On May 5, 2017, the National Security Agency wrote a chilling report detailing Russian cyberattacks, just days before the 2016 election, against US election officials and a company that provides voting software in eight states. The analysis represents “the most detailed US government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light,” according to reporters at The Intercept, who were sent a leaked copy of the top-secret document: Russian intelligence sent phishing emails to employees of the company in order to obtain login credentials that were later used to send malware-infected emails to more than 100 government officials involved with voter registration.
Further, the report squarely placed blame: “It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks,” wrote reporters Matthew Cole, Richard Esposito, Sam Biddle, and Ryan Grim.
Two days before The Intercept’s report was published, the woman who leaked the document—Reality Winner, a 25-year-old military contractor and former Air Force intelligence specialist—was visited by the FBI, questioned, and ultimately arrested. Since that night, she’s been in prison, serving a 63-month sentence as the first person to be charged by the Trump administration under the Espionage Act.
When theater director Tina Satter read the transcript of the FBI’s June 3 interrogation of Winner—which took place in a cinderblock back room of the house Winner was renting in Augusta, Georgia—she was enthralled. “This is like a thriller,” she recalls thinking. “This is a character study of a person trying to hold their ground in this moment when you know that in 45 minutes, oh my God, their life is going to be so different.” Satter and her company, Half Straddle, set out to turn the transcript into a theatrical performance, which launches the Walker’s 2020 Out There festival this weekend. In the days following the US House of Representatives’ impeachment hearings, in which the role of whistleblowers featured prominently, Satter spoke with Reality’s mother, Billie Winner-Davis, and Walker Reader editor Paul Schmelzer, about the ideas that went into Is This A Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription, discussing the process of creating potent theater from real events, the work’s surreal (yet apt) title, and the performance that, quite literally, gave voice to a silenced whistleblower.
PAUL SCHMELZER (PS):
Billie, you weren’t present during the interrogation and the arrest of your daughter on June 3, 2017. Given that, what was your experience watching Is This A Room for the first time?
BILLIE WINNER-DAVIS (BW-D)
I was extremely nervous. When I found out that a play was being developed, I reached out to Tina, and we had a little contact, but I really didn’t know what direction the play was going to take. I can’t even tell you how many times I read over the transcript. I think I was trying to desensitize myself to the actual content. When I read it, it didn’t make any sense. It seemed like you could almost make a comedy out of this. A part of me was really worried that this was going to come across as a comedy, that people were not going to take it seriously.
When we went to see the play, and saw how stark the set was and how they brought the transcript to life, the dynamics between the actors, and everything that was happening in this very stark room—or I would say, non-room—it was so powerful. I hope everybody gets that same experience I had, of having the breath knocked out of them. It’s really powerful, and it’s dramatic, and it’s suspenseful. I hope it makes people want to know more about this story.
PS
Tina, you had no audio to work from, just text documenting Reality’s interrogation and arrest. How did you go about interpreting the transcript for the stage?
TINA SATTER (TS)
My life’s work is looking at scripts, not transcripts, but from the first time I read it I was like, “There is something really fascinating in here.” I had just read this incredible profile about Reality in New York magazine, so I was like, “Wait, this human being is really fascinating.” I had that in my head as I went to read the transcript. I knew that this person was now in prison, but in reading the transcript I was like, “Oh my God, she’s not giving up very easily.” Then I realized, “This is like a thriller; this is a character study of a person trying to hold their ground in this moment when you know that in 45 minutes, oh my God, their life is going to be so different.” I was feeling all that as a dramatist.
Then we used the transcript in a very old-fashioned way; we treated it like a script. 
Then of course we had to interpret what was happening moment to moment and what the character was doing moment to moment. For us it was such a rich document. But it wasn’t supposed to be a replication. It was really sort of a heart and brain connection to the language on the transcript.
PS
Watching the piece I was struck by all the banal-seeming chitchat. But then I realized that this is a practiced act by these agents, that the FBI trained them to seem friendly and approachable, while really they’re needling to get the confessions they’re seeking. What do you make of that banter and the “friendly” approach they took?
