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Arts & Entertainment

Naked Stage Reading Shines Light on Domestic Violence

Extremities followed by Q & A with Retreat staff.

On Tuesday, The Retreat joined forces with Joshua Perl and the Naked Stage at Guild Hall to raise awareness of domestic violence through a staged reading  Extremities by William Mastrosimone, a play dealing with rape and relationship violence.

The cast included Joe Pallister, Anne Browngardt, Logan Kingston, Elizabeth Oldak, and Minerva Scelza, a New York University trained actress and current Director of the Retreat Shelter. 

"The reason it's so good is we ask people to take the stage to then go on to talk about violence," Perle said at the start of the reading.

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In Extremities, the lead character, Marjorie, played by Scelza, takes the upper hand when she tortures her would-be rapist. And Scelza was believable as both victim and perpetrator of violence.  She delivered lines such as: "I can be just like him. I can just go on impulse to kill, maim, or hurt." After the performance, Scelza spoke of justice for victims of sexual violence. "Marjorie gets justice within herself, and she does these messed up things. She takes comfort in it."

In the talk that followed the reading, the audience gave their feedback and discussed with the staff of the Retreat the desensitizing of women and women's bodies. A member of the audience raised his hand and said, "We still, as a society, say things like, 'She really wanted it. She said no, but she means, 'yes.'" Perl remarked that popular music's lyrics on the issue of violence as acceptable behavior. Scelza reffered to this as "water cooler talk."

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The audience was quite sophisticated in admitting these gender roles are not really accurate and can lead to desensitizing sexual violence against women and girls and that the community needs to be more aware to change these stereotypes.

Lisa Longnecker, the clinical director of the Retreat, discussed raising awareness in East Hampton. "People in this community and in Suffolk are raped and assaulted sexually," she said, "The Retreat's shelter deals mostly with victims of domestic violence." The mission of the Retreat is to provide safety, shelter, and support for victims of domestic abuse, and to break the cycle of family violence.  Longnecker said, "It's difficult for women in East Hampton to report domestic violence…women think 'I have to face people I know and tell them this awful thing is happening to me.'" Many women blame themselves, she said, as evidenced in Extremities when another of the characters reveals she was assaulted as a child, and Marjoirie accuses her, "You do exactly what little girls are suppose to do, nothing."

 

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