Seattle – A homeless woman is speaking to a Congressional subcommittee convened to study health disparities.
She issues them a challenge: “If you can look into my face and you don’t see yourself, somebody has stole your soul.”
This voice is the conscience of The Right to Care, a monologue written and performed by the New York-based performance artist Sarah Jones. Though the dramatic premise of the piece is that the characters Jones portrays (10 in all) are addressing members of Congress, she performed it last Thursday before an audience full of journalists gathered in Seattle for the annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists.
The show begins and ends with the homeless woman character, who provides a frame for the other nine characters who address the members of Congress.
Taken together, these voices form a polyphonic monologue as Sarah Jones does health care disparities in 10 voices: the homeless black woman, a Dominican college student, a Korean pharmacist, a hip-hop barber, a Salvadorean veteran of the U.S. military, a lesbian Indian physician, an Italian American Long Island nurse, a Blackfoot community organizer, a Somali Girl Scout from Minneapolis and an elderly Jewish widow.
Jones manages the amazing shifts between such diverse characters almost entirely with her voice, showing a rare talent for impersonation of accent and sensibility. The only props for the performance were a few rows of chairs with jackets thrown over them. As she changed characters she changed jackets, and (at most) eyeglasses. The chairs also fit the dramatic premise: the jackets were the various people waiting their turns to speak.
When they spoke, they spoke of pain and exclusion.
“When rich people start to feel it, it’s a national crisis,” said the homeless woman.
“I feel just like this one lucky Guinea pig in this experiment,” the Dominican college student said about leaving her family’s unhealthy urban environment for the safety of a university campus.
“We need to break this silence and help people of all backgrounds in a language they understand,” said the Korean pharmacist.
“We are in as much danger from drive-thru windows as drive-by shootings,” said the hip-hop barber (or, in his self-styled terms, the “folicular aesthetics counselor”).
“I will fight for this country,” said the Salvadorean veteran of the U.S. military – “and I pray there is no one inside this country who is trying to fight me back.”
“It is this hospital system that is in need of intensive care,” said the lesbian Indian physician.
“I don’t want to waste your time with information your assistants may already keep on file,” said the Blackfoot Indian community organizer.
“It was so white,” the Somali Girl Scout says of ending up in Maine – “and there was snow, too!”
“You can’t spend all those years of your life seeing that you will be taken care of when you get older, only to have it all taken from you,” said the elderly Jewish widow.
I have not included in this catalogue a quote from the Italian American nurse from Long Island, whom (Jones said, in a Q&A following the performance) is modeled on a woman who once cared for Jones’ mother when she was hospitalized. (Both of Jones’ parents are physicians, by the way.)
This particular character is something of a ringer, thrown in to give voice to a different sort of American minority – the white reactionary. Jones said that when she has performed this piece before audiences lacking in diversity, this character gets all of the laughs.
The Long Island nurse drew some painful laughs from our diverse crowd of health care journalists.
“Look at Oprah! I mean, hello?” she said. “When will people be satisfied? Not even with a black president, apparently.”
Jones first performed The Right to Care in 2005 after being commissioned to write it by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. She said the foundation continues to subsidize her performances of the piece.
An editor from the American and our health reporter Sandra Jordan both traveled to Seattle on association fellowships to participate in the conference, and we watched this performance together. Immediately we agreed that Sarah Jones should come to St. Louis and perform this piece.
I buttonholed the great writer and performer as she was leaving the conference hotel after the performance. I told her that we work for a newspaper in St. Louis published by an African-American oral surgeon, Donald M. Suggs. I explained that our paper also has a foundation that annually produces a Salute to Excellence in minority health. I told her she needs to come next year and perform this piece at our Health Salute.
“I’ll do it,” she said.
I’ll hold her to that. St. Louis needs to experience Sarah Jones and The Right to Care.