BW-D
I hope people see it for what it is, that these agents are highly trained. They’ve looked at her life, they’ve looked at all her social media, they knew a lot about her before they got to her house. And I believe they had it all planned out as to how they were going to approach her. They knew that she was interested in pets. They knew she was interested in athletics and CrossFit. They knew she was trained in languages. They’re very skilled at getting people to relax, and the way they jumped around in the dialogue [was designed to keep] her off balance. I hope that people see that this was a skilled interview on their part.
I remember during the court hearing, where [Reality’s lawyers] were trying to say that Reality actually was in custody, which would make this a custodial interrogation. The prosecution was trying to say, “No, this wasn’t an interrogation at all. In fact, this was a conversation that was very casual and could have occurred anywhere, to include your local coffee shop.” So even though it was very casual and seemed very relaxed, I think the play does a good job of pointing out that there were dynamics involved, that it wasn’t a relaxed situation for Reality at all, and that these agents knew exactly what they were doing.
TS
Something I thought about from the beginning was that if I was in my apartment and men came into it, more than one, and were talking: that alone sets up such intense stakes for anyone, but especially a female body. I just think there’s that as a baseline, that she is home, and then all these men, ultimately, are in her house and on her property.
PS
In the year since you premiered this work, we’ve gained even greater awareness of the role and power of whistleblowers, thanks in large part to the recent House impeachment hearings. I wonder if the work resonates differently now, 12 months later, for either of you?
TS
It’s horrifying how relevant this remains, because Reality remains in jail, and the facts that she was sharing are so taken for granted, are in the public debate. I was screaming at NPR when Fiona Hill was testifying, saying it’s just a fact that the Russians did this, and I was going, “Reality. Reality.” It’s just beyond an attention to whistleblowers. What Reality was alerting people to has remained more relevant than ever.
BW-D
I scream at my TV quite often, too. It’s been frustrating, since day one, how little empathy, how little attention has been placed on Reality and her case. When the whole impeachment whistleblower thing came up, everybody was saying the word whistleblower all day long, every day. And I’m just like, “Yes, what have we been trying to say? Now will you listen to the value of what a whistleblower can hold?”
Now we go back to the whole dialogue about, was it really Russia that interfered with our election or was it Ukraine? Again,
PS
I’m sure… The transcript itself doesn’t really refer to the content of what Reality shared with the media—
BW-D
It’s in there, but it’s redacted. What I like to remind people is because she was charged with the Espionage Act, the information she leaked remains classified. That shows how totally beaten down by the Espionage Act she and other whistleblowers are. When they’re charged with the Espionage Act, they have no way of defending themselves because, just like the audience of this play, the actual jury in her case (had she gone to a jury trial) doesn’t really know what it is that Reality leaked and would not have gotten that information either. How can a person even get a fair trial in a situation set up like that?
PS
I thought it was powerful the way you dealt with the redactions, Tina: when something’s blacked out of the transcript, there are accompanying sounds and lighting changes that happen on stage. How did you arrive at those choices?
TS
That was actually a bit of artistic experimentation. One day in an early rehearsal we tried putting the redacted information in just to see what would happen—like “Sent to The Intercept” or whatever—but it just took away the power of what that document is. There was just something effective about having the audience plunged quickly into that feeling of not knowing information. The viscerality of watching Reality try to figure out how to survive this moment, the chaos of that gets added by this information that, although she would’ve heard it, helps with the theatrics.
Then once we had the lighting designer (Thomas Dunn) in, he nuanced these ideas to create a build. So early on it starts with just a bit of pink light and sound. Then by the end it’s falling into these big blackouts. It mirrors the experience of reading it, too: when you come to the black box on the page, there’s something inherently kind of terrifying about it, like something I can’t know or that’s dangerous.
