Unspeakable Acts
It's been an emotionally rough few days. I'm on campus early--even earlier than the frosh, who mostly arrived today--to participate in one of our orientation events meant to bring awareness to issues around sexual and relationship violence, and alcohol. The alcohol one is, I believe, only on its second year; my frosh year, there was a motivational speaker instead. We, however, have made both into one show called We Speak We Stand.
Our first day of meeting, Monday, went pretty well. We had icebreakers, and then chose whether we wanted to be in the sexual violence half or the alcohol half. As most of the alcohol skits involve people who go to parties and drink (or not), I didn't think I could connect--I don't go to parties much at all--so I picked sexual violence, with which I feel perhaps more familiar. Yesterday and today, we ran our skits.
I wasn't expecting it to hit me so hard, emotionally. Yesterday one of the edits someone made to his monologue included the use of a gendered slur in a very aggressive context, and it triggered me. I spoke up, and asked him to cut it, and left for the five minutes he did it today. I did, however, spend the rest of the day yesterday doing self care.
Today, rehearsals ended on a better note for me. However, my partner in the skit I chose to do asked to meet this evening after dinner to go over it a few more times, and I agreed. I feel that both of our performances are a lot more nuanced now, but it was incredibly hard to read it four times in a row.
You see, this skit involves two people talking about the same night from opposite sides. My partner, a man, has to act very oblivious to his hook-up partner's body language, such that he ends up raping her. I have to do a very nuanced performance, moving from excited at hooking up, to scared and panicking, to a kind of defeated, flat tone. As one might imagine, I'm drawing heavily on things I felt and still feel reguarding the traumatic incident with my brother last winter. It's taking all of my (inexperienced) acting skills, and a lot of spoons to do this, especially in a row like that to adjust how I'm performing bits of it each time.
And then there are other things in my life going on right now, and I'm not sure how much of what I feel right now is from being emotionally worn out by this, and how much of what I feel is related to the other things going on.
*deep breath*
So that's where I'm at right now. Still doing self-care, and trying to cope as best I can. I'm glad the performance is tomorrow night, though. I'll only have to do it a few more times tomorrow, and then I'm done.
I picked this skit because I strongly remember it from my orientation freshman year. Hopefully, with all the work we've put into it, we'll have the same impact on this year's frosh. That, at least, will make it worth it.
Our first day of meeting, Monday, went pretty well. We had icebreakers, and then chose whether we wanted to be in the sexual violence half or the alcohol half. As most of the alcohol skits involve people who go to parties and drink (or not), I didn't think I could connect--I don't go to parties much at all--so I picked sexual violence, with which I feel perhaps more familiar. Yesterday and today, we ran our skits.
I wasn't expecting it to hit me so hard, emotionally. Yesterday one of the edits someone made to his monologue included the use of a gendered slur in a very aggressive context, and it triggered me. I spoke up, and asked him to cut it, and left for the five minutes he did it today. I did, however, spend the rest of the day yesterday doing self care.
Today, rehearsals ended on a better note for me. However, my partner in the skit I chose to do asked to meet this evening after dinner to go over it a few more times, and I agreed. I feel that both of our performances are a lot more nuanced now, but it was incredibly hard to read it four times in a row.
You see, this skit involves two people talking about the same night from opposite sides. My partner, a man, has to act very oblivious to his hook-up partner's body language, such that he ends up raping her. I have to do a very nuanced performance, moving from excited at hooking up, to scared and panicking, to a kind of defeated, flat tone. As one might imagine, I'm drawing heavily on things I felt and still feel reguarding the traumatic incident with my brother last winter. It's taking all of my (inexperienced) acting skills, and a lot of spoons to do this, especially in a row like that to adjust how I'm performing bits of it each time.
And then there are other things in my life going on right now, and I'm not sure how much of what I feel right now is from being emotionally worn out by this, and how much of what I feel is related to the other things going on.
*deep breath*
So that's where I'm at right now. Still doing self-care, and trying to cope as best I can. I'm glad the performance is tomorrow night, though. I'll only have to do it a few more times tomorrow, and then I'm done.
I picked this skit because I strongly remember it from my orientation freshman year. Hopefully, with all the work we've put into it, we'll have the same impact on this year's frosh. That, at least, will make it worth it.