Valerie M. Joyce was first inspired to write I Will Speak for Myself in 2012 when she stumbled upon Mary's story in an old book of laws. The mental image of Mary enacting her punishment haunted her for months. She recalls, "I could vividly picture her body enacting the scene of subjection but, curiously, I could not ever hear her voice. Without historical records to provide a model against which to construct this woman’s lived experience, she had been effectively silenced. And thus, I began to utilize the theatre as a way to explore, teach, and ultimately hear history through performance."

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She began a theatre project called  (Dis)Embodied Voices, where she searched forgotten archives for mentions of pre-Emancipation African American women, who are generally absent from history books, transforming these bites of information into powerful monologues delivered by the formidable Kimberly S. Fairbanks. Through their collaboration, the project transformed into a one woman play called I Will Speak for Myself, which has been performed in Philadelphia, New York City, San Francisco and in the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

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Valerie received her doctorate in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she studied biographical performances of historic women. She is currently the Chair of the Theatre Department at Villanova University.