PS
I agree. There’s emotional power in those blackout moments, which conjured for me feelings of a black hole or the unknown or lost time. It also underscores the verbatim-ness of it, that you’re really rendering every section of this document literally. That brings me to the title of the work, which, while appearing in the verbatim transcript, comes across as incredibly surreal, a total non sequitur from the main conversation between Reality and these agents. So how did that come about, and what does Is This A Room mean to both of you?
BW-D
It’s perfect, because when Reality rented this house, she rented it sight unseen. She knew she wanted to go back to Augusta, and she didn’t have a job there yet but knew she could get one working at this CrossFit place and needed a place she could afford on a CrossFit salary. When she actually moves in, she tells me, “It has a room in the back, but I don’t like that room and I’m not going to use that room because it’s really not even a room.”
I’ve always believed that the agents had been in the house before that day, because they knew there was a place where they could go to interview her that was away from it all. They asked her specifically, “Is there a place we can go that’s away from… ?” Because they’re going to search everywhere else. They’re going to go through her things, and they know that there’s nothing in that room. Reality tells them, “Yes, there’s this room, but I don’t like it. It’s creepy.” And they say, “Tell us more about that. Why is it creepy?” She can’t really explain it to them because they don’t know her. I understood it because she would tell me, “That’s the room of death. It’s smells like death. There’s always dead bugs there, Mom.”
So it’s funny when one of the agents comes to that little hallway and asks, “Oh, is this a room?” For Reality that was an important part of it, the fact that they took her to that room, which gave them more power over her. Later when her team tried to argue that, yes, she was interrogated, they took her to the back room of her house where she was uncomfortable. She told them she wasn’t comfortable, yet they did it anyway and they blocked the door. So she was very much in custody at that time. So, yeah, it’s a correct title for this play. I don’t know how you did it, but you did it.
TS
Well, for a long time, we were just calling the performance Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription because “verbatim transcription” was stamped on the top of the transcript, and it felt really important to us to have her name in the title. But as we were working on it, a playwriting friend was like, “I think it should have a title that’s reflects the poetic way you’re treating it,” and that made a lot of sense to me. So we went through and wrote down any phrase that had meaning to us, without really thinking about it. I made a big list of short phrases, things like “Is it pink?” Then at The Kitchen, where we premiered, they said, “You need to know what you’re calling this show because we’re going to publicize it.” And I went with Is This A Room. I didn’t want the question mark on it because I wanted it to be weirder than that, somehow.
Another thing that comes to mind is that we don’t have a set—as Billie said, it’s sort of a stark abstract thing—so it raises the question of whether this is happening in real life or whether this is happening in a theater? Like, you set up a theater as a sort of old-fashioned thing: you go into a room and you make this story happen.
PS
Interesting. The title could be a reminder that we’re not just here in this space of the theater to be entertained. This is reality. This is not mere theater but something that’s affecting someone’s life—and all of our lives…
TS
Right. There was an instinct I had all along to not try to make a set: “Let’s have something that looks like the front of a house.” I wanted it to be really stark. I wanted people to hear and see this conversation and to have it feel like all the action and emotion and energy came from those humans in space and not from a fake room on a stage.
PS
For me, that line—“Is this a room?”—came out of the blue. It was so out of place and surreal and seemed to emphasize the absurdity of the whole thing. I felt like it could speak to the absurdity of the government’s fierce prosecution of Reality while seemingly not doing much about the actual content of what she brought forth about election security.
TS
Right. There’s a very dark surreality that’s running throughout the whole thing, and the line is a perfect one because, even just hearing it, it’s like, is that a sentence? I mean… what?
PS
Before I read this transcript, I had known Reality’s (quite memorable) name but not much of the facts about what she leaked, and I imagine that’s probably the case for a lot of people. In your advocacy, Billie, you’re trying to get the facts out, both about her plight and the fact that our elections are in peril?
