AMERICAN THEATRE | Human Trafficking at Human Scale in ‘Live Bodies for Sale’
AMERICAN THEATRE | Human Trafficking at Human Scale in ‘Live Bodies for Sale’
Human Trafficking at Human Scale in ‘Live Bodies for Sale’
In Ohio-based writer Christopher Johnston’s new play, a disgraceful global trade hits close to home.
At a table reading of Live Bodies for Sale, a new docudrama about human trafficking in Northeast Ohio, playwright Christopher Johnston addresses the assembled cast and crew. “Everybody in this play is real,” he says. “The characters, their monologues, are all taken from what these people have said to me in the time I’ve spent with them. We want to tell their stories.”
There’s clear urgency to their stories. Worldwide, human trafficking currently traps 4.5 million people into lives of exploitation. According to Johnston, sex and labor trafficking represent a criminal industry worth as much as $150 billion each year, making it the second largest black market in the world after the drug trade. Ohio is no stranger to this business. Indeed it is a veritable hotbed of sex trafficking because of its location and its robust transportation infrastructure.
In response to this global tragedy’s local profile, Cleveland’s Playwrights Local will produce the world premiere of Johnston’s Live Bodies for Sale, directed by former Karamu House artistic director Terrence Spivey, Nov. 22-Dec. 15. The documentary play explores the lives of several Cleveland-area women who survived human trafficking. Johnston, author of the book Shattering Silences: Strategies to Prevent Sexual Assault, Heal Survivors, and Bring Assailants to Justice (Skyhorse Publishing, 2018), based his script on years of extensive interviews with people connected to human trafficking. The play includes testimonials from survivors, professionals dedicated to freeing the victims of these crimes, prosecutors, law enforcement, and judges.
Central to both human trafficking interventions in Cleveland, and in the play itself, is the Renee Jones Empowerment Center, a local nonprofit that provides holistic and restorative services to survivors of trafficking and sexual assault. As part of their mission, they provide assistance including counseling, support groups, and street outreach. The center’s eponymous CEO, Renee Jones—also a character in the play—explains that her outreach is “all about love…Our philosophy is taking someone that’s broken, and turning them around. When you become empowered, you begin to take a stand.”
Det. John Morgan, another real-life person who appears as a character in the play, is the head of the Cuyahoga County Regional Human Trafficking Task Force. The task force has undergone specialized training in recognizing human trafficking and in decriminalizing the industry’s victims. In one scene, Morgan directly addresses the audience as he walks them through what goes into busting an operation at a roadside hotel. Assuming the role of an everyday john, Morgan advises, “You don’t want to flash a lot of guns because you don’t want to scare them. But someone is going to have a gun out until they check the room.” Through his years of service, Morgan has helped dozens of survivors out of human trafficking.
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