Diandra Interviews Anya Pearson: The Wisdom Earned Through Healing

I reviewed Made To Dance In Burning Buildings, and remarked at the wisdom Anya Pearson has earned through her healing. It is not easy to be human, but, when you are traumatized, it can feel near impossible. How to rediscover your heart, mind, and body as tools of sentiment were central to her choreopoem/ theatre play and our interview.

Diandra: You have spoken about how For Colored Girls saved your life. Which character and line did you find most poignant to your spirit and helping it heal when you first read it?

Anya: I still have the copy of For Colored Girls that I bought at a used bookshop in Berkeley when I was 17. I carry it with me everywhere I go. I made a promise to myself that I would carry it with me on my person everyday until Made to Dance in Burning Buildings gets produced. It is like my talisman. Picking a favorite line or a favorite character would be like asking me to pick a favorite book. I simply couldn’t. The book has so many dog-eared pages, so many underlined lines, so many stars in the margins. There are so many poems I know by heart. When I say For Colored Girls saved my life, it is not an exaggeration. All of the ladies, all of their stories touched the very fabric of my soul. I felt seen in literature for the first time in my life. I discovered the power of art; that it could transform a hopeless girl from Berkeley into a dreamer. I knew that I had to survive so that I could give that same gift to some other girl someday.

Diandra: How do the works Citizen and As I Spoke relate to who you are now?

Anya: Citizen was another life-changing book for me. It is part of the evolution of my writing as a poet. My first collection of poetry is about my experience overcoming PTSD and trauma. My second book of poetry will be about my experience being a black woman and artist in the whitest major city in America (Portland, Oregon). This is heavily inspired by reading Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. I think she is utterly brilliant.

Diandra: You have been very open about your rape and suffering from PTSD. How has Made to Dance in Burning Buildings helped you transform the pains of the past into further wisdom and healing?

Anya: It has been a long journey for me to get to the place where I can have a normal life; where I am happily married and have a daughter and do normal every day things. The strength to be able to talk so openly about what has happened to me comes from the desire to help others, and to help other women who are going through similar things to what I went through know that they can come out the other side. Working on the production for Joe’s Pub, I was honored to discover that the play resonated with so many people. I was humbled by how much my words touched people. That allowed me to get through the days where the difficult emotions would rise up as we were working. Sometimes, it would hit me in rehearsal, the weight of what has happened to me in my life and how awful it is, while watching it unfold in front of me. Staying connected to the why, the women I do it for, helps me to stay grounded.

Diandra: With #MeToo and so many stories rising on the prevalence of sexual abuse and assault against women, what do you feel Made to Dance in Burning Buildings adds to the conversation? What do you wish or was more focused upon in terms of discussing rape culture?

Anya: There aren’t a lot of stories about women of color. There just aren’t. There also aren’t a lot of stories about what it means to live with PTSD caused by rape. Made to Dance in Burning Buildings is the story of a woman of color dealing with the aftermath of rape and the very real everyday struggle of PTSD. It is also a story of survival and healing. I don’t think we get to see those stories a lot.

Diandra: How do you believe Made to Dance in Burning Buildings, #MeToo, and other works of art on empowering women are a product of social progress?

Anya: I think the fact that the larger society is even allowing space for these conversations to happen is a sign of social progress. The thing that is more exciting to me though, is that women are coming together to say enough is enough. It’s our time. That’s what excites me the most. The empowerment of women to find our collective voices.

Diandra: How do you feel “choreopoem” revolutionizes theatre?

Anya: Ntozake Shange was the originator of the term. It is something I use inspired by her definition. As an artist, I don’t like boxes. I don’t like to color in the lines and I’m not interested in telling stories that fit within the dominant cultural narrative. My stories don’t fit there. So I play with form. I mix genre. I am interested in a world where these things are invited into mainstream theatre because they are tools that can help to tell the stories of the people who make up the rich fabric of the entirety of America.

Diandra: You are working on a documentary. Can you tell us more info on what it is about, the title, and how it connects to your previous works?

Anya: The documentary is in its early stages. My goal with Made to Dance in Burning Buildings, with the documentary, and with my first book of poetry, is to reach as many people as possible so I can be a part of eradicating rape culture. Recognizing that different people consume information in different mediums, I am making the three projects to reach people in their preferred medium. The documentary will follow the journey of the play, through development to full production, as well as my passionate quest to empower other survivors. It will include interviews with other survivors and will feature a dissection of rape culture as a whole.

Diandra: Jumping from Made to Dance in Burning Buildings and into SALT, how do you see your works have grown in scope, depth, and influence?

Anya: Made to Dance in Burning Buildings and Above a Whisper (my piece for SALT) are similar in that they are both based on personal experience but very different in format and scope. Made to Dance in Burning Buildings is a full-length choreopoem that I am hoping has a wide reach. Above a Whisper is a much more intimate piece. It will have a limited run of 7 days as a part of the larger piece called SALT at Shaking the Tree Theatre in Portland, Oregon. I have not decided if I have said all I want to say with the piece or if I want to make it a longer piece. SALT is a multimedia presentation of 9 installations exploring the idea of civil disobedience, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March speech and the effect his words had on a multitude of people. For my piece, every hour on the hour, the audience will see a 15 minute performance piece about sexual harassment featuring me performing, a dancer dancing, and a visual artist live sketching on stage. On the half hour, they will see a short film projected on the wall featuring the same three artists, also about sexual harassment.

Diandra: Looking back at that 15-17 year old version of yourself that is struggling to deal with her traumas, what would you say to her, now, to give her a little bit of relief and hope?

Anya: I talk to her all the time. She is still a very real part of me. I believe we carry all ages of ourselves with us throughout our lives. It’s just a matter of who is driving the car on any giving day. I think my 17-year-old self will still be around when I’m 60. I would tell her that we made it out the other side. And that all the work paid off, because at a sold out show at Joe’s Pub, we met that girl we wrote the play for and she said thank you.