BW-D
Absolutely. Just this morning on Twitter, somebody was saying, “Reality wasn’t a true whistleblower because she didn’t follow the right avenue. She’s just a leaker.” And people try to say there’s a difference between a whistleblower and a leaker. I say, let’s put all that aside and ask, “Have you seen what Reality released to us?” It’s valuable information for the American people. Did she deserve to be called a traitor by her country? Did she deserve to be tried under the Espionage Act? Did she deserve to have a 63-month sentence thrown at her and to be silenced? Let’s go back to what it was that Reality Winner released.
But then I have to ask what did the other ones do? What did Chelsea Manning do? She released it to WikiLeaks. What did Edward Snowden do? He released it. So it’s infuriating to me as well that people want to try to disparage her name because she released it to the press.
PS
One thing that stuck with me throughout the performance, Billie, is that this whole incident is real for you, obviously. This is your beloved daughter who remains in prison to this day, ever since the night that’s captured in this performance. What do you think art can do that talking to the media, or other tools you might have at your disposal to try to get the word out, might not?
BW-D
To me this has been a godsend, a gift that Tina and the cast have given us. It gives Reality a voice where she doesn’t have one. She’s been locked up in silence by our government, and this is her voice. It gives people an opportunity to see a version of my daughter, there on the stage, and to try to understand or see her. And it reminds people that this is a real human life we’re dealing with. This was a 25-year-old young woman. She’s real and she’s funny and she’s beautiful, and it brought her to life and made her human in ways that just reading about it in the newspaper can’t. I couldn’t be happier, and I couldn’t be more grateful for what they’ve done to bring her story in this way.
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From 2010 to 2016, Winner served in the Air Force’s 94th Intelligence Squadron, where she worked as a cryptologic linguist. Photo: standwithreality.org
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Reality Winner. Photo: standwithreality.org
TS
As Billie said earlier, we had very limited contact. She, incredibly, reached out to us very early in our work process, which was an incredible gift to me. We had this little back and forth over the time period before the show premiered and Billie and her friends and family came to see it, but Billie never ever asked explicitly, “What are you doing with this? What’s the treatment?” I would just send emails to let her know what we’re doing: I know these actors would probably mean nothing to her, but, “Here’s the cast and here’s the details”—just letting her know as the project developed.
What I felt was the strongest thing was just kind of crazy—because this is Billie’s daughter and this is real—but I always just felt like somehow there was some sort of implicit trust.
BD-W
Right.
TS
I didn’t want to know too much, and I was trying to keep it pure to this idea of let’s just stage this with a lot of integrity, stage this conversation—without bells and whistles and without taking too much of what the emotional sense of it was for Billie’s family and Billie, which is super valid and really important. I believed that the strongest way we could do this as a piece of art was to really adhere to this and not editorialize too much.
In the talkbacks and in the programs we give information about the case and Stand with Reality, but [the aim was] to keep what was on stage clear to this idea I had for it.
BW-D
Right. I never really gave it a thought to try to be involved in the production because I wanted it to be true. I wanted it to be real. I mean, I had never met Tina. I didn’t know anything about her work and, like I said, before I went to New York, I was very afraid. I was so afraid about this could go one way or another way.
Then when I met Emily and when I saw her outfit—she even had a handwoven bracelet—I was just like, “Well, how did you know?” They did research and they knew about Reality and what little details to put in there—Pikachu on the Converse—and I was just like, wow. There were so many little things that they did that sitting there as the mother of Reality Winner I felt such comfort with the work that was done.
PS
And what does Reality know of the performance or think about it?
BW-D
She knows everything. For her, there was fear because she didn’t know what people were taking away from this, other than the things that she’s heard from us. I shared with Tina not too long ago that Reality received a letter from a 10-year old named Max. His parents took him to see this play, and he was so inspired he had to write to Reality, and he drew her a picture and sent it to her. That was the very first time that Reality said, “Wow, I’m glad they’re doing this.” Because she felt like if Max had seen this play and had been inspired enough to draw her a picture of a robot and send it to her, then she knew that this work was good. So it is impacting her in a good way, but it is also terrifying to her because she’s not involved in the process and just has to trust that her story is being told with integrity. Her story is being told in a way that does her justice.
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