Anonymous stories of sexual assault inspired the Interactive Theater Project at CU to create a play called Real Conversations.
The play will be performed 5 p.m. Oct. 25 in ATLAS 100. The goal is to inform the public and student body about how rape occurs and how to deal with its aftereffects. The free show is in its second year.
Women’s studies major Miriam Barrere developed the idea. The performance is part of a larger series called Untold Stories, a program aimed at raising campus awareness about social justice issues. Barrere attended a conference in Washington, D.C., about violence within the Jewish community two years ago. She met a woman there who put together plays to educate the Jewish community about issues of violence. That woman’s idea inspired her to create Real Conversations, she said.
The play is a collaboration between CU Rape and Gender Education and the Interactive Theater Project on campus. COURAGE got real stories by setting up a box outside their office where students could submit stories about sexual assault they experienced.
“All the stories that were submitted were used because there were several, but not many,” Barrere said.
Barrere said she was the victim of sexual assault when she was 9 years old. She didn’t tell anyone when it happened.
“I didn’t talk about it to anybody until I was in high school. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school until I told my mom,” Barrere said. “She was shocked that would happen to her daughter. It was a really hard conversation, and I didn’t know going into it what I wanted from her.”
Barrere said she wished her mother had reacted differently.
“At the time, I felt good about telling her, but I also wish that she would have done something more or said something differently. It was more that I didn’t want to admit that would happen to me,” she said.
As a result, Barrere said she wants to help other victims of sexual assault.
“Part of why I work with COURAGE is to really help my peers understand what it means to be supportive. Many survivors go to their friends first,” Barrere said. “It’s not uncommon for survivors to have reactions similar to me and just kind of shutting it out.”
Rebecca Brown Adelman is the Interactive Theater Project director. The acting troupe, founded in 1999, performs 85 each year on social justice issues across campus.
“Real Conversations is one of the many performances we do,” Adelman said. “It was really successful last year.”
The play is of the genre of documentary theater. It takes real life and puts it onto stage, Adelman said.
“The performance overlaps. It would go into someone’s story and then go into someone else’s story. I would try to connect it,” Adelman said. “We are here to just honor those stories.”
Adelman said that she and Barrere look at the performance differently.
“Miriam is thinking about it from an education perspective, and I’m thinking about from a theatrical perspective. We try to get people to look at the issue through their heart rather than their head,” Adelman said. “When you start thinking from the heart, you start thinking with compassion. We hope to touch people, and by touching people they’ll have more understanding of these issues.”
