0:00:07.600,0:00:12.000 [Mary Reid Kelley: "You Make Me Iliad"] 0:00:12.620,0:00:13.580 [You] 0:00:13.580,0:00:14.820 [Make] 0:00:14.820,0:00:16.080 [Me] 0:00:16.080,0:00:18.080 [Iliad] 0:00:23.600,0:00:24.700 Stamped Monday, 0:00:25.180,0:00:27.160 the Doctor’s bill of health-- 0:00:27.160,0:00:29.450 Unless the Hippocratic Oaf himself 0:00:29.450,0:00:32.590 left a blemish on my record, I'm clean. 0:00:33.720,0:00:35.060 Good line! 0:00:35.060,0:00:37.280 Iʼll put that in the second scene, 0:00:37.280,0:00:39.460 along the fortress ramparts. 0:00:41.000,0:00:43.560 Herr Lieutenant, Mach Schnell, 0:00:43.570,0:00:45.310 you only have 10 minutes? 0:00:45.870,0:00:48.190 Your flesh is not of interest. 0:00:48.190,0:00:51.900 I audition characters to boost my composition. 0:00:51.900,0:00:54.760 The verse needs local flavor to be edible, 0:00:54.760,0:00:58.240 and as a tragic female, you are most credible. 0:00:58.930,0:01:02.790 I've always been very interested in the history[br]of women-- 0:01:02.790,0:01:06.680 what women are doing, what the circumstances[br]of their lives are, 0:01:06.680,0:01:12.280 how law and politics make women's lives what[br]they are historically. 0:01:19.560,0:01:22.980 When I started researching "You Make Me Iliad," 0:01:23.630,0:01:25.799 I had looked at what women were doing 0:01:25.799,0:01:27.909 at different points in the first World War-- 0:01:27.909,0:01:28.840 like a nurse, 0:01:28.840,0:01:29.860 a factory worker-- 0:01:29.860,0:01:32.880 and then I knew I wanted to do a prostitute-- 0:01:32.880,0:01:34.049 a sex worker-- 0:01:34.049,0:01:36.649 but the information is so scarce. 0:01:39.880,0:01:42.869 When I was trying to construct the narrative[br]of this woman, 0:01:42.869,0:01:45.119 at first, I was trying to make it more about[br]her 0:01:45.119,0:01:47.539 and imagining what would happen to her. 0:01:48.430,0:01:53.450 But I felt like I didn't want to fictionalize[br]something 0:01:53.450,0:01:57.000 that was so completely lost to history. 0:01:57.000,0:01:58.770 And so rather than doing that, 0:01:58.770,0:02:03.649 I put her in these bookends of these male[br]characters 0:02:03.649,0:02:07.289 that provide what information we do have about[br]these women, 0:02:07.289,0:02:11.480 and that was the medical officer and the soldiers[br]that visited them 0:02:11.480,0:02:12.590 and wrote about them 0:02:12.590,0:02:15.030 and let us know that they were there at all. 0:02:17.430,0:02:20.300 I learned the Classics at my Father's Knee. 0:02:21.200,0:02:22.140 [hymen karate fest!] 0:02:22.150,0:02:24.150 He put verses in my mouth, 0:02:24.800,0:02:26.100 which I’d mangle. 0:02:26.110,0:02:27.660 [fret thy namesake!] 0:02:27.660,0:02:30.440 A forgetful, and a frigid prodigy, 0:02:30.460,0:02:31.520 [my frank aesthete!] 0:02:31.530,0:02:33.830 unable to express my Sturm and Drangle... 0:02:34.760,0:02:36.430 --Trauma, as experienced by women, 0:02:36.430,0:02:43.220 is often cut off quite deliberately from artistic[br]expression or artistic experience. 0:02:43.220,0:02:44.200 [I'll take my six percent saline solution,] 0:02:44.200,0:02:45.320 [and flush away the Species most invasive,] 0:02:45.330,0:02:48.780 --Many men who did all kinds of work during[br]the first World War 0:02:48.780,0:02:50.190 would have written poetry-- 0:02:50.190,0:02:52.110 they would have written a memoir. 0:02:52.110,0:02:55.420 Women just didn't have those kinds of opportunities 0:02:55.420,0:02:58.280 to process what had happened to them, 0:02:58.280,0:03:01.820 so they couldn't put the trauma anywhere other[br]than 0:03:01.820,0:03:05.140 into the deep dark recess of history. 0:03:08.080,0:03:10.840 In terms of what my role is in it, 0:03:10.840,0:03:16.560 it's almost the only way that you can reconstitute[br]that experience that is so lost 0:03:16.560,0:03:20.020 is through art, is through imagination. 0:03:20.020,0:03:21.870 Do you recall my home? 0:03:21.870,0:03:23.310 It was en route. 0:03:23.310,0:03:27.090 Your army sacked it as I bawled my eyes out-- 0:03:27.090,0:03:29.710 quite helplessly--but in this setting 0:03:29.710,0:03:32.510 I'm Alpha Female, and I'm Alpha Betting 0:03:32.510,0:03:36.650 That you can author, but can’t spell, disaster. 0:03:36.650,0:03:39.710 You're slow to learn, which makes the clean[br]up faster.