Reality in Motion

Reality in Motion is the third iteration about Reality Winner, a whistleblower for confirming Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Winner, a former Air Force veteran and National Security Agency translator, was interrogated and arrested in her own home for leaking an NSA Pulse article to The Intercept, a New-York based publication she thought would keep her identity in confidence. In 2018, Winner was given the longest prison sentence for someone who leaked classified governmental information to the media. Her story was created into a play, and then a film, both directed by Tina Satter, who uses the FBI’s verbatim transcript from the day of Winner’s interrogation and subsequent arrest. As the third iteration of Winner’s story, Reality in Motion explores what it means to have reality framed in a way that doesn’t honor truth, but rewards oppressive systems of government. How do we reconcile a version of reality that upholds our basic principles of our democracy? This piece aims to honor Winner with the dignity her story deserves and to question how we construct narrative, even when we’re faced with something so real–it’s irrefutable.

“Creating this piece while under surveillance has only felt like the most proper, authentic way to capture how someone acts and presents themselves when every move is being watched. Although I’ve felt mainly unfazed by the cameras, Instagram lives, and physical heart tracker that’s capturing my biometric data, it’s only helped inform my piece more in knowing this is only the process. What’s real, what’s true, is what I perform onstage. It felt natural to create this piece about Winner, already having the language from the transcript, the film, and how to build that into a movement-based story. This process has forced me to think about what it means to commit to an idea, and that when I believe in the idea, I’ve been able to create something that feels the most authentic to me.”