SEVENTH BIRTHDAY
When my seventh birthday rolled around, I pestered my parents to take me to Miss Kiterick’s Carousel, a children’s show on a local television station in Houston, Texas. Miss Kiterick was a remarkable oddity. She dressed like a black cat in a shapely leotard, black fishnet stockings and kitten pumps. I adored the wisp of whiskers drawn on her face and the perky black kitten ears that hugged her head. I was one of the lucky ones who got to sit on the little birthday carousel of miniature, galloping horses. It revolved in a slow circle before stopping in front of Miss Kiterick. She asked the child mounted on the little horse before her what they wanted to be when they grew up. The boys wanted to be policemen or firemen. The girls wanted to be teachers or nurses and mommies. I was dizzy with anticipation as the carousel turned and stopped, turned and stopped. It circled around once more and there was Miss Kiterick in front of me.
In a gentle Texas drawl she asked, “and what is your name, honey?”
“Randa Jo”
“And what do you want to be when you grow up, Randa Jo?”
“I want to be a movie star.”
I never made it to the silver screen, but I reveled in my work as a theater artist and dancer that spanned over 25 years. I performed frothy plays by Noel Coward and southern gothics by Tennessee Williams. I performed in dinner theaters to the clatter of forks on plates and patrons drinking one too many Manhattans. Musical comedy was my forte – hearing people laughing fed my resilience to survive my childhood. Then something amazing happened. I found feminism. I left Texas for Minneapolis, Minnesota and discovered feminist theater performed by a company of women.
“I stumbled onto the best profession to heal my childhood. The only one that lets you release and express whatever is ugly and messy and beautiful about your life.”
—VIOLA DAVIS, ACTOR
When I tell people that my father sexually abused me for much of my childhood, he is suddenly a monster to them. He becomes one-dimensional in their eyes; a man whose character is defined by and limited to that of child molester – a person to be reviled and feared. But I know that isn’t all there was to the man. It was much more complex than that.”
Writer, Theater Artist, and Child Welfare Advocate
RADICAL FEMINISM
AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
At the Foot of the Mountain (AFOM) was a professional feminist theater known for its groundbreaking transformational plays that came out of women’s lives. It was an ensemble theatre (a rare gem then and now) of protest that tackled sexual and domestic violence, the objectification of women, addiction and recovery, the threat of nuclear war, civil disobedience, and the Catholic Church. Its raison d'être was to create plays that shed a bright light on social injustice and oppression through the collaborative and improvisational methods of experimental theatre. Performing at the Foot required that I be an actor in a radically different way than I had ever experienced.
During my almost four-year association with At the Foot of the Mountain. I developed strong bonds with women whose vision and mentoring gave me a deeper respect for my craft. I learned that theater can be a tool to change people’s lives – it changed mine – and not just in theaters. We performed in the back room of an AA meeting, the cafeteria in a women’s prison, the opening of the first women’s shelter in Rapid City, and before an audience of 10,000 participants at Minneapolis’s first Take Back the Night rally.
My work in feminist theater and social justice gave me the emotional stamina to begin my recovery and healing from a childhood of abuse. I could finally look at the utter betrayal by my father and the incest that took away my trust and innocence. I could see my mother’s tragic and abusive childhood that informed her inability to protect me. I was ready to write my solo performance piece.
PUTTING INCEST ON THE STAGE
In My Father’s Bed was commissioned for production by Alice B. Theatre in Seattle. It toured nationally from Boston to Honolulu. My script was published by Rain City Projects and taught in the Women’s Studies program at the University of Washington. In the forward to the script, I wrote that my show was for all survivors and the people who care about them. And, I dedicated it to the children who grew up to be my parents.
In a review in The Boston Globe Anthony Tommasini wrote: “…Downs’ play is an affecting memoir…using song, movement and ritual, she makes the guilt and boundless anger she has felt come alive. Through her simple, honest writing and good theatrical sense, her story is healing and engrossing…”
Joe Adcock wrote this about In My Father’s Bed for the Seattle Post Intelligencer: “it is breath-taking and brilliant.”
After performing and touring for three years to sold out houses, I performed at the Twin Rivers Correctional Institute for 160 sex offenders and my play was developed into a training video for social workers. It was time to change course.
CHILD WELFARE ADVOCACY
I went into child welfare where I worked full time as a voice for children. My focus on LGBTQ youth in foster care and the homeless population along with work as a researcher and writer for a national child welfare foundation shaped my views and knowledge of childhood trauma and sexual abuse. It was this second career that propelled me to write Comfort, Texas, my memoir about father-daughter incest.
I feel like a bit of a chump. Unknown to me and other survivors back then, we were assigned all those pathological characteristics of women who complained of predatory fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, men of authority, strangers, boyfriends and husbands. In short, we were crazy, hysterical, harpy girls and women out to make trouble for men.
ACHIEVEMENTS
I received grants from King County Arts Commission, the Boeing Foundation, and the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. As the co-creator of Toklas, MN, a lesbian soap opera, I brought my love of old television shows to the stage. I am most proud of Casey Life Skills, a website for older youth in foster care where I wrote curriculum and training guides for youth and social workers, and performed the voice overs. I wrote Home for Bobby, a play for a staff development training event about a boy finding a forever home. It would also be adapted to video. I have a degree in theater arts and family studies, and I am an alumna of Hedgebrook.
Two stories from my memoir will be included in upcoming anthologies published by Hippocampus Books and Sinister Wisdom in 2024.