Gitana Productions, Inc.

My Heart is Always Shaking
An Original Play Written by Lee Patton Chiles

May 22-June 7, 2009
Fridays and Saturdays 8:00 PM
Sunday Matinee 2:30 PM

St. Louis University Theater
Xavier Hall
3733 West Pine Mall

Lee Patton Chiles-Playwright

Patton is an accomplished playwright, director, actress and educator. She is the former Artistic Director of Historyonics Theatre Company, where she wrote two to four plays a year for fourteen years, directing and editing the rest of the plays the company presented. Her final play written for Historyonics, “Dancing on Air: The Katherine Dunham Story”, was nominated for the Kevin Kline Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical. For nearly 11 years Patton has maintained an association with Gitana Productions with roles ranging from Artistic Director to Playwright and Drama instructor in the Global Education through the Arts program. Patton wrote Complacency of Silence: Darfur for Gitana in 2008 to incredible audience reviews. Patton currently teaches at St. Louis University, Washington University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has a BA, MA and MFA in theatre.

For over a period of six months Patton spent time on a weekly basis with women from Afghanistan using the techniques of drama to provide them with a vehicle to open up and share their feelings. Her work has resulted in genuine friendships which have allowed the stories of these refugees in St. Louis to emerge.

Here is a brief excerpt from extensive interviews conducted during this period. This particular interview provided the basis for the title of this play.

Excerpt from Interview with Afghani Woman living in St. Louis
Conducted by Patton Chiles, Playwright


Interviewer:		“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

Woman:		“Should I count the ones who are dead?”

		(The interviewer tells her yes and the woman counts them all.)

Interviewer:		“How many children do you have?”

Woman:		“Do I count the ones who are dead?”

		(The interviewer does not speak the woman’s language, stops writing and takes the woman’s hand.)

Interviewer:		“Yes. The dead count. Count them all.”
The woman counts them all as she holds the interviewer’s hand. She is from Afghanistan and has survived the Taliban. The woman has left her homeland and escaped to the land of the “infidels” – America.

The interviewer notices that the woman’s hands are shaking and she asks if the woman is afraid. “Yes. Even here. Even now. My heart is always shaking.”