Dear dreamer, mystic, truth-seeker, 

What a joy it is to meet you. My name is Phoebe Turner, and I’m a senior theatre major at Smith College in my last semester. A deep feeler, truster, and child of the forest, I have a profound spirituality to my life, that nourishes me from the inside out. A challenger, listening one, and student of Community Engagement and Social Change, I seek the ways my spiritual path can take action on the injustices in the world. Waves of anger shake me as I see beaches washed away, children stricken from existence, and people ill with the cold ice of history in their bones. I am tired of the thousands of years that we have hurt each other, and I am regretfully recognizant of the horrors my people have done to contribute to it.

My ancestors came to the American colonies from England in the 1600s with profit on their minds, and a new life on their hearts. Many of them spread across the Southeast and fought wars and enslaved others to ensure they achieved this goal. I walk with the blood of colonizers in my veins every day, and share the DNA of many of the most powerful men this country has seen. My mind, sensitive to all of this violence, and under the pressure of an intense psychological disorder, weeps and grasps for understanding, intuiting the deep suffering my people have committed. I feel raw with disdain at times. As a pagan woman, I feel the cycles of life, death, and rebirth constantly, and the ways these people have disrupted the natural way of things feels horrifyingly wrong. 

Deeply keening, but also very much a believer in the power of love on this planet, I have come to a project that I hope can heal something for me, and for the ones who watch it. Combing through endless records of plantation masters and colonizers in my family, I finally found some who may have some wisdom or hope for me. My ancestors George and Ann Durant were anti-authoritarians in Albemarle County, North Carolina, which was known as a safe haven for freed slaves and indentured servants. Ann, among the many politically active women in Albemarle, was the first female attorney to ever appear in a North Carolina court. Finally able to believe they could speak some message of truth and compassion, I can peer into the past and momentarily touch history with a sense of hope. I will study the womxn of this place, and craft a character inspired by them and the many complexities they faced. The woman who comes out of this research will be the lead in one part of my play, mirrored and studied by her descendant Layla, a researcher and soon to be mother living in modern times. 

But they are both only one kind of American, as am I. There’s a wild and courageous woman in all of us, within every shade, herstory and belief system under the sun. I want to search for where She lives and breathes in our people today. I’m searching for 6-8 womxn who would like to explore the wisdom and power of their own radiant and gracious female ancestor, as an homage to the many who have fought before us for justice, and the goddesses across cultures who represent the divine feminine energy that can balm the knotted scar tissue on our nation’s spirit. What do the womxn of the naissance of America have to say to the ones facing the apparent end? Can they give us some idea of compassion? Some way forward? 

I hope to offer a stipend of $75-$200 to each womxn who participates. This will depend on how many do end up working on the project, and the generosity of my support network and the Five Colleges Multicultural Theater Program. The 7-9 of us will work together throughout this fall, and you are welcome to participate in or simply attend the final reading and community discussion about the piece in December when it is held at Smith College. I invite you to dream, to encounter, to wonder at history. I hope we can celebrate the power of womxn, humanity and grace together. 

With love and gratitude, I hope to hear from you soon. 

Phoebe