The Connectedness of Trauma

(Listen to the podcast recording of this post HERE)

Theatre is sacred to me.

And I know that I’m not alone. There are so, so many theatre artists that feel a deep connection to the artform; we have to, honestly, because it’s far from easy. Yes, the dedicated attention of an audience also calls to many, but you have to wonder that if that is someone’s motivation, why would they choose theatre? It is under or unpaid for the vast majority of gigs, it requires a large number of man hours to prepare for, it is over in between 3 days and a month or so (most places that aren’t Broadway or Off-Broadway) and is geographically limited, unlike film, music, YouTube, Instagram or Twitch. There are no such things as close-ups (though this is changing somewhat with the integration of video design), and you’re almost always sharing the stage with dozens of people who are much better than you at this step or that move. Not the best way to “be seen.”

So the people that stick it out in every arena of theatre, from educational and community theatre all the way to Broadway are, more often than not, “true believers.” They’ve been “bit by the bug,” as they say, and their connection deepens because of it. So theatre is sacred. It is sacred because of who it draws in and the stories they have to share. It is sacred because it is one of the earliest acts of telling story in community. And it is sacred because the theatre community is connected.

Ask an artist who has moved to a new city. Maybe they were super involved in their local community theatre, but now they have no connections. With exceptions for extremely cliquey theatres (of which I’m sure there are more than a few), that person will be welcomed into the fold, especially if they’re willing to participate in a variety of ways. Similarly, that artist will find familiarity in the act of telling stories communally and theatrically, even if things are done a bit differently here than they were at their last theatre. The language of the theatre, for instance. Up stage, down stage, stage left, stage right, watch out for the cyc, make sure we put out the ghost light, he missed his cue, and on and on…so much shared vocabulary.

The reality is that very few performers beyond the community theatre level work only in one theatre their entire lives. And in a market with multiple community theatres, there’s an even higher likelihood that there is crossover and movement of artists between them, even at the community theatre level. So this shared language is vital to help facilitate that cross pollination…artists aren’t having to learn multiple sets of stage directions and terms to be able to work for multiple theatres.

But unfortunately, not everything we all have in common is positive. For artists who have a passion for telling stories, we sure are bad at communicating with one another on the whole. Gossip especially drives wedges between artists without legitimate cause and often based on poor assumptions and fragile egos. Those damaged relationships move with the artists, changing their working relationships temporarily or permanently, and it may all be occurring completely outside the eye of other artists. Likewise, theatre shares language around problematic directors and leadership. “Yeah, he’s just like that. You’ll get used to it.” “She only yells sometimes, and she’s just so brilliant.” “No, I think you misinterpreted that, he would never touch someone like that maliciously.” “Did you hear that the director was screaming at David last night after rehearsal? He quit the show today, so stay out of the director’s way.”

I know that these experiences aren’t unique to me because they’re not all mine. And not every theatre has toxicity or drama, to be sure, but in the same way that one rotten apple spoils the whole batch, so do the theatres where this behavior is allowed to exist and perpetuate stereotypes that negatively impact all of theatre.

A story. I am a director who works to empower the actors in their bodies and minds during rehearsal. I often run a scene for the first time just asking them to move as they feel like they should; with actors new to working this way, things are very stiff at first, but they eventually begin to loosen up and start to live in their body. I will often encourage them to “just make a choice, it’s not binding, and you can make a different choice next time.” Normally, this is enough support that they can begin to do that. But one day after a rehearsal early in the life of my theatre company, I had an actor tell me that she had been in a theatre program with directors and teachers that would often tell her that she was making the “wrong choice” and would sometimes raise their voice in frustration because she “didn’t get it.” She had experienced verbal abuse (raising your voice is only acceptable when you are trying to be heard over loud noise or when someone’s safety is at risk, otherwise it is verbal abuse) from an adult in a position of authority, so it was completely reasonable that her mind and body had developed a fight or flight response to the idea of being asked to “make a choice” in our rehearsal process.

The harmful behavior of some directors in some rehearsal rooms affects ALL of us who work in the theatre, because even if we didn’t experience it, those that have often develop trauma responses and psychologically unhealthy and closed off coping mechanisms that will affect their work and their relationships with their fellow artists - us. Of course, the fact that our fellow artists are experiencing trauma at all should be motivation to speak up and actively work to ensure that they and the artists that come after them do not have to experience that moving forward. The image I chose for this blog post is evocative with the appearance of blood, but if we are aghast at someone physically beating another person, why is a psychological beating any more acceptable, simply because there’s no visible blood?

Something has to change. Our field, the field of Directing as a whole, has to professionalize and step up to the plate. We are often seen as the leader of the theatrical unit, so we need to act like it and get our house in order before we can truly support the changes necessary elsewhere in the world of theatre. We owe it to ourselves, each other, and all of the artists we get to work with throughout our careers.

Coming up next, I’m going to outline the “paradigm manifesto” that I have developed so far, but it is not the end of the conversation, simply a starting point. I hope you’ll subscribe on our main blog page and follow along as we have that conversation.

(added 1/8/24) Narrator: But that post was never to come, in part because Andrew freaked themself out by saying that it would be a finished manifesto; he really needs to not put so much pressure on himself. More writing is coming, but it will be a slower build!