Patricia Davis

Patricia Davis

Patricia Davis' play, "Digna," based on the life of Mexican human rights attorney Digna Ochoa, was produced in February-March 2017 by the Digna Theater, a new professional theater company in Tucson, Arizona, directed by Barclay Goldsmith, and has since been produced in Spanish and English in Mexico and the U.S. Patricia participated in Arena Stage's 2015-2016 Playwrights' Arena, where...
Patricia Davis' play, "Digna," based on the life of Mexican human rights attorney Digna Ochoa, was produced in February-March 2017 by the Digna Theater, a new professional theater company in Tucson, Arizona, directed by Barclay Goldsmith, and has since been produced in Spanish and English in Mexico and the U.S. Patricia participated in Arena Stage's 2015-2016 Playwrights' Arena, where she developed “Digna.” Other productions include "Alternative Methods," about a psychologist's work on a torture team in Iraq, produced in the New York International Fringe Festival, where it won a Best Director Award and garnered a Pick of the Fringe recommendation from The New York Theatre Review. "Alternative Methods" was also selected for readings at Urban Stages, Georgia State College and University, and Catholic University, in collaboration with Theater J.

"After the Blood" is a one-act about two activists in Washington, DC during the summer of 2014, at the height of the war in Gaza. "After the Blood" received a reading at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in January 2015. "Cleared," a fifteen-minute play, focuses on Guantanamo, protests at the White House, and the conundrums of a suburban mom with highly placed friends. "Cleared" was selected by Theater Alliance for presentation in the Kennedy Center’s 2013 Page-to-Stage Festival.

Short plays include "Daphne in Leaf," produced as part of the Kathy Rasmussen Womens Theater's Magical Creatures Festival in 2019; "Four Minutes," produced in the Jane Addams New Play Festival in 2019 and a finalist for the Bridge Initiative; and "Fish Story," selected to be read in the 29th Street Playwrights Collectives' Feisty Women Festival in 2018.

Plays

  • Digna
    Mexican human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa suffered harrowing attacks in response to her defense of environmentalists. Forced to flee, she finally had to choose: Washington or Mexico—the safety of exile or the pull of her calling? Digna, a solo show based on her life, explores resistance—its modalities and costs—and its essential, transformative power.

    Digna Ochoa was one of Mexico’s most prominent...
    Mexican human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa suffered harrowing attacks in response to her defense of environmentalists. Forced to flee, she finally had to choose: Washington or Mexico—the safety of exile or the pull of her calling? Digna, a solo show based on her life, explores resistance—its modalities and costs—and its essential, transformative power.

    Digna Ochoa was one of Mexico’s most prominent human rights defenders. By age 37, she had met President Clinton, was close to the Kennedy family, was a MacArthur Fellow and had won Amnesty International's Eduring Spirit Award. In 2001, all her connections notwithstanding, she was gunned down in her Mexico City office.

    Her case is emblematic. The rallying cry of those demanding justice in the 2014 disappearance of 43 university students–a case that has called the world’s attention to Mexico–is “Fue el Estado”; “It was the government.” In Digna’s murder, too, the evidence points to the state. After initially declaring her death a clear political assassination, the Mexican government changed its tack when the evidence pointed to the army. The government insists that Digna killed herself, and cleverly staged the scene to resemble a murder.

    Compelled by the worsening human rights crisis in Mexico, Digna returns from the dead to give a lecture on resistance. As she progresses through the lecture, drawing on her own life for examples of the basic tenets and modalities of resistance, she is beset by doubt. She begins to leave the stage. But she returns; she will speak, even if it is pointless. She will speak, simply to resist. In telling her story and confronting her doubts, she finds her strength and courage and invites us to find our own.

    Digna's story is especially timely. Environmental activists and their defenders are being murdered in ever greater numbers. Worldwide, each week an average of three environmental activists are assassinated. Mexico, meanwhile, is spiraling into unprecedented violence. A recent report by the Open Society Justice Initiative found that the government’s systematic torture and mass executions amount to crimes against humanity. As Digna points out from the stage, when the US tightens the border and continues to send guns and funding the to Mexican military, only one result is possible--more murders.

    Running time: about 60 minutes.
  • Daphne in Leaf
    Daphne's father saves her from Apollo's lechery but has left her maimed. Daphne makes a life-or-death request of her father.
  • Four Minutes
    An activist is about to turn off the valve of an oil pipeline. She reaches for her bolt cutters to cut through the fence. Her mother, creeping up behind her, has taken them, intent on saving her from felony charges.
  • Alternative Methods
    A young psychologist attempts to assist a team of interrogators in Iraq. The psychologist, Susan, is tasked with winning the trust of an Iraqi doctor they have detained. US forces believe the doctor treated an injured Al-Qaeda leader, and they want the doctor to reveal the location of the leader's safe house.

    Susan bonds with the doctor. Instead of learning where the safe house is, she...
    A young psychologist attempts to assist a team of interrogators in Iraq. The psychologist, Susan, is tasked with winning the trust of an Iraqi doctor they have detained. US forces believe the doctor treated an injured Al-Qaeda leader, and they want the doctor to reveal the location of the leader's safe house.

    Susan bonds with the doctor. Instead of learning where the safe house is, she begins to question whether the leader's capture would, in fact,save lives, as her colleagues insist. Susan, desperate for some kind of control of the situation, makes a fatal mistake. She comes to understand the psychology behind torture and her own desire for power, which has marred her present and her past.

    http://www.alternativemethodstheplay.com/about-play.
  • Cleared
    An activist-turned-mom wants her child to get into the best private school Washington, DC has to offer. A neighbor has connections and offers to help. But what would taking him up on his offer mean, and how would it change her life?