“Jane Doe” says the trauma of abuse echoes for an eternity, and she should know. For 15 painfully long years, she endured ugly words, death threats, and even dislocated bones at the hands of her husband. When she finally escaped his brutal tirades in 1995, she vowed never to stay silent about domestic violence again: “I cannot just say, ‘Oh well. I’m safe. I don’t have to talk about this anymore.’”

And she has managed to keep her promise, despite the anguish of what she calls “reliving the trauma over and over again.” She and six other Boston-area women — lesbian and straight, young and old, black and white — have come together to share their experiences with domestic violence by helping write a two-hour performance that will be presented this Friday and Saturday, June 15 and 16, in Cambridge.

The performance, called The Persephone Project, features the stories of four women who meet in the antiseptic hallways of the district attorney’s office while applying for restraining orders. Their personal tales illustrate the eerie evolution of abuse in intimate relationships — the first encounter with the batterer, the first warning signs, the first slap in the face. Abuse escalates until each woman begins to recognize what one describes as “the full-blown rage and anger” that comes with the victim’s first steps away from the cycle of violence.

Director and playwright Anna Baum put the finishing touches on The Persephone Project after helping the survivors write down their own experiences. Baum, a long-time victims’ advocate, got the idea for the project while facilitating support groups for battered women at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in the late 1990s. Often, she found herself marveling at the sheer poetry of survivors’ words. “Women would say the most beautiful things,” she recalls. But because everything in the groups is confidential, she adds, “these powerful and poetic words would be lost. The rest of the world would never be able to understand what these women have to offer.”

Baum admits that a performance about domestic violence makes for a heavy night out. But she and her collaborators hope these real-life survival stories will inspire a sense of activism — especially among people who think that abuse doesn’t happen in their neighborhoods. As Baum puts it, “This play brings home the message that batterers never work alone. And victims cannot get out alone, either.”

The Persephone Project will be performed this Friday and Saturday night, June 15 and 16, at 8 p.m. at the Cambridge YWCA, 7 Temple Street, Cambridge. Admission is free. Project participants, actors, and the director will lead a discussion about domestic violence afterward.

Issue Date: June 14 - 21, 2001