Utah Women’s Narratives: Narrative, Performance, and Collaboration

Abstract:On April 15, 2021 the Gender-Based Violence Consortium premiered the Utah Women’s Narrative performance, an online performance directed by Diane Lê Strain, Francesca Hsieh, and Aimee Pike, produced by Annie Isabel Fukushima and the Gender-Based Violence Consortium. The project emerged from an attempt to create a platform for women who were willing to share their stories, particularly those who experienced marginalization related not only to their gender, but also in relation to other identities. The goal of the project was to complicate notions of gender by sharing lived experiences and taking up space in a world that typically pushes gender and racial minorities to the margins. Here the contributors, a director, producer, editors, and workshop facilitator, and reflect on the centrality of narrative in storying the self, the workshops intended to create community. We place contributions by Rae Luebber, Samme James, Sandra Del Rio Madrigal, Olivia Acosta, and Hollee McGinnis, into a larger context, submissions that were performed as part of the Utah Women’s Narrative project that included the voices of thirteen authors and ten actors. Bookending this submission are the vignettes capturing the voices of the individual authors and a poem by Debetta, by way of reflecting on the need to break the silence of how our gendered lives must be storied in publics and community. Here we offer an example of how we collaborated to create this community even in a time of global pandemic where we were separated for public health safety.