By Cynthia Jessup
While waiting for her daughter who was taking a cooking class, Margie Tompros decided to take a walk around the Workhouse Arts Center. When she came across a mannequin depiction of a woman being tortured, she was dumbfounded. Moved by the scene, she wrote a play, titled Deeds Not Words, about what she observed.
This museum is the site where these horrifying events took place. Suffragists were imprisoned at the Workhouse in 1917. During their stay, they were beaten, tortured, force-fed and even stripped of their clothing. Nov. 14, 1917, the day when the suffragists were imprisoned, came to be known as the Night of Terror. Tompros came across a scene portrayed by mannequins that showed a method of torture the women endured during their two weeks at, as it was known in the early 1900s, the Occoquan Workhouse. Tompros had heard about the suffrage movement, but she didn’t know of the horrific treatment of the suffragists while imprisoned.
Tompros has been an actress since she was 12 years old. Now with a background in role-playing at law enforcement agencies’ academics (she enacts positions in scenarios that educate students interested in police and forensic psychology), she decided to write this play and add it to the museum. Her daughter, Amelia, is a cameo in the play. “I wanted to incorporate women of all ages to emphasize that this issue is multigenerational,” Tompros says.
W-3 Theatre at Workhouse Arts Center
Sunday, March 13, 2 p.m. & 4 p.m.
Free, with suggested $10 donation at the door
