Transcript of Rachael Holmes
Rachael Holmes: That was amazing. So yes, it was Ruined at Arena Stage, directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, one of my dear friends who's about to open Motown on Broadway, and I played the lead character of Sophie, an 18-year-old girl who had been gang-raped in the Congo where a civil war is going on. That's one of the most challenging roles I've ever played and I guess as a result, one of the most rewarding. The first thing I actually had to work on with Sophie was her walk, because she has a fistula from being assaulted so deeply and she can't walk correctly anymore. And once I got that into my body -- that was actually the hardest part. It was very real, and there was a moment when I was practicing my walk -- we'd have rehearsal at ten in the morning or something and I get there early. And I'm just walking around in this walk, and it dawned on me for the first time ever that almost a good ten years before when I was studying in Paris, doing an internship in the 18th arrondissement, in the 18th quarter, that there are women who I used to see walking that way. And being a young, kind of naïve person I had no idea. I thought oh, maybe they hurt their legs or they had sprained ankles. And I now realize that these are women who have been raped and this is how they're surviving. So something as tiny as trying to find the first physicality of a character was a real tipping point for me. It was a perfect world of merging the political with the arts, and I do consider myself a citizen artist. I wrote a letter to the Rwandan and the Congolese ambassadors in DC to come and see the show and it was pretty special to be able to write to them, and I actually wrote the letter in French. I speak fluent French after studying in France for a while. And these amazing people whose job it is to try to bring their issues to the forefront of the world came to see this play. And they're not used to going out to see shows like that, and they had no idea that you could go and see a piece of theater and walk away with as much information as maybe a press conference or some kind of political meeting on the Hill. So it kind of opened their eyes in a way of what is possible through the arts. And of course a lot of homework had to be done with what the situation is in the Congo, and how lucky I am to be able to have the luxury to be bringing this story to people through a play and then being able to go safely home myself as a young woman, and not have to be living those nightmares that many, many women are experiencing as we have this interview right now.
