Our team at Athena Project was immediately struck by the compassion and specificity of Sarah Bierstock’s HONOR KILLING. As a thoughtful and compelling journey of a young woman searching for answers about another woman’s death across the world, the play touched on the mission of Athena Project both on and off the stage. After learning of the 2014 killing of Farzana Parveen in Pakistan, Sarah spent years researching, writing, and revising this play. When HONOR KILLING was submitted to the Plays In Progress Series, we felt the need to give it a platform to be heard.

Many of the play’s themes revolve around questions that have never felt more relevant than in March 2017:

What does intersectional feminism look like?

How do we deal with trauma and its effect on the rest of our lives?

What is the role of American journalism internationally and how may that differ in regions where the cultural differences are vast?

The triumph of the play is that the moment you believe you know the answers to any or all of these questions, it immediately forces you to reexamine. Some moments clearly address these questions: Allisyn and Mehreen’s heated and thought-provoking exchanges, Allisyn’s endless pursuit of justice for honor killing victims, and the American reporters’ tactics when collecting information and reporting on Pakistan. Other moments leave you ruminating on the words of the characters long after they are said. While the story at the heart of HONOR KILLING is the fight for awareness and truth regarding a pregnant woman’s murder at the hands of her family, the questions we are left with at the play’s end outnumber the answers we are given.

Personally, I was intrigued and wanted to dive deeply into the method of storytelling for the piece. Due to its investigative storyline, the play nearly follows a detective/thriller structure. In this way, our major goal was to examine the leanness of the play, ensuring that the relationships remained supported and the story maintained clarity and depth. The pace and structure of the scenes were analyzed to make sure information was revealed and withheld in a way that would provide the most effective journey for the audience.

Craft-wise, we knew that the largest hurdle was staring us right in the face: the use of technology in the play. In the 21st century, virtually all news reporting and consumption is digital. Segments of HONOR KILLING rely heavily on the use of onstage screens and/or projections. Because of Athena Project’s workshop structure in the PIP Series, we knew that we could not provide an accurate depiction of the piece as it is meant to be presented. However, we felt that the significance of the story and immediacy of the text itself merited bringing the play to the Denver community as a table reading in the Athena Project Arts Festival.

In our future post (“Technology of HONOR KILLING“), we hope to uncloak the technological elements of the piece and highlight the accessibility, not formadibility, of a full production of HONOR KILLING.