An emotion-filled production of “Speed Killed My Cousin” came to Tempe on Saturday as part of ASU Gammage’s BEYOND series.
The Carpetbag Theatre, based in Knoxville, Tennessee, brought the play to Gammage to tell the story of an African American veteran and her struggles returning home from the Iraq War.
As a third generation veteran, "Speed’s" main character, Debra White, contemplates vehicular suicide throughout the play while flashbacks from her service and family stories unfold in her rear-view mirror.
Debra’s father, David White, served in the Vietnam War along with his cousin Lynnell.
After returning home from war, both men suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and began living recklessly. Weaving in and out of cars far too quickly, speed eventually kills Lynnell, but he reappears to talk to Debra in the back seat of her car.
Speed Killed My Cousin from Carpetbag Theatre on Vimeo.
The play focuses on damages veterans face when coming home from war including moral injury, PTSD and military sexual trauma (MST).
Moral injury is defined by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs as, “a construct that describes extreme and unprecedented life experience including the harmful aftermath of exposure to such events.”
A dialogue between the cast of “Speed,” female veterans and the community took place at the Burton Barr Central Library in downtown Phoenix four days before the show.
The community dialogue was hosted by ASU’s Center for the Study for Race & Democracy, Project Humanities and ASU Gammage.
The dialogue began with a scene from “Speed” where Debra recounts her time in the military to the ghost of Lynnell. She explains the feeling of seeing her best friend die and being a female veteran.
“I pulled her body out of that Humvee, I watched her blood leaking in the sand,” Debra, portrayed by actress Andresia Moseley, said. “I heard her crying out for her kids and begging me to look after them.”
After the scene, Linda Parris-Bailey, the playwright of “Speed," spoke about how she sees The Carpetbag Theatre being at the axis of art and activism. She said she based the play off of her own life experience and stories from veterans.
“The cousin in the title of the play was a cousin of mine,” Parris-Bailey said. “I’m a child of the Vietnam war as a teenager, and all of my cousins were going off to war, the eldest of my cousins came back from the war and was killed in a car accident.”
Attendees were then asked to discuss the scene and share their reactions. Tawana Henderson, a former Marine, related to the scene and said she felt that it could have been her being pulled out of her Humvee.
“Nobody knows what we go through,” Henderson said.
She said traumas in the military go beyond the death of soldiers, especially for women.
“(It is) not just the death of friends and loved ones, but also the sexual abuse or the harassment that we encounter,” Henderson said.
This community dialogue is similar to the panel that took place after the play on Saturday, which is a unique part of the BEYOND series.
The panel featured Gammage Executive Director Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, veterans and the cast of "Speed."
Chris Cadeau, a former Marine and sports journalism sophomore at ASU, spoke at the panel on how creative storytelling can be used as a healing mechanism by telling relevant stories.
“These stories are real, these are what’s going on in our lives, and while it may not be coming out on the surface level every day, these are the things we deal with when we’re in our car by ourselves,” Cadeau said.
“Speed” was the first of Gammage’s five-show Beyond series, which aims to bring artists to the community that go beyond the performance through engaging in cultural participation programs, according to their website.
The next production coming to Gammage BEYOND is Agua Furiosa on Nov. 12. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased here.
Reach the reporter at tsbisho1@asu.edu or follow @taylor_bishop6 on Twitter.
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