How I Got Over

HOW I GOT OVER is an intimate, innovative profile of 15 formerly homeless and incarcerated African-American women that dramatically reveals the social causes of their plight and how their lives were transformed.

The film follows the women for 12 weeks as they craft and rehearse an original play based on their harrowing, true-life stories. None have had any acting experience and are guided by the Theater Lab's "Life Stories" program. Their work together leads to an emotional, one-night only, sold-out performance at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. As their stories unfold, we learn that most of them suffered earlier trauma and abuse -- including domestic violence and incest -- that led to their lives of drug abuse and homelessness. Reckoning with their troubled pasts in the play, addiction and homelessness look less like the result of personal choices and more clearly an outcome of the social circumstances they were born into.