Building Trust When Staging Others’ Intimate Stories

Crafting theatre about true stories is a delicate dance, and it is particularly tricky when a director is adapting the personal experiences of another person in their life. Forum Theatre, a practice from Augusto Boal, not only necessitates a basis of personal stories but also asks audiences to improvise and engage with them. Walls: Chloe’s Story, a play I wrote and have directed twice now, isn’t just any story that belongs to someone else: it’s a story about sex. Western audiences are used to hearing throw away jokes about Viagra, but I’d venture to say most aren’t familiar with female sexual dysfunction. So how do you put someone else’s sexual health story on stage, and do it in a way that is radical and not exploitative? By involving the right voices in the creation of the project and in the audience.

Chronic vulvovaginal/vulvar pain (which encompasses conditions like Genito-Pelvic Pain/Penetration Disorder (GPPPD), vulvodynia, endometriosis, etc.) is something that I learned about from the television show Sex Education. There’s not much media on the subject—it wasn’t until delving into Walls that I discovered other media such as the film Ladyparts by Bonnie Gross and the play Skin a Cat by Isley Linn.

By the time I was a junior in college taking a class called Boal and Beyond taught by Alexander Santiago-Jirau, four of the closest people in my life were suffering from GPPPD. GPPPD is a chronic condition associated with the inability to receive vaginal penetration of any kind, often including tampons, and is frequently referred to as “vaginismus.” Around this time, I also began following the Tight Lipped Instagram account to learn more about chronic vulvovaginal pain. Forum Theatre is a practice in which a short play is performed concerning a specific oppression (for us, that was societal ableism concerning GPPPD). This first ten minutes ends poorly for the protagonist, at which point the play restarts, and this time audience members can intervene by yelling “STOP,” jumping in for the protagonist (in our play, Chloe), and attempting to change the outcome by improvising with other actors on stage. Walls started as a final project for that class, but after I became one of the first recipients of the New York University Undergraduate Community-Engaged Summer Theatre Grant, it became clear making the thing happen would require a lot more care and patience.

Trust and How to Build It

Even before I submitted for the grant, I had many conversations with the people in my life living with GPPPD, especially with the person from whom the bulk of the accounts in the script were borrowed, to obtain enthusiastic consent to produce the project. I volunteered with Theatre of the Oppressed New York City (TONYC) to bolster my knowledge of Forum Theatre, keenly aware that this practice is spearheaded by people of color, another group I am not a part of. Including Tight Lipped was an imaginary scenario I pitched in the class project. I had no hopes that they would be involved with the real thing. Luckily, the grant I received came with mentorship from two professionals who advised me on how to reach out to Tight Lipped to learn more. From there I got connected with the New York City chapter leader, Sarah Minion, to whom I pitched the project with no expectations, saying it would be great if they would advertise the show for us on their social media account. I was beyond lucky that the chapter was looking for a place to focus its efforts that summer of 2023. Sarah encouraged me to come to meetings where members were eager to read my drafts and give me feedback.

In many ways, Tight Lipped became my research partners. I had already been gleaning insights from listening to their podcast, but they then got on Zoom with me to engage with the material I was writing. I could've written a ninety-minute play with all the accounts I gathered in these meetings. Instead, I returned to Chloe’s story with hopes of making it more specific and saved the additional accounts I gained as an outline for interventions (when the audience interacts).

Notably, I found that many of the stories I gathered from Tight Lipped centered around cis women’s sexual encounters with cis men. While this is a very common narrative around experiences with vulvovaginal pain, the people in my life with these conditions were mainly queer and having very similar problems. In fact, everyone who submitted to my original casting call for Walls identified as genderqueer. Through research, I discovered that GPPPD is associated with gender dysphoria, and for many years was labeled by doctors as being caused by queer or trans identity (which, of course, it is not). Preserving the queer narrative of Chloe’s story was essential. Nonetheless, listening to people talk at these meetings helped provide phrases I could feed to my actors in rehearsal—for example, one person shared that their gynecologist asked if their partner was “well-endowed.”

I knew who I could trust in the room because they had already trusted me with this private information about themselves.

With Tight Lipped in my corner, it was time to seek out trustworthy collaborators. My list of collaborators started with my friends because it had to. I knew who I could trust in the room because they had already trusted me with this private information about themselves. I knew I wanted to put as many people with these conditions in the room as possible, so I put out a casting call for actors with chronic vulvovaginal pain. Initially, the team was me and four people suffering from chronic vulvovaginal pain. But when one member had to drop out, it became clear that I needed to expand the parameters of who I was asking to be involved. This was also apparent when crafting the company for the second production at the Tank, which involved a team of designers and producers that I hadn’t had on the first project. Notably, we involved the Invitation Arts Collective as our producer, a new collective of artists founded by Eli Coe, one of Walls’s initial cast members. I ended up asking a friend without chronic vulvar pain to jump in over a stranger with chronic vulvar pain, considering I was bringing personal accounts of people not directly involved in the project into rehearsals. I knew I needed to go into the rehearsals with a lot of existing trust in the room.

Holding space for those in the room with chronic vulvar pain was something I always knew would be paramount. Especially when it came to rehearsing interventions, it often made sense to pause rehearsal to share stories. Interventions were my favorite part of the process and became the bulk of rehearsal time the second go around. I made it clear to actors in both productions that the script was just an outline, and other than a series of keywords we had to hit, I wanted them to make it their own and build it with me. The second time I also cast a performer in the role of the Joker, the facilitator of the interventions in the piece, a role that I played in the first production. This allowed me to hand over the play during performances in a way I hadn’t the first time. With both productions, I had team members behind the table with vulvar pain and before anyone ever saw the piece I held an invited dress with Tight Lipped members.

