THE GHOSTS OF RAVENSBRÜCK:

WOMEN’S CIRCLE READINGS

Gather with playwright and haunted historian Nikki Kendra Davis and fellow Columbus femmes to give voice to ghosts of the Nazis’ concentration camp for women. As you conduct embodied storytelling together, you’ll share with Nikki and the collective how these ghosts’ stories haunt you. Your shared hauntings will inform how the script is finalized.

Most importantly, Circle Readings curate a spacetime, a ritual container, for women to commune, to express themselves, and, in this case, to gain valuable wisdom and warnings about how fascism targets the feminine and how the feminine can, and must, fight back!

The six circles will be held in Hilliard, OH on various Sundays 6pm-8:30PM from September through November.

Space is limited! By taking a spot, you are committing to be present that evening for the collective, for Nikki, and the ghosts. To get as many women as possible involved, please sign up to participate ONLY ONCE.

CIRCLE DATES:

• September 6th

• September 27th

• October 11th

• October 25th

• November 8th

• November 22nd

Sign up NOW for the first three circles! The others will open for sign ups in September.

“The Ghosts of Ravensbrück: a fable for femmes fighting fascism” will premiere in April 2027 produced by Ember Women’s Theatre.

NIKKI KENDRA DAVIS ON CIRCLE READINGS:

“Women’s Circle Readings are collective embodied storytelling rituals that bring women together to tell ghosts’ stories that can educate our present moment about ongoing social injustices and violence against women and the feminine. These readings are an integral part of my Theatre of the Ghostly Feminine praxis. I don’t want only the handful of women cast in the full scale production to get to embody these ghosts. It's a powerful, emotional, educational, cathartic, and even activating experience for women to gather and allow ghosts, the historically silenced, to speak through them, to affect their nerve systems and consume their thoughts. I want as many women in the communities to which I bring my plays to have that experience.”

THE GHOSTS OF RAVENSBRÜCK JOURNEY

THE GHOSTS OF RAVENSBRüCK PROJECT UPDATE

In the creation process…

Nikki Kendra Davis is crafting a new play about the Nazis’ only concentration camp built explicitly for women. To Ravensbrück were sent approx. 139,000 women (mostly non-Jews) who either did not meet or who actively threatened the Nazi’s composition of womanhood. Initially, these women were associated with or were themselves communists and social democrats; scholars, artists, and journalists; Jehovah Witnesses; and “asocials.” From 1939-1945, Ravensbrück served as a large women’s prison, a slave labor camp, a laboratory for biological warfare, and eventually an extermination camp. Gender-based violence and experiments aimed at helping the Aryan race procreate were common. But also common were small but mighty acts of solidarity, resistance, and perseverance.

As the war progressed, to Ravensbrück were sent thousands of women who had fought in the Resistance, mostly non-Jewish women who refused to stand by while their neighbors were disappeared and their countries were taken over by Nazis. Ravensbrück became a nexus humming with the memories, actions, love, and courage of women who had chosen to put their lives on the line to fight fascism.

What might the ghosts of Ravensbrück have to teach us today in the US? Local playwright Nikki Kendra Davis would say “A LOT!” Nikki (she/her) is a multidisciplinary theatre artist, haunted historian, and the creator of “Theatre of the Ghostly Feminine,” a feminist, political, history-adjacent performance praxis for reckoning with ghosts of erased and exploited feminized beings and reimagining their stories.

Writing and collaboration going on now.

Ember Women’s Theatre will produce Nikki’s new play about Ravensbrück will premiere at MadLab in April 2027.