A still from Syria: The Trojan Women

Last Monday, the Global Mental Health Program and the Center for the Core Curriculum hosted “Far From Home—Syria: The ‘Trojan’ Women.” Daily Editor Rachel Deal gives her account of the presentation.

The presentation featured an adaptation of the Trojan Women production, performed by Syrian refugee women in Jordan as a form of art therapy. The creator of the project gave an introduction to the production, followed by a short preview of the documentary. Finally, the Syrian women involved participated in a Q&A session with the audience via Skype.

The discussion began with introductions from Kathleen Pike, the Executive Director of the Global Mental Health Program, and from Charlotte Eagar, a filmmaker, former foreign correspondent, and the co-producer of the Syrian Women Project. She spoke for a while, despite her acknowledgement that the women involved in the project were staying up late to speak with us (it was 1:30 in the morning in Jordan). She mainly talked about the production aspect—how her journalism experience in other war-stricken countries was what inspired her and about the backgrounds and expertise of the documentary’s and play’s directors. Eagar briefly mentioned the topic of cultural imperialism, but she brushed it off by arguing that the project wasn’t imperialistic because Troy was in Turkey.

Eagar then showed a fifteen-minute segment of the documentary. Although many people afterward said they found this part of the presentation to be the most engaging—it was refreshing to watch clips of the Syrian women work through and adapt the play after being lectured to for forty-five minutes—there was still a strong focus on the people who organized the project and not so much on the women themselves.

Finally, the question and answer segment with the Syrian women in Jordan began, but before audience members were able to ask questions, Pike posed a series of rambling, pretentious, prepared questions. There was one point in the presentation when she asked a question for Julie Crawford (chair of Lit Hum), while the Syrian women (who, once again, were up past midnight) sat in silence for ten minutes as Crawford answered. When answering questions about their own living conditions or performance, the Syrian women were often asked to answer more quickly or to shorten their responses.

At one point, one of the Syrian women asked in English if the audience was bored, giving the sense that perhaps the women felt the question and answer session to simply be an extension of their performance—that they felt the need to entertain us instead of feeling able to engage in conversation. Ultimately, the environment of the presentation just wasn’t conducive to real discussion or revelation. It would probably be silly to think that these women would feel comfortable opening up to us when we were so far removed, but nevertheless, the format of the presentation could have been more focused around the experiences of the Syrian women instead of the accomplishments of the project’s creators.

Originally, the Syrian women were supposed to come to the United States to perform, but their visas were rejected, so it’s true that the format of the presentation had to be redesigned rather quickly. Nevertheless, it felt poorly put-together and simply disrespectful to the Syrian women’s time.

Image courtesy of SyriaTrojanWomen.Org