Writing for the Stage via Scripted Trauma: Unlock Your Inner Thespian Part 1

Writing for the stage is how you get to merge memory and fantasy into mastery over a traumatic event. Once you write a script, you have the option to take it one step further and unlock your inner thespian. If you can visualize a stage, I can walk you through how to write a script for your trauma.

Why write for the stage and not some over the top movie production? It’s because the stage “performance” infuses structure with the imagination. It’s grounded in the tradition of live performance on a low budget. This gives your imagination more pathways to work with; not unlike how rhyming a confrontation letter has added benefits.

Writing for the Stage: Your Scripted Trauma

Writing a script has added benefits compared to the short story format. As you’re writing the script, you’re visualizing your characters walking out on stage in front of a live audience. Believe me, this aspect is the beginning of the empowerment process itself.

Stage productions have always challenged the audience to use their imagination more than they ever have when watching a movie. You can make one or more of your “actors” play dual roles because that’s always been common where plays are concerned.

Minor characters don’t usually require an “actor”, much less lines. In fact, there are countless ways to improvise in a play that you simply can’t get away with in a film or short story. You can have your character mime a reaction and then tell the audience what just happened. A crowd of people can be improvised by off stage noises, like a laugh track or a chorus of “boo!” Cardboard cutouts with smoke screens can also ensure your cast of characters are as few as possible.

This keeps the focus on your key characters. There were many people, or “characters” in your life at the time. Who becomes your “actors”?

How to Write Your Scripted Trauma

Because what happened to us stayed hidden behind closed doors, we are using our imagination to blow out those walls for full exposure. Our abusers have no clue that a “live audience” is watching their every move, while “our character” is fully aware. In fact, our character is so aware, we have the extra freedom to break character and address the audience intermittently. Meanwhile, our abusers’ characters never notice we’re speaking to a live audience. Your end goal for this one is to make your character come out on top in some way.

Keep the lines – change their delivery

Chances are, you know the lines because they’re burned in your mind. It seems that nothing becomes a declarative memory faster than the trauma of verbal abuse. Use every line you remember when writing your script, while making those who traumatized you look as ridiculous as possible. This element is important because by making your abusers look ridiculous, you’re lowering their power over you.

There are many ways to make them look laughable while they are speaking the very lines you can never forget. One way is giving them a prop they have to carry around through the duration of the play. You can also play with costume design and make them wear ridiculous clothes.

You can even give them a mask as a means of showing who they pretended to be in public. Then, in their “masked” state, they can address the audience too. While they’re playing this false self, they have no idea that their audience can still see them with their mask off. (Unmask Trauma Glossary 1). Then, one way to make your character come out on top is having “the great reveal” at the end. Your abusers are shocked to find out that they have been watched the entire time. Imagine them squirming and sputtering in humiliation while attempting to explain themselves to the public.

Acts versus Scenes: What’s the difference?

The simplified answer is duration time and scenery. Scenes rely on set design. When you’re writing for the stage, it’s important to keep in mind that set design makes it possible for your characters to move between scenes without intermission. This is thanks to stage lighting. Different spotlights can shine on different areas (scenes) of the stage while blacking out the rest of it. No dropped curtains required for major scene or costume changes. This is what makes the one act play possible, even if there is more than one scene. However, the one act play is also a short performance, an hour or less.

If your play runs over an hour, you need to give your audience an intermission somewhere in the middle. This is a great spot to determine where your second act begins. The intermission gives the audience a ten or fifteen minute break; while behind the curtain, major set design and costume changes can happen. Acts in a play also have distinct themes, similar to how some novels are broken down into parts that contain several chapters.

Bear in mind that these are things to consider when professionally writing for the stage. So, unless you plan on publishing your scripted trauma, or have it performed in front of a live studio audience, you’re free to break as many rules as you wish.

My Scripted Trauma as an Example

I wrote a play based on my age 15 trauma. I divided it into three acts: Act 1: The Blind Date; Act 2: Under Lockdown; Act 3: Rescue and Soliloquys. (And no, my play was not three hours long, thank goodness!) 

I refused to dignify my enabler father with an “actor”, so I turned him into a brick with googly eyes perched on the back of a rocking recliner. (Don’t ask me why I chose a brick with googly eyes, I still don’t know. The idea popped in my head one day, made me chuckle to myself and off I went.) Every time my mother (named “That BPD”) asked my father (named “Spineless Enabler”) a question, she would make the recliner rock. The brick’s eyes moved up and down, stage code for agreeing with her.

My mother carried an old-fashioned scale as a prop. One side represented “idealization” and the other “devaluation”. Throughout the play, she added weights to the scales so that I was continuously devalued while my horrible blind date got idealized.

I acknowledged that my best friend was my light in the darkness at the time, so I had his character walk around in a knight costume. His “actor” also played the dual role of my blind date. So, I had four key characters but only three “actors” were required.

The event itself, including the lines were exactly as I remembered it. But because my parents looked so ridiculous, it filled me with a major sense of empowerment, opposite of how I felt at the time. By the story’s conclusion, my character snatched the weights off my mother’s prop and hurled them all over the stage. My mother’s final appearance was crawling on her hands and knees in search of her precious weights.

Next week: Part 2!

I will talk to you about the most underappreciated branch of creativity: Theater and its unique powers for healing trauma. I will show you all of the different ways you can perform your script when you don’t have access to a stage. Whether it’s a gathering among friends or if you’re more comfortable being the only actor, there are ways of unlocking your inner thespian via the living room performance.