You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

M
CHAPTER 20
FINDING YOUR VOICE: COMMUNAL
RHYTHMS AND THEATER
Act­ing is not about putting on a char­ac­ter but dis­cov­er­ing the
char­ac­ter with­in you: you are the char­ac­ter, you just have to find it
with­in yourself—albeit a very expand­ed ver­sion of your­self.
—Tina Pack­er
any sci­en­tists I know were inspired by their children’s health
prob­lems to find new ways of under­stand­ing mind, brain, and
ther­a­py. My own son’s recov­ery from a mys­te­ri­ous ill­ness that, for lack of a
bet­ter name, we call chron­ic fatigue syn­drome, con­vinced me of the
ther­a­peu­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of the­ater.
Nick spent most of sev­enth and eighth grade in bed, bloat­ed by
aller­gies and med­ica­tions that left him too exhaust­ed to go to school. His
moth­er and I saw him becom­ing entrenched in his iden­ti­ty as a self-hat­ing
and iso­lat­ed kid, and we were des­per­ate to help him. When his moth­er
real­ized that he picked up a lit­tle ener­gy round 5:00 p.m., we signed him up
for an evening class in impro­vi­sa­tion­al the­ater where he would at least have
a chance to inter­act with oth­er boys and girls his age. He took to the group
and to the act­ing exer­cis­es and soon land­ed his first role, as Action in West
Side Sto­ry, a tough kid who’s always ready to fight and has the lead in
singing “Gee, Offi­cer Krup­ke.” One day at home I caught him walk­ing with
a swag­ger, prac­tic­ing what it was like to be some­body with clout. Was he
devel­op­ing a phys­i­cal sense of plea­sure, imag­in­ing him­self as a strong guy
who com­mands respect?
Then he was cast as the Fonz in Hap­py Days. Being adored by girls and
keep­ing an audi­ence spell­bound became the real tip­ping point in his
recov­ery. Unlike his expe­ri­ence with the numer­ous ther­a­pists who had
talked with him about how bad he felt, the­ater gave him a chance to deeply
and phys­i­cal­ly expe­ri­ence what it was like to be some­one oth­er than the
learn­ing-dis­abled, over­sen­si­tive boy that he had grad­u­al­ly become. Being a
val­ued con­trib­u­tor to a group gave him a vis­cer­al expe­ri­ence of pow­er and
com­pe­tence. I believe that this new embod­ied ver­sion of him­self set him on
the road to becom­ing the cre­ative, lov­ing adult he is today.
Our sense of agency, how much we feel in con­trol, is defined by our
rela­tion­ship with our bod­ies and its rhythms: Our wak­ing and sleep­ing and
how we eat, sit, and walk define the con­tours of our days. In order to find
our voice, we have to be in our bodies—able to breathe ful­ly and able to
access our inner sen­sa­tions. This is the oppo­site of dis­so­ci­a­tion, of being
“out of body” and mak­ing your­self dis­ap­pear. It’s also the oppo­site of
depres­sion, lying slumped in front of a screen that pro­vides pas­sive
enter­tain­ment. Act­ing is an expe­ri­ence of using your body to take your
place in life.
THE THEATER OF WAR
Nick’s trans­for­ma­tion was not the first time I’d wit­nessed the ben­e­fits of
the­ater. In 1988 I was still treat­ing three vet­er­ans with PTSD whom I’d met
at the VA, and when they showed a sud­den improve­ment in their vital­i­ty,
opti­mism, and fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, I attrib­uted it to my grow­ing ther­a­peu­tic
skills. Then I dis­cov­ered that all three were involved in a the­atri­cal
pro­duc­tion.
Want­i­ng to dra­ma­tize the plight of home­less vet­er­ans, they had
per­suad­ed play­wright David Mamet, who was liv­ing near­by, to meet
week­ly with their group to devel­op a script around their expe­ri­ences.
Mamet then recruit­ed Al Paci­no, Don­ald Suther­land, and Michael J. Fox to
come to Boston for an evening called Sketch­es of War, which raised mon­ey
to con­vert the VA clin­ic where I’d met my patients into a shel­ter for
home­less veterans.1 Stand­ing on a stage with pro­fes­sion­al actors, speak­ing
about their mem­o­ries of the war, and read­ing their poet­ry was clear­ly a
more trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence than any ther­a­py could have offered them.
Since time immemo­r­i­al human beings have used com­mu­nal rit­u­als to
cope with their most pow­er­ful and ter­ri­fy­ing feel­ings. Ancient Greek
the­ater, the old­est of which we have writ­ten records, seems to have grown
out of reli­gious rites that involved danc­ing, singing, and reen­act­ing
myth­i­cal sto­ries. By the fifth cen­tu­ry BCE, the­ater played a cen­tral role in
civic life, with the audi­ence seat­ed in a horse­shoe around the stage, which
enabled them to see one another’s emo­tions and reac­tions.
Greek dra­ma may have served as a rit­u­al rein­te­gra­tion for com­bat
vet­er­ans. At the time Aeschy­lus wrote the Oresteia tril­o­gy, Athens was at
war on six fronts; the cycle of tragedy is set in motion when the return­ing
war­rior king Agamem­non is mur­dered by his wife, Clytemnes­tra, for
hav­ing sac­ri­ficed their daugh­ter before sail­ing to the Tro­jan War. Mil­i­tary
ser­vice was required of every adult cit­i­zen of Athens, so audi­ences were
undoubt­ed­ly com­posed of com­bat vet­er­ans and active-duty sol­diers on
leave. The per­form­ers them­selves must have been cit­i­zen-sol­diers.
Sopho­cles was a gen­er­al offi­cer in Athens’s wars against the Per­sians,
and his play Ajax, which ends with the sui­cide of one of the Tro­jan War’s
great­est heroes, reads like a text­book descrip­tion of trau­mat­ic stress. In
2008 writer and direc­tor Bryan Doer­ries arranged a read­ing of Ajax for five
hun­dred marines in San Diego and was stunned by the recep­tion it received.
(Like many of us who work with trau­ma, Doerries’s inspi­ra­tion was
per­son­al; he had stud­ied clas­sics in col­lege and turned to the Greek texts for
com­fort when he lost a girl­friend to cys­tic fibro­sis.) His project “The
The­ater of War” evolved from that first event, and with fund­ing from the
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense, this 2,500-year-old play has since been
per­formed more than two hun­dred times here and abroad to give voice to
the plight of com­bat vet­er­ans and fos­ter dia­logue and under­stand­ing in their
fam­i­lies and friends.2
The­ater of War per­for­mances are fol­lