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BY GERALD OCHS
Rappahannock News Special Writer
Julie Portman had a dream a few years back. It didn’t make much sense at the time, but it was compelling for that and for the fact that it was clearly a message— though one of unknown origin and of nebulous intent. What was certain was that the dream provided a clue in the form of a title, Three Roses, and that that title belonged to a play yet to be written.
Ms. Portman took the only course possible for a woman of her imagination and drive; she began to write the play, Three Roses, knowing neither where it would go nor what it was about. Fortuity played its hand though, and brought Julie Portman a woman who had the answer: Three Roses was to be a drama about the lives of three women who had faced and survived violence, and who had been transformed as a result.
The dream so powerful began to shape into a reality. The woman who knew also led Ms. Portman to the others, and the Three Roses was no longer just a dream. The play that was fashioned speaks of the violence done to these three woman, to their methods of contending, to the wisdom that results. The play somehow blends Julie Portman’s dream with the truths of such injustices, and with the strengths that are bom from the encounters by these three roses.
A Cambodian who survived the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge; an American anthropologist who exhumes and confronts abuse suffered in her childhood; a child of the projects who grows beyond the afflictions of circumstance and of her body to emerge whole and healthy—these are the three roses, and their story and that of the dream are presented in a full length drama written by Julie Portman and directed by Leslie Jacobson, the Artistic Director of
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