How Connective Theatre Company and Awakenings are Healing Sexual Violence Through Theatre

In textbooks for acting classes across the globe, we have chapters devoted to interpreting musical theatre performance, Shakespeare, commedia dell’arte, and other material. But we have no language to discuss how to create, interpret, and perform something that has been around since before stages could be tread: sexual violence. Me Too Monologues with Connective Theatre Company and Awakenings is more than a performance of monologues written by and performed by people sharing their own experiences, even though that is a feat of its own. It is a study, a lesson, and an experiment on how to create theatre that takes a painful experience and spreads the lesson and healing without creating more pain. 

The genesis of this production was beyond the stage, with Tarana Burke, who started the Me Too Movement back in 2006, and then with the hashtag that started to circulate in 2017.  The title of Connective Theatre Company’s evening of illuminating monologues drew inspiration from Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues.” Director Leah Huskey first proposed the concept of survivor led theatre at The University of Missouri, which led to a one-night performance in April of 2018. Now, as a part of Connective Theatre Company’s first season, the company has paired with Awakenings, an arts organization dedicated to making visible the artistic expression of survivors of sexual violence, to create the Me Too Monologues.

Huskey explained that by having survivors initiate the conversation with their own voices, it gives them the opportunity to take the driver’s seat when sharing stories that history has tried to silence and ignore. This isn’t even the first time cast member Bianca Thompson has performed art concerning sexual assault, but now she gets to revisit her healing process at a different point in her life. What was specific about this process was that she didn’t “have to do anything” because she got to “tell the story in (her) way and the only rule is that (her) safety comes first.” 

Fellow cast member Valerie deGroot spoke to the uniqueness of the process with “people in the cast who have been having these moments, and it means so much to be there for them, where it’s this huge emotional release.” deGroot specifically, as an actor and developer herself, was drawn to this project “to craft something from (her) experience and in doing that, it has helped solidify things in (her) mind.” Thompson was drawn “to explore getting comfortable sitting in anger,” something that women and femme people don’t have the space to do. 

The partnership between Connective Theatre Company and Awakenings started at the beginning of 2019, when Huskey reached out to Laura Kitner and Jeri Frederickson of Awakening to learn how to foster a safe environment for the cast to explore their stories. Over the course of five months, Huskey, Lena Romano (assistant director of the show), and Chase Hauser (Artistic Director of CTC) worked with Frederickson to develop the process of creating the piece, from writing to workshopping to rehearsing and finally to performing. Huskey and Romano emphasized from the start that this process was to “heal wounds, not pick at them.” Frederickson led workshops over the course of three weeks (two workshops per week) that resulted in the written pieces that are to be performed. After each performance, a panel of trauma specialists, collected by Frederickson, will be present to discuss what the audience witnessed so as not to leave them in the lurch. 

The collective whole of the show is a wreath of stories told in solos and in groups. The ensemble includes Radcliffe Adler, Valerie deGroot, Chase Hauser, Tehilla Newman, Wendy Parman, Ramona Pozek, Bianca Thompson, and Nikki Thompson. Some artists will present their experiences with specific details, while others have taken a more poetic form. Still others are incorporating music and various elements. Wendy Parman’s piece incorporates music that she hopes will help people feel lifted up, and will remind people that “there is healing when we speak our truth and that there is beauty there.” 

With this production, Connective Theatre Company and Awakenings want to help survivors onstage and in the audience “come to terms with their own experiences and know they are not alone.” By giving people permission to tell their stories, we are also giving people the permission to listen. Often we are taught to hold people at arm’s length, for our own good and for others. We are told that to ask is to pry and you don’t want to pry into someone else’s life, but connection is what we crave. So what’s the basic foundation to creating theatre and human connection? Consideration. Imagine what theatre could be like if as much thought as money was being put into every step of the process. 

Connective Theatre Company’s Me Too Monologues runs only one weekend: October 24th, 25th, and 26th. Admission is free, and any donations will be given to Awakenings. Performances begin at 7:30 pm at 4001 N. Ravenswood Avenue, 204-C. To reserve a ticket, go to https://www.connectivetheatrecompany.com/ 

Sophie Vitello