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Voices from the Battlefront
In 2002, the Voices from the Battlefront performance and workshop was first conducted at a regional domestic violence workshop in Duffield, Virginia, and soon thereafter in Richmond at a statewide training workshop held by the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice. Since then, the performance/workshop has been commissioned by communities in southwest Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and Tennessee. Each five-hour performance/workshop includes a performance of Roadside's play, Voices from the Battlefront, followed by story circles designed to help diverse participants relate what they just saw to their own lives and to the life of their community. The workshop's participants typically include those working in the fields of social services, law enforcement, education, medicine, judicature, juvenile justice, and the general public The Voices from the Battlefront play and workshop was created through a year-long residency with HOPE House, a women's shelter in Norton, Virginia. The play includes the personal stories of victims and survivors of domestic violence in the Appalachian Mountains of southwest Virginia, and the story circle based workshop was developed from the methodology used to create the play. The play weaves the personal stories of domestic violence with archetypal Appalachian folk tales and ballads passed down as warning tales. The cast includes members of Roadside Theater, community volunteers, and survivors of abuse. The Voices from the Battlefront performance/workshop is designed to bring different, even conflicting, points of view together to address a common community problem, domestic violence. Voices from the Battlefront was funded in part by the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Read the Voices from the Battlefront play script
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Comments from attendees of the Voices from the Battlefront performance/workshop conducted at a Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice statewide training From a probation officer: I work every day with victims. I’ve heard all this before, but the story circles and the performance helped me listen in a new way -- with my heart. I think we have to listen with our heads and our hearts if anything is ever going to change here. From a judge: I’ve often considered these women’s complaints trivial. I didn’t understand how it [domestic violence] starts, and how it escalates. I’ll have to be more careful weeding out the trivial from the substantial.
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