Blackface, Rape, and Beyond: Rehearsing Interracial Dialogue in Sally's Rape

Abstract

When Robbie McCauley made this statement three summers ago in the partially revamped warehouse of DiverseWorks in Houston, where I sat amid a multi-racial but for the most part self-segregated audience, I felt accused.2 And challenged. McCauley speaks this line-several times-in Sally's Rape, a two-woman performance piece that McCauley characterizes as always, finally, a work in progress (221). The entire piece is partially scripted, partially improvised by McCauley and Jeannie Hutchins; at interludes, the two also spur the audience into call-and-response participation. This particular line is spoken when Robbie is partway in the persona of Sally, her greatgreat-grandmother, who was raped by her white plantation master. (Robbie is a descendent of this rape.) Robbie/Sally is responding to her white friend and collaborator Jeannie Hutchins, who is partway in the persona of a rape victim talking about the herb tea and blankets she is given at the rape crisis center. Both women describe rapes-and their aftermaths-in alternating lines, but they do not describe them together. The women remember past and present pains, inscribed on their bodies. Their memories are both similar and incomparable. Indeed, comparison leads to more