My Supporting Lead

I’ve never been good at doing things half-assed. It’s all or nothing in my book. So, when trauma hijacked my brain onstage the other night, it nearly did me in.

I’m a survivor of sexual violence from a young age— I was 10 the first time I was assaulted. Then I was assaulted at 15, 19, 21… I spent a lifetime hiding my trauma from others. Then, I came forward in a very public way eleven years ago to expose one of my perpetrators and the theater organization that protected him. There are some posts here in my blog that tell that part of my story if you are interested.

It’s been a wild ride. I wrote a couple books about my trauma and healing. I don’t hide from my past anymore. So, when I wrote a one-woman play with music about my experience, it seemed like a natural progression in my healing process.

I was diagnosed with Compound Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder a few years ago. Some days, I’m amazed I can have anything close to a normal life. There’s a part of me that thinks I’m crazy for ever thinking I could pull this off. I’ve been in the theater my whole life, but doing a play about my own trauma?  

I started working with a friend and collaborator, Chuma Gault, who agreed to direct the piece for me. I was given the gift of a residency at the LGBT Center in Los Angeles to develop this play. Time in a theater, tech people to make it look and sound beautiful. I spent months getting the script refined, working the music, and choreography. This last week, I was there, in LA, getting ready to share where I’m at in the developmental process with a live audience.

The phenomenon of putting all of the pieces of a play together onstage is always a challenge. Every actor knows the struggle of stumbling with lines during this part of the process, integrating blocking, sets, props, lighting, etc. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, I know this,” is uttered repeatedly in rehearsal when we are supposed to be off book [lines memorized]. The brain needs time to pull all of the pieces together, and then it starts to flow as our bodies and brains get used to everything happening at once. This is totally normal. I was prepared for it. What I wasn’t prepared for was my utter inability to overcome it for the sections of the play that bump up against my trauma. I know the lines— I wrote them for cryin’ out loud. But I kept dissociating and getting dysregulated during rehearsals. The mind-body connection wasn't happening.

Chuma encouraged me to point at those moments I was struggling with onstage, not try to hide them, so I did. I wrote a part where I explain what’s happening. “My trauma hijacks my prefrontal cortex, my higher reasoning goes offline, and I can’t memorize the lines. They won’t sink in.”

The performance day finally arrived, and earlier in the day, when we were running through the show— which I’d never gotten through without stopping— I got to a particularly difficult and painful section of the story, and I went off the rails. I was stumbling with the words, lost focus, my body was dysregulated. I got as far as I felt I could, and then just walked off stage. Two things you need to know to understand the significance of this: I’m a perfectionist, and I don’t walk away from things that are hard. I may need to take a breath, but I don’t quit. 

My trauma was now in the driver’s seat. We had to make a decision. The possibility of me dissociating onstage was very real. It was either not do the show at all, which was unacceptable to me, or do it differently than we had rehearsed it.

We decided to make it a hybrid performance/play reading. When I got to a certain section of the play, about halfway through, I would make the shift and bring the script forward and read from it and not do the blocking. It’s not what I wanted, but it was necessary. There was no way I was going to keep my demons at bay onstage.

The first part of the performance went great. I was even having fun at times. Then I started creeping closer to a section that describes one of my assaults, and I could feel my brain starting to go fuzzy. Shit... Then, I was totally dissociated.  

I stood there, trying desperately to bring my brain back online. I could feel a lot of energy moving through my body, but none of it was pointing me in the direction of clarity. It was all a swirl. I realized after what felt like an eternity that I wasn’t going to find my way without the backup we put in place for me— the script on a music stand off to the side. I went to the script, but when I looked at the words, they may as well have been written in a different language. This is trauma. I couldn’t make heads or tails of them. I thumbed through the pages. Looking for a landmark. I finally found a word I could read, and then two, and then a sentence. I was able to find my place. I knew where I was again.

I’ve had Actor’s Nightmares before; most actors do. I’ve flubbed lines plenty of times, lost my place. It happens. But I’ve never gone offline like this before in front of an audience. I felt like a failure, and no kind words after the show would convince me otherwise.

Right after I came off stage, I never wanted to do this show again. It was too painful, too exposed, too vulnerable. I felt like it was nothing short of a miracle that I got through it. It was similar to the feeling I had when leaving the courtroom after I testified at my trial— utterly raw. I wanted to disappear.

Several people have told me they have never seen anything like what I’ve created. And I believe it. There’s a reason that survivors don’t put themselves onstage and expose their soft underbellies like this. It’s terrifying and summons the protectors in us.

It’s my trauma body that wants to hide; she’s that part of me that’s built to protect me, keep me safe from harm. She’s a powerful, primal element of my psyche that doesn’t listen to reason. That is who showed up onstage.

I’ve been considering letting the whole project go— I wrote it, I did it, maybe that’s enough. Maybe it isn’t healthy for me to put myself through it repeatedly. But I’ve put too much time and energy into this to walk away without a close examination.

Then, I had an interesting encounter last night. I’ve had powerful nature connections in my life during moments of searching for clarity— nature is my church. I was on my evening walk with my dog, Wilbur, thinking out loud, wondering what the message is from the last few days and the struggles I’ve faced. I don’t believe the lesson is “Give up, it’s too much for you.”

I have lived in my house for over two years. I walk my dog nightly, and I’ve never encountered a bat— until last night. I was literally asking out loud what I need to embrace or let go of around this performance, and a bat fluttered by my head, circled me a few times, and then followed me for a bit. When animals do things like that, I pay attention. This particular animal is especially significant because I talk about an encounter I had with a bat when I was a little girl in my show. This made me think the bat showing up in this moment was not a coincidence but a message.

In Western culture, bats are considered harbingers of evil— little vampires. This bat didn’t scare me at all. In fact, it was lovely, playful.  I looked up bats for their spiritual meaning when I got back home. This is what I found:

“The bat is a powerful spiritual symbol of transition, rebirth, and intuition. Because they spend the day resting in dark caves and emerge at dusk, bats represent shedding old patterns, navigating the unknown, and embracing personal transformation.”

The final song of my show is called Stepping Into the Unknown. I’m taking this as a sign to keep forging ahead with the play.

This morning, I read some of the feedback notes I had asked for in a survey after the show. Words like poignant, release, beautiful, vulnerable, and inspiring jumped out at me from the page. These words make me want to keep going. My struggle, which felt so defeating, was appreciated and made people feel less alone.

Trauma literally changes the brain. That’s proven science, not hyperbole. There are things one can do to mitigate the effects, but you will never change the brain back to what it was before the trauma. So, if I want to keep developing this show, I have to work with what I have.

When my trauma is triggered, my trauma body will show up. How loud she gets will vary, but she will appear. I thought I could conquer her, tame her, get her to behave onstage. She will have none of that. She will always be there to protect me, that’s why she exists. If I’m going to continue to pursue this production as a healing exercise and example to others, she and I need to coexist onstage. I need to find a way to make peace with that and integrate her into the show. I don’t want her to have the starring role, but she can be a supporting lead.