On January 21, actors read staged monologues by seven award-winning playwrights—Paula Cizmar, Catherine Filloux, Gail Kriegel, Carol K. Mack, Ruth Margraff, Anna Deavere Smith and Susan Yankowitz—based on personal interviews and oral histories of seven women from Russia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Guatemala and Cambodia who overcame injustice to become leaders for change. Seven was developed in partnership with Vital Voices, a nonprofit organization which invests in emerging women leaders around the world, and directed by Evan Yionoulis.

Marcia G. Yerman reviewed the event for the Huffington Post.

Perhaps the most starkly emotive narrative of the set is Mukhtaran Mai’s story of survival and redemption. She was gang-raped by four men as retribution for an “honor crime” supposedly committed by her twelve year old brother (allegedly he held hands with a girl from a higher-caste tribe). A male tribunal from her village in Pakistan instituted the sentence. After her physical ordeal, she was forced to walk home in ripped clothing that rendered her virtually naked. Defying the tradition of committing suicide to restore honor to her family, she instead challenged the Pakistani legal system to punish her assailants. She was rewarded with a damages payment, which she used to build a school for girls. Susan Yankowitz, who worked with Mukhtaran Mai said, “It’s a very different process to put yourself in service to someone else’s voice.” They met in person three times, in a situation where neither woman spoke the other’s language. Yankowitz elucidated Mukhtaran Mai’s experience emphasizing, “She transcended the fate of women in her society to become a major force...and she did it in isolation and solitude, out of her own suffering.”