Me Too Monologues, a student-run production produced by the Center for Race Relations, will host its fourth annual show this weekend. Duke students will perform 19 monologues written anonymously by other students about themes of identity including sexuality, religion and race. Recess’ Jamie Moon and Caitlin Moyles sat down to chat with members of the show’s production team: executive producer Kimberley Goffe, assistant producer Logan Hasson, theatrical director Afftene Taylor, assistant director Naomi Riemer and actress Alison Kibbe. The group talked about the ups and downs of production and why Duke needs Me Too Monologues.
Recess: Me Too Monologues is student-directed and produced. Can you explain the process of choosing submissions and matching them with actors?
Kimberley Goffe: In the fall, we send out calls for submissions and people submit stuff, and then we basically have a marathon session of multiple hours and multiple days of reading them all together and reading them out loud to each other. This year we had 45, more than we’ve ever had before, and of higher quality than we’ve had before.
Naomi Riemer: We chose monologues and cast sort of simultaneously, so some of the auditions had happened and we began to get an idea of whom we wanted to perform what monologues.
Afftene Taylor: [When I first saw the show in 2009] it was starting to explore gender but not really, until the third year when we did race, gender and sexuality. And now this year is race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, ethnicity, any form of identity we can possibly include, and the monologues we’ve chosen reflect that. It just became this melting pot of topics that’re on Duke students’ minds.
Naomi Riemer: [On the submission fliers] we had a word cloud and tried to get as many identity-type words [as possible]. When you say, “me too,” it’s about identity. Sometimes people say, “I don’t have a story.” When you say it’s about race, gender or sexuality, they say, “I don’t have a story.” You make a word cloud like that and you tell them really, it can be anything. Then they see a word that is them and they realize suddenly they do have a story to tell.
Logan Hasson: We just kept adding words all the time.
Kimberley Goffe: Yeah, like “community” or “family.”
R: In the selection process, did you try to choose a monologue out of each of these categories or those that struck you the most?
LH: We first picked the ones we liked the most. And then we narrowed it down to a list way bigger than we could ever fit into the show. They were so good, every single one of them. After we narrowed down to like 25, 30, we were like, “Okay, we need some race stuff. We need some religion stuff.”
AT: You don’t want to have the saddest show in the world. But you don’t want to give the false impression that everything is funny and happy at Duke. So you want sad, happy, neutral, funny, just a spectrum of tone.
NR: And a range of relatability. There are ones that are definitely ones that people will say, “Me too,” but there are definitely ones that we all will react to and say, “Well, we can’t relate. That’s definitely never happened to me.”
KG: Which is fine. A part of the point is to hear stories that aren’t your life.
R: I wanted to ask how it feels acting out someone else’s monologue.
Alison Kibbe: I think there’s a different weight than acting in other shows because you know that this is not only a true story, but because the person who wrote it could very well be watching you do it. So I think it adds a sense of urgency and gravity to what you’re doing. You have to use the motivation of the real person to really drive you, but you have to create a character that can drive your performance.
KG: There’s always the issue of, like, “Do I want to be identified with my monologue? Will people separate me from the things I do on stage? I don’t want people to change their perspectives of me.” Committing to be in the show is a big task.
AT: Especially when you don’t agree with the author is saying.
R: What are the best and worst parts of organizing and running a student production?
AT: Organizing and running a student production.
All: Laughter.
AT: To be perfectly honest, juggling egos and juggling schedules because you want to be respectful of everyone’s time but we do have an end goal in mind. We want to respect the legacy of the show and the effort the authors have put in. We want to respect the effort the actors have put in. The best stuff is watching people come into their own on stage, watching them when the light bulb goes off in their heads like, “oh, this is what the monologues are about, this is what I’m supposed to do.”
R: What is your vision for the show now and the years to come? What role do you hope these monologues will play on campus?
NR: Jules [Odendahl-James], our faculty adviser, made this great point about how our end goal could be that there would be no need for a Me Too Monologues on this campus. But the pushback to that is, no, we would never really want that. We always want Duke’s campus to be a place where people have a space to share because these problems; these stories and insecurities are never going to go away.
AT: What I’ve been telling people is that it’s about coming closer to the truth of who you are. It gets the wheels rolling in your mind, thinking, “What am I lying to myself about? What’s keeping me up at night?” The act of putting a pen to paper and submitting it and having someone else speak your words and then having those words go out to hopefully 1,000 people this weekend, when you hear truth, you just know it, and it fills up your body and your soul.
KG: Preach.
Me Too Monologues will be performed in the Nelson Music Room Friday, Feb. 10 and Saturday, Feb. 11 at 7:30p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 12 at 2p.m. All shows are free.
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