This article appeared in the June 10, 2004 Jewish Advocate.

Local activist helps produce play on global sex trafficking

by Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

In May, 2003, the Boston Center for the Arts premiered Body & Sold, a new work by playwright Deborah Lake Fortson which focused on worldwide sexual exploitation of teenagers. On June 10, the Center will begin a run of the newly expanded Body & Sold Parts I and II, which focuses on on the subject of runaway teens in the sex industry.

The gritty underworld of sex trafficking and teen prostitution in the US and India is portrayed in the play, which is based on interviews with sex workers and accompanied by an exhibit of drawings by female victims of the industry. The exhibit was curated by social worker and artist Myrna Balk, who led the drawing sessions in Nepal while helping NGO’s develop rehabilitation programs for survivors of sex trafficking and domestic abuse. Texts of the girls’ thoughts and experiences accompany their drawings; Balk’s own woodcuts on the subject are included as well.

The production includes the words of actual women, girls and boys who were interviewed in Bombay, Calcutta, Minneapolis, Boston, and Connecticut, according to Tempest Productions General Manager Darren Evans. “In Act I, we see the drama of two girls kidnapped from Nepal and India and sold into a Bombay brothel,” he explained. “In Act II, we hear from eight young American who reveal why they ran away from home and how they were lured into prostitution. We also hear from the pimps who sell them.” The play projects a hopeful note as it shows how the victims were eventually able to resume their education and their lives. 

Artistic Director Fortson researched the play in Bombay and Calcutta, India. “I was plunged into such a rich and complex culture, and was altogether dazzled and intrigued,” she said. The author of plays including Spackling, Traveling Naked, and Ah Houdini!, November and Dear Nel, her play The Yellow Dress, on dating violence, has been produced across the country. “It's because of learning about domestic violence through writing that play that I got involved in the issue of trafficking in women, which I was first made aware of through Myrna's work,” she said.

Balk’s paper and wood-based works have been shown in Boston, New York, Cleveland, Kathmandu, Beijing, India, Hungary, and at the United Nations in New York. She grew up in St. Louis in a Jewishly active home. “My mother, a Russian immigrant who kept Kosher, was an active member of the sisterhood and started a gift show for them,” she recalled. Balk went to University City High School and was active in young Judea as a teen. “I really loved the sermons of Rabbi Mazer when I was in Sunday school, and am sure that influenced my sense of responsibility to do something if I saw an injustice,” she said. Balk, who moved to Boston in 1968 and has lived in Brookline since 1971, taught Sunday school and led groups for Jewish Family and Children’s Service, but her identity is more related to action and change.

In 1996 she traveled to Ukraine with Project Kesher, a group based in Evanston, Ill. that aims to educate Russian women in the former Soviet Union who want to know more about Judaism. Project Kesher addresses the issue of sex trafficking; while there, Balk distributed condoms and talked about women's health issues.

Balk lives in Brookline with her husband, psychiatrist Ray Greenberg. She has two sons from a first marriage, Josh, 33, who lives in Oakland and has a baby, and Ben, 31, a chef who lives in Cambridge, whose wife is expecting their first child. Both were Bar Mitzvahed at Temple Emmanuel in Newton.

“I see my human rights work as an extension of my Jewishness,” she said. “Tikkun Olam is what I believe.” In 1922, her mother snuck across the Ukranian border at the age 15. “Knowing first-hand how Jews were treated in Europe and Russia has added to my determination to be involved in helping women and girls around the world,” she said.

The Tempest Company, known for its dynamic theatrical style of acting, is a multi-cultural ensemble of Indian, African-American, and European-American actors. Live music composed by Vessela Stoyanova of the group Flutter accompanies their productions.

Body & Sold runs June 10 – 26, Thursday through Sunday, at the Boston Center for the Arts Black Box Theatre, located on Tremont Street in the South End. For tickets, call the BCA Box Office at 617-426-ARTS.

For information about Project Kesher, contact Andrea Waldstein at the Boston chapter at 617-266-7666.