and they were in the process of paying and sending off the Cambodian prostitutes they had brought back in the night.

The women's eyes were bloodshot and though they laughed and smiled at the men as they said goodbye, the look of emptiness was unmistakable. One girl sat across from me while waiting for her friend and my heart broke for her. I don't know how exactly to describe her expression, but in addition to emptiness, it contained sadness, weariness, and hardness. It was not the face of a woman who liked herself. I felt repulsed by her, but hut for her; however, the real repulsion came when I looked at the men. Deep, deep anger, loathing, and hatred was inside of me. I felt nauseous. A very long string of curses came to mind, but I won't write them down. What misery for all involved. What evil really does exist.

A woman can legally work as a prostitute in Cambodia when she is 18 years old, but many are forced, or sold, into the work. I don't know what these two women's stories were, but bumping into them gave a whole new meaning to the anti-trafficking signs posted all over the country. Many hotels in Phnom Penh specifically state if they are "No Sex Tourism Allowed" locations and I quickly learned to look for such places when booking places to stay the city.

Please take time to watch the following videos. The third one isn't possible to embed, but please take the time to click on the url.

This is the largest form of slavery in our modern world. This evil does exist beyond your computer screen. I've seen it now first hand.

~Hannah





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXlg9bacB1o