axes, herbs & satchels: open the archives
Devised and performed by The Anthropologists; Directed by Melissa Moschitto and Sandie Luna
JACK, 20 Putnam Ave, Brooklyn 11238 | Hebrew Tabernacle, 551 Fort Washington Ave (Washington Heights) 10033 | Tiffany Street Theater at Inspiration Point, 710 Tiffany Street, East Bronx, Bronx, New York 10474
April 16th - May 10th
Photos by Jody Christopherson
In a time when stories of people of color and women are being erased, and on the day the head Librarian at the Library of Congress gets fired, it was all the more necessary to see a show like Axes Herbs and Satchels, Open The Archives, which I saw Friday night at the Tiffany Street Theater, a striking new venue in the Bronx.
The mission of the Anthropologists is to create “investigative theater that inspires action”, and with this interactive production, they do just that. Before the show starts, one can read sections from articles and see photos of Black midwives, but soon after, women in hospital hair caps with clipboards come around asking about what insurance you have; how many children do you have; do you plan on using birth control after the birth? A young woman approaches them, like surely, we all have at some point, asking why they haven’t been seen yet when they’ve been there for 30 minutes, awaiting news about a relative. We are then escorted into the theater for the show to begin.
As we got seated in the ¾ stage area, the caps and clipboards are gone and now there are lanterns and satchels. These are the midwives of the past who would cross fields to get to their rural patients; who would collect herbs for “dirt dauber tea” to move contractions along, ginger root for nausea, cobwebs, bayberry, and ergot to stop bleeding. They massage, talk to, and “fuss over” birthing women. They make sure they move, walk around. They put a pocketknife under the bed to “cut the pain”, build a fire, and throw salt in it to keep away the “haints”. It is knowledge that is passed down through generations of women, mother to daughter, to help women survive and thrive in childbirth. The audience is asked “What does a baby need to come into the world?”
There were answers such as “faith”, “patience”, and “community”. But then the doctors get involved: the white, male doctors who somehow find a way to both steal their knowledge and suppress it at the same time. There is a repeated refrain of “Just don’t tell them all you know,” due to the earned distrust. “They bury our names, but keep our knowledge.”
Through the stories of Beulah, played defiantly by Jan Andree, a formidable and legendary midwife who has been servicing the county for years, and her granddaughter Alice, who, while having learned her grandmother’s traditions, is also training to be a nurse, using more modern practices, we see how these women went from being able to follow a calling using herbal, traditional, and what just seems to be common sense medicine, to stop using this knowledge, wear uniforms, and be licensed under the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act. We learn that the only way to get a license is to go through three years of training in the modern ways, and getting connected to a doctor and a hospital some of the patients may never see, due to being in hard-to-reach areas of the rural south. (Sound familiar? One way to keep abortion providers from providing their services has been passing laws where they must be connected to a hospital.) In a sign of gentle defiance, some midwives keep two bags: “one to show and one to go”. This way, they continue to practice as they know how. But others, no matter how successful they are, cannot get that precious license and are suddenly “retired”. One of the saddest moments in the show is when Alice, played by Qianna Brooks, is asked to turn in her bag. Brooks, who beautifully transitions from Alice’s younger self to the older uniformed midwife, clearly does not want to quit this life, but is refused a license. Cynthia, played with managerial glee by Enette Fremont, surprises her with a “retirement” party instead.
After a transition involving movement and spoken word, reminders of ritual and traditions, the young woman we saw outside the theater questioning the hospital employees returns, claiming to her partner that she’s been dreaming of the ghosts of these women. (This transition felt a bit, to me, like “it was all a dream!”, and I feel that there might have been a stronger way to make the shift to present day.) We learn that not only is this young journalist, played by Genevieve Ngosa Daniels, writing an article on the history of these black midwives, she has also suffered the loss of her sister to modern day childbirth. She and her partner, Imani, a doula, played by Sandie Luna, (who also is a co-director and co-writer) debate whether her sister would have survived had she been treated by more traditional methods. The conversation continues into issues with our present health care system; how black women’s pain is often ignored; how male doctors often do not properly communicate; how doulas can be at least of some help and are much needed advocates for the pregnant person, but what about the women-centered care midwives provided that could be done privately at home, and thus not only be safer and more personal, but cost much less than a hospital? There are many conversations in that one conversation, that it gets a little overwhelming, but you can’t help but be left thinking…
As the conversation comes to a close, the hospital staffers return to remind us that midwives don’t provide the “cha-ching”. Midwives don’t do surgery. They don’t “cut women”; they don’t need to. Hospital procedures are “cha-ching”, care is “cha-ching”, “we must cha-ching vigilant.” It is something we surely all ponder any time we go to the doctor.
The “ghosts” with their lanterns and satchels return for one final dance to share the rituals and this lost history, using symbolic movements of grinding herbs, of traveling, of digging, leaving us to wonder, what if…what if we returned to at least SOME of these traditions, let women “listen to the women”.
After the show, in the lobby, there were stations to continue the experience. “Witness” invited you to share “what you are taking with you” on a post-it and put it on the wall. “Release” gave you the opportunity to write down something you wanted to “let go of” on seed paper, and place it in a bowl of dirt, which would be planted in the future. The “Fussing” table had oils to smell and cocoa butter to rub into your hands. I was not able to stay for the post-show reflection with the creative team, including Anthropologist in Residence, Nadia Naomi Mbonde, but I appreciated that that was an option after such a piece.
I am intrigued to see what The Anthropologists bring out next after this powerful rendering of lost stories.
Review by Alexandra de Suze.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on May 14th, 2025. All rights reserved.