When Susan Miller wrote her one-woman play, she wrote it for herself to perform. "My Left Breast" is an autobiography. And when Miller performed the play in New York City, at the close of each performance she would show her mastectomy scar to the audience.
"It was difficult in the beginning," she says. "There's a vulnerability." But her audiences were overwhelmingly accepting.
Last weekend, Miller came to Salt Lake City to see Plan-B Theatre's production of her play. Though the award-winning play has been performed around the country, this visit to Salt Lake City was the first time Miller had seen another actress in her role. She thought Betsy West did a fine job playing Susan Miller.
It was perhaps a moment of vulnerability for both women. West met the woman whose life she portrays, and Miller watched someone else act out her own intimate story.
Having never had cancer, West didn't have a scar to reveal. The director, Jerry Rapier, thought about trying to feign a scar but wisely decided against it. It might have seemed disrespectful of Miller's real scar, of the real scars of all those who have had mastectomies.
Last Sunday, at a panel discussion after the matinee of "My Left Breast," the local audience heard more about the vulnerabilities and triumphs of women who have had breast cancer. The Utah panelists told one poignant story after another.
Joan Mullaney, a professional actress and drama teacher, said she always thought there was something dirty about breast cancer. She never spoke of it. She might not be talking now except that when she heard "My Left Breast" was coming to Utah, she decided to audition for the part and dared to tell Rapier that her own left breast was gone.
An Olympic bobsledder, Ildiko Strehli, said it took her four years to be able to talk about her cancer. She didn't even tell her parents the first time she was diagnosed. Back in Hungary, she explained, breast cancer is a death sentence. No one survives. Living in the United States, she got treatment and was hopeful.
Then in 1999, as she was in training (so thrilled that women would be allowed to bobsled in the 2002 Olympics), she found another lump. The second cancer hit her hard. Just before she went in for a bilateral mastectomy, a volunteer appeared to ask if she wanted to see what her chest was going to look like. Strehli said yes. "I was starving for that." The volunteer showed her own scars.
After the Utah panelists told their stories, a woman in the audience raised her hand to talk about a recent vacation to San Francisco. She and her husband happened to be in town on the day of the Gay Pride parade and as they stood on a corner, just watching, a group of women who had had mastectomies walked by — baring their scarred chests.
"I stared," the woman in the audience said. "I just stared." Then she added, "I was proud of them and at that moment I was proud to be a woman." And she was proud of the panelists, she told them. "Proud that you are so strong." She hadn't had cancer, she said, but if she ever did, she would be less afraid because of these women, because of their bravery.
When a play is good, it lets us understand someone else's struggles. That's art. But the panel discussion got us thinking about life. It was a meaningful addition to the play.
When someone shows us her scar, or when she gets tears in her eyes, as one young panelist did when she talked about her children, we become more than an audience. We become witnesses.
E-mail: susan@desnews.com