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Overview:
The 1993 play, about a survivor of rape kidnapped by an extremist group wanting to force her to carry the pregnancy caused by that rape to term, focuses on the tense dynamic between two women: the captive and her doting Christian captor.
Du looks after Keely. She wants what she thinks is best for Keely, and tends to her needs as well as she can.
Keely is pregnant and chained to a bed in a basement.
The dynamic between the duo is the heart of the play “Keely and Du,” a searing abortion rights drama that opened on May 1 at Eugene’s Very Little Theatre. Jane Martin’s 1993 play, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama, offers a particularly bleak view of the abortion-rights debate. A young pregnant survivor of rape is kidnapped by an extremist religious group, which confines her in a basement and plans to keep her there until she gives birth.
Amy Weinkauf plays Du, the religious woman in the extremist group and is tasked with caring for Keely, played by Eve James.
Weinkauf pointed out that women had more reproductive rights in 1993, when “Keely and Du” was written, than they do now, after the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. It also skewed personal for her: Weinkauf is a Christian and a former evangelical, who found herself bristling with what she was being taught about women.
“I knew some people who were Du, and I have a strange compassion for that woman,” she said. “Some of these women I knew were trapped in that situation, not understanding that their value was more than just to make meals and take care of just basic needs.”
Eve James, the actress playing Keely, first read the play at 15 years old. She had always wanted to act in a production of it one day, but didn’t realize it would only gain relevance as she became an adult. Some lines hit particularly hard right now, she said, like when Keely asks: “Do you think I care about rapists who find Jesus?”
At first, it was a difficult role for her. She said she had a block to access the emotions required to be Keely, but was upended by a realization: for years, she had been trying to convince herself she was less scared about the state of reproductive rights than she really was.
“As a white woman in Eugene, Oregon, I have more rights than a lot of women in this nation,” she said. “But it is still terrifying, and just a tragic situation that so many women are in. Opening myself up to that has been difficult but extremely necessary.”
A basement hosting an ideological battle
The play is being performed in VLT’s Stage Left, a smaller black box theater in the building where the seats are far closer to the action than in the larger performance space.
For the majority of the play, the only elements onstage are Du, Keely and the bed that Keely is attached to. James thought that acting while lying down would be physically easy, weaving in micromovements that would be fitting for a captive changed to a bed: adjusting a pillow and swinging legs over the side of the bed here, struggling against the chain there.
“But I didn’t realize holding those emotions in my body is a lot,” she said. “After rehearsal for a while, I was like, ‘why am I sore? Why do I feel like I just went swimming?’”
Keely and Du are not the only two characters in the story. There is Cole, Keely’s ex and the man who raped and impregnated her, and Walter, the controlling leader of Du’s group. Though the story is largely centered on the two women, the casting of the men offers novel layers to the VLT production.
Cole is played by James’ real-life fiancé, David Landon, (the couple brings sour candies to the set as a literal palate cleanser); Walter is played by a much younger man (Rohan Myers) than the typical elder statesmen casting of the character.
Director Leslie Murray made the decision to cast Walter as a younger man in the vein of charismatic conservative personalities who have become ascendant media figures in the time since the play first premiered, most notably Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder, who was assassinated last fall on a college campus speaking tour. (“Keely and Du” is not a play that begets political subtlety; the character of Walter makes his entrance donning a suit, an American flag pin, and a wolf mask.)
The intrusion of the men makes for a quicker bond between Keely and Du, who eventually begin actually talking with each other while confined in the basement. Keely shares the story of her attack, which softens something in Du and pushes her worldview beyond the Operation Rescue mandate to save the fetus, but to see Keely as a woman who has been wronged. No spoilers, but the play culminates in a cryptic moment of mutual recognition in the same vein.
“We have preconceived notions of people, sometimes without ever speaking to somebody,” Weinkauf said. “One of the things I loved about the story is that they have to converse eventually, because they’re in a basement. Du has to not only speak, but she has to listen.”
How to see ‘Keely and Du’ at the Very Little Theatre
“Keely and Du” is running through Sunday, May 17, at the Very Little Theatre, located at 2350 Hilyard St. in Eugene. The next performance is 7:30 p.m., Thursday, May 7.
Tickets are available online for the remaining performances, for $22 for adults and $16 for students. Thursday performance tickets are discounted, $17 for adults and $11 for students.
(Content note: Sexual violence is a key plot point for “Keely and Du.” A rape is described, but not depicted on stage.)
