The Case of Aileen Wuornos

The Case of Aileen Wuornos:
The Legal, Psychological and Social Consequences of Childhood Abuse (Video screening and discussion)
Sunday, June 3; 2pm
Location: Women’s Building, 3543 18th St @ Valencia
Free

This event consists of a screening of Nick Broomfield’s documentary Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, followed by a panel discussion with artists and activists. Panelists will include Carla Lucero, composer and librettist for the Wuornos Opera; Rhodessa Jones, artist and activist; and Norma Hotaling, Executive Director, SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation, www.sageinc.org).

Cosponsored with the Jon Sims Center for the Performing Arts

Aileen Wuornos’s story of lesbian love, betrayal, and murder is ripe for opera. It was written in the fashion of the dark and perverse comedy of Alan Berg’s operas Wozzeck and Lulu and their anti-heroes. Wuornos tells the story of how an ordinary, working-class woman’s history of abuse at the hands of men propels her into extraordinary circumstances. The opera delves into a world of physical and sexual violence toward women and children, revealing the cyclical transmission of abuse from victim to victim and the murderous and self-destructive sequelae of unhealed lives. The Wuornos story also avails itself to a critique on the media and religion. (See also, Music section for the premiere of the opera, Wuornos).