Each time I staged this piece, the rehearsal process was only five days. With such a truncated process, I tried to approach each rehearsal with a manageable number of tasks. I prepared myself to ask questions we had the space to answer and, with the help of an intimacy coordinator, talked the actors through potential ways to leave the heaviness of the material in the room. Forum Theatre gets intense, but the outlandish truth behind many of the interventions can be hilarious. I tried to uplift those moments to the cast to help them begin to laugh at ableist partners and healthcare professionals, in the room and in life.

Making Intimacy Interactive

What level of intimacy will an audience engage with? I struggled with this a lot. I thought, “If I have the characters kiss, will the audience be reluctant to jump in at all for fear of having to kiss an actor?” which I would, of course, never allow an actor to do. Or, “If I don’t have them kiss, will the audience write off the story as unrealistic and not want to engage?” In its first rendition, I kept things flirtatious. I prioritized the dialogue and story, having Chloe interrupt her love interest, Hot Andie, with a confession of her condition before they hooked up. This provided a lot of room for intervention around how and when to talk about one’s condition. In the second rendition, I portrayed the hook-up through a silly dance to “Physical,” ending in Hot Andie grinding on the floor while Chloe writhed in pain on the bed, depicting a moment of attempted penetration in an abstracted way. I also staged an intervention with my actors in rehearsal, which we showed at one of two performances, during which Chloe says “no” and Hot Andie attempts to reinitiate. That iteration allowed us to have deeper conversations about intimacy and consent but made audiences more loath to interact, especially during the dance sequence.

One of the tricky parts of Forum Theatre is that it calls for an audience of people who understand the oppression the show centers on. When it comes to chronic vulvovaginal pain, it’s challenging to identify audience members. Meetings with Tight Lipped are ultimately how I started to build my audience. In hindsight, especially when it came to remounting the show at the Tank (a bigger venue with a higher ticket price), I relied on Tight Lipped a bit too much to garner an audience. There are many New York City-based pelvic physical therapists, informational Instagram accounts, and medical centers that serve people with these conditions whom I wish I had reached out to sooner. It’s definitely a weird sell—“Come to an interactive play about your vagina!”—but the performance we were able to do with just folks from Tight Lipped with so special. I wish I had invested more time in trying to spread the word to more people with chronic vulvar pain.

Each version of the show had two performances. Initially, the first show was reserved for those suffering from chronic vulvar pain, with a second performance open to the public. The performance for those with chronic vulvar pain was particularly effective. One member of Tight Lipped even shared with me that she wasn’t sure if she could interact because her condition varied slightly from Chloe’s, but that she would feel most comfortable in a room of peers, and I held that with me as I considered remounting the piece. I hoped to reframe both performances the following year to be geared towards people with chronic vulvar pain but open to friends and family. With the seats and ticket prices of productions at the Tank, we ultimately had to rely on inviting a wider audience, which led to many broader intervention scenes. The wider audience was of value too. Several people shared discoveries of overlap with these conditions they hadn't named before. It was also important for me to acknowledge who didn’t need to come. Some of the folks who inspired this play were unable to attend because the content was just too triggering for them, and that is okay.

Ultimately, Forum Theatre is about the quality of interventions over the quantity of the audience.

Neither production had an exceptionally high turnout. There are several reasons for this: timing, price point, location. I struggled with pricing tickets from the jump. The first year the show was free, but only half of the people who reserved tickets showed up. The second year, the tickets were fifteen dollars, which I justified by giving our share of the ticket split with the Tank directly to Tight Lipped. We had a higher turnout overall the second time, but a lower turnout of people with chronic vulvar pain. Several Tight Lipped members from out of state reached out about receiving a video of the performance, but we opted not to record due to the sensitive nature of the audience interaction. Ultimately, Forum Theatre is about the quality of interventions over the quantity of the audience.

The Response

The response to Walls has been nothing short of heartwarming. People in my life shared with me that after the show had come into our lives they were more comfortable talking about their conditions. Members of Tight Lipped shared personal stories with me about their conditions and things that resonated with them from the play. I felt positive affirmation from my friends in the queer community. It was important to me that this remain a queer story, as much of the narrative surrounding vulvovaginal pain is associated with heterosexual relationships, but being queer doesn’t alleviate the problems and pressures that accompany chronic vulvar pain. I received an outpouring of support from Tight Lipped, an encouragement to remount the piece, and an eagerness to have me more involved in their organization, which I hope to find time for this upcoming year.

This has not come without internal friction for me though. In both rehearsal and Tight Lipped meetings, I was mindful to name that I do not experience chronic vulvar pain, and gave more context than I will give here to my relationships with those who do. However, because this has become my project, when I talk to people who saw the piece, I often feel like the assumption is that I do experience chronic vulvar pain. Although I have proximity to these conditions, I could never claim to understand them like someone who experiences this kind of chronic pain does. I have been careful to conceal the identities of those who have lent me their stories.

Working on a story about intimate pain that isn’t yours requires a lot of listening. Making the play was about sifting through all the stories I’d heard to get to what made Chloe’s story the most specific, knowing that the stories I cut were still present in the piece; listening to audience reception and keeping that with me when reshaping the show; and listening to the people most excited about being involved in the process. The most joyful part of this was listening to my loved ones with chronic vulvar pain talk about the play like it was something they were proud to be a part of. They are who I made this for.

We must keep talking about chronic vulvar pain! We cannot continue to accept dismissive behavior from gynecologists and partners. We must invest in organizations like Tight Lipped and Our Body Justice Project that are fighting to get patients the care they deserve. I hope Walls helped provide a little practice at that.