Cast Blog: Dana Iannuzzi (Riverbend)

Initially, when Jay explained to me what my role (he described Riverbend as an “Iraqi-Revolutionary”) I thought immediately of Che Guevara and thought that I was clearly going to be portraying someone who was integral to the plot - not through what I said or what I did, but more by the character’s presence.

Guevara, or rather a character loosely based on him, appears as a watcher in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita and urges the plot onward for the audience while also giving his own perspective on the events taking place. So right there automatically I thought that that could be something helpful to get me into character.

Monday, June 30th - First Day of Rehearsal @ 17 Warren Street.
Today was our first read through and I have found out that Riverbend is an actual person not just some fictional theatrical instrument for plot development. It has completely blown my mind! I am playing someone who is actually out there right now, probably about my age, who has been through a traumatic life experience I have not been. Now being a know-it-all-smarty-pants I had to go home immediately and find her blog, print it out, and read them figuring that it would be in the vein of character development. I read the first one I printed out which was dated Monday, October 22nd, 2007 and immediately realized that this role was going to be the most amazing and difficult one I have ever played - she is just like me.

Monday, July 14th - First Rehearsal at Mitch & Alice’s Apartment
We sat in a circle as soon as everyone had arrived and Jay (our director) asked each of us about us, or rather our characters. Not how we were becoming them or playing them, but about them. How they think, how they are, what they’re feeling, why they’re here - who they truly are. Having read as many of Riverbend’s blogs as I can get my hands on right now and I have to say the first two things that came into my mind were angry and immediately following that emotion is sad. Unlike everyone else in the cast who is playing someone who exhists I have the difficulty of taking limited writings and even more limited personal information and transforming that into something concrete that will hopefully resonate with them.

Riverbend, as far as I can tell, is now about 29 or 30 years old. She comes from what we would consider an upper-middle class family in Iraq. She is a college educated, working professional. The only thing that separates her from me in terms of this laundry list of things is that she is a refugee. Riverbend and her family left Iraq and sought refuge in Syria in September of 2007. In one of her last blogs that was posted Riverbend had this to say about being a refugee:

“After all, refugees are people who sleep in tents and have no potable water or plumbing, right? Refugees carry their belongings in bags instead of suitcases and they don’t have cell phones or internet access, right? Grasping my passport in my hand like my life depended on it, with two extra months in Syria stamped inside; it hit me how wrong I was. We were all refugees. I was suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country - including their own… especially their own.”

In February of 2007 I participated in a production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and was the first speaker in the final moment of the show. Ms. Ensler requests that those performing her show do a monologue which is called “The Spotlight” monologue. This monologue is meant to speak specifically about what V-Day (the parent organization of The Vagina Monologues) is fighting for during that particular year. V-Day in 2007 was throwing the spotlight on women in war torn areas and after reading what Riverbend wrote about her perception of refugees I though immediately of the first few lines of the 2007 Spotlight Monologue because up until that moment I realized that I too had a preconceived notion about what a refugee was. Ensler writes, “We make decisions all the time. Decisions about Them. Them is always different than us. Them has no face. Them is a little bit deserving of all the bad that happens to them. Them is used to violence - it’s in their blood.” Have you ever seen a refugee? Would you know it if you did? Perhaps you have seen one and they looked exactly like you and you failed to notice it because you could never be a refugee. Nothing like that would ever happen to you… could it?

Click here to read more from the real life Riverbend in her blog “Baghdad Burning.”