Speaking Without Tongues
Hidden Voices
Triangle Area, North Carolina
My Role: Composer/Sound Designer
Director: Kathy Williams
Script by: Lynden Harris
Lighting Design: Cecilia Durbin
Performed at: The ArtsCenter (Carrboro, NC), UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central University, Duke University (Reynolds Theatre)
Cover Photo by Cecilia Durbin
Hidden Voices is a non-profit theatre organization whose mission is “to challenge, strengthen, and connect our diverse communities through the transformative power of the individual voice.” Speaking Without Tongues uncovers the stories of female survivors of domestic violence. The stories are performed by survivors themselves – not by professional actors.
The performance is based on the fairytale “The Woman Without Arms,” told through recorded narration. The survivors’ stories are interspersed between narrations and relate to the idea of powerlessness and, eventually, regaining a sense of power and self.
SWT Opening: For this opening theme, we used the song “Other Side of the Mirror” to bring the performers on stage. The main idea of the song is a woman who looks in the mirror and wishes she had the strength that she sees on the other side.
After the lyrics comes the first narration of the show. We let this opening cue be relatively long to get the performers on stage and so that they could get settled and focused once they got on. Many of the performers had not been on stage before, and given that they were about to perform deeply personal stories, we wanted to give them some time to adjust to the space.
Motherwords played during a scene where the performers spent time remembering interactions with their mothers. The words you hear on this audio file are actual words that survivors recalled hearing from their mothers as children.
Take Me Down to the River: A mix of documentary-style and traditional songwriting, this particular song was inspired by a story that didn’t make it into the show, but stuck with me, nonetheless. Details about the story (location, etc.) have been changed, and the river portion was a device added in based on the stories of many of the women who were involved in the production. There seemed to be a pervasive theme of cleansing (more figuratively than literally) as the women left situations of abuse and worked to create new lives for themselves. It lead me to think of baptisms in rivers, though in my case I was thinking of baptism in a more secular sense — a general renewal and a starting over, rather than in terms of Christianity.
Credits:
Other Side of the Mirror:
Music and lyrics written, recorded and edited by Shannon O’Neill.
Instruments, Vocals: Shannon O’Neill
Voiceover: Lynden Harris
℗ 2008 Shannon O’Neill
Motherwords:
Recorded and edited by: Shannon O’Neill
Voiceover: Lynden Harris, Kathy Williams, Marie Garlock, Shannon O’Neill
Take Me Down to the River:
Music and lyrics written, recorded and edited by Shannon O’Neill.
Guitars, Vocals: Shannon O’Neill
Bass: Wendy Spitzer
Djembe: Ali Colleen Neff
℗ 2008 Shannon O’Neill