Athena Fitzpatrick finds a challenge

When Worcester native Athena Fitzpatrick auditioned for a theater production titled “Becoming Natasha” in New York City in February, she didn’t know she was about to become involved in an intense dramatic project.

“I just auditioned, really. I didn’t know anything about it before I auditioned,” she said. But “Becoming Natasha” has given Fitzpatrick opportunities for creative input, while delving into some tough subject matter.

“I’m really happy I’ve been part of it,” she said.

The work was called “a fascinating and often harrowing piece of documentary theater” in a recent review on American Theater Web. Based on Victor Malarek’s book about the global sex trade, “The Natashas,” “Becoming Natasha” includes the true stories of Eastern European women who, having been duped into going abroad, find themselves laboring more as less as prisoners in the sex trade. The piece also includes transcripts of interviews with men who traffic in the trade and posts to various online bulletin boards.

Currently, four actresses — including Fitzpatrick — compose the cast, as they sit at a table and read/act the material. After each performance there is usually a “back talk” discussion with the audience. It is causing a buzz and was most recently seen at the Women Center Stage Festival put on by the Culture Project in New York last month.

“Becoming Natasha” has been developed over the past couple of years by the New York theater group Isadora Productions. It has been performed at several venues in New York, as well as regionally and in Canada. Fitzpatrick, 27, is the newest member to join the cast.

“It is an evolving thing. It’s taken many different forms,” Fitzpatrick said. Male and female actresses in a larger cast were previously featured, but the current four-woman format looks like the one director Gabe Maxon wants to stick with.

“It’s been a pretty intense project for me. The personal research I had to do was not easy,” Fitzpatrick said. “For the audience, too, it’s tough stuff.”

A good part of the script is real-life dialogue, and everything in the show is factual, she noted.

One of the women Fitzpatrick gives voice to was able to escape from the sex trade after some horrendous experiences. Fitzpatrick read interviews that the woman had given to Malarek for his book. But what she had gone through left a shroud that would not go away.

“She ended up killing herself,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s tough to read those interviews and know she didn’t make it. The damage that’s done is done. It can’t really be erased.”

Fitzpatrick also went on the Web and saw how easy it is to access sites that are basically pushing prostitution, as well as the sites full of boastful postings.

“It’s so gross,” she said.

To bring matters even closer to home, “Becoming Natasha” uses messages taken from local Web sites of the city the piece is being performed in.

According to Amnesty International, an estimated 20,000 people are trafficked into the United States every year (as many as 700,000 are trafficked internationally) — many through and into New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. In that tri-state area, thousands of men, women and children are forced to work against their will in households, sweatshops, construction sites and adult clubs.

And yet this is not an issue that appears to stir up consistent headlines or outrage. “Becoming Natasha” could help that situation become different.

“In the talkbacks, people do get fired up,” Fitzpatrick said. The theater group tries to be neutral as opinions are expressed. “It’s four women up there telling a story, and then letting the audience make up their own minds based on what we’ve shown them.”

Topics that come up as the audience talks can vary — whether prostitution should be legalized, for example, or censorship in rap music. “Ultimately, it often ends up how we raise our children,” she said.

Fitzpatrick grew up in Worcester and graduated from Notre Dame Academy, where the idea of becoming an actress quickly developed.

In her first year at Notre Dame she auditioned for a school production of the musical “Oklahoma!”

“I auditioned thinking I would be the star of the show,” she said. Instead, she was cast as a cowboy.

Later, the director of the show, Notre Dame theater head and local theater legend Virginia Byrne, told Fitzpatrick’s mother that she hoped her daughter would stick with acting.

There would be no worries on that front.

“I was hooked,” Fitzpatrick said.

She credited Byrne with inspiring her to act. “She’s a great director, definitely.”

Fitzpatrick went on to graduate as a theater major from Connecticut College, in a program that offered several opportunities to study abroad. But after graduation, she returned to Worcester for a year. “I was broke.”

She has been based in New York for a little over three years. “My goal is just to be able to make it,” she said, “to be able to work as an actor and not make martinis every week.”

It can be a struggle for many actors in New York as they strive to get on their feet. Still, Fitzpatrick has maintained a sense of humor. She said an outdoor Shakespearean production she got involved in turned out not to be Shakespeare in the park but, more accurately, “Shakespeare in the parking lot.”

To help support herself, she has taken non-acting jobs, including bartending, with a certain panache for martinis. “I can make a mean martini,” she said.

She has been asked the question “are you done yet?” — meaning, not so politely, is she done with pursuing acting. “I don’t feel I’m done yet,” she said. “I’m not done.”

Indeed, “Becoming Natasha” is her first Equity production.

The project is taking August off and then will see where the piece goes from there. At present, the production is, without intermission, a little less than an hour. It may have to be lengthened. Fitzpatrick feels the work could do very well touring the college circuit and engendering debate there.

Her voice will be heard.

“It’s a collaborative effort. A group project. I actually have creative input,” she said.

“I really want to stay connected with them. I think this has the potential to take off.”