PhD student puts on original performance about reproductive injustice and incarceration

On Friday and Saturday, audience members gathered in Swain Hall for Fight Like Hell, a research performance that explores reproductive injustice and incarceration. The sold-out performance was inspired by Pamela Winn, Kristie Puckett, Latisha Facyson and Tiawana Brown — four black women that have survived pregnancy during incarceration, and some even labor during incarceration. 

“It's an honor for my story to be told,” Puckett said. “It's an honor for it to be sold out, and I'm just hopeful that people walk away seeing incarcerated pregnant people differently than they walked in seeing them.”

The script and plot are based on the conversations the director, Megan N. Foster, had with the women. Foster is a fifth year doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication. 

The casting process was not an ordinary audition process. Foster attended performances on campus to scout and invite actors that seemed to have the same fire she saw in the women's stories.

The four women were directly involved with the process of scripting by giving feedback and changes throughout the script. Foster said that the women having as much agency as possible was important to her — it was not her story but theirs. 

“We're talking about pretty horrific stories of survival and injustice that can only be changed if we get other people involved and we get more support from folks in our community, folks who might not know that this is happening,” Foster said. 

The title, Fight Like Hell, was Winn's response to a question Foster asked her: "What advice would you give to pregnant women who are currently experiencing incarceration?" Winn is the founder of a nonprofit organization named RestoreHER US, which advocates for incarcerated women and girls, including victims of reproductive injustice.  

The show’s narration was done by Foster herself. Foster then reenacted each conversation with the four women, played by actors. 

Latisha Facyson, played by Nadia Jefferson, lost her son to gun violence in 2021 while incarcerated. Kristie Puckett, played by Jailyn Neville, shared her experience of being pregnant and voiced the lack of care for pregnant women during incarceration. Pamela Winn, played by Cree Noble, discussed the tragic accident of losing her baby during labor while incarcerated.

Tiawana Brown, played by Alizabeth Ervin, shared her experience of being shackled to the bed during labor while incarcerated. In 2021, North Carolina banned shackling pregnant women beyond the second trimester, unless the individual had documented evidence that they could be a potential danger to others. 

“My [daughters], we are very, very close and incarceration did try to break us, but the love that I came from sustained us,” Brown said.

Throughout the play, audience members reacted: some crying, others humming their agreement with the women's testimonies.

"I knew their stories, but the way they were portrayed tonight, it gave me a new, profound knowledge on reproductive injustices and just on their personal stories, it was vivid — almost like I was in the room with them at that moment,” Traletta Banks, a friend of some of the women that inspired the show, said. 

After the play, a Q&A panel was opened for the audience to ask and give comments on the play to the four women, who were in attendance. 

“There's such a sense of trust and community and camaraderie in the show that makes me just glow,” Foster said. “It makes me beam when I think about it, when I think about how special our cast is and their intention.” 

Editor's note: Nadia Jefferson is an assistant Lifestyle editor at The DTH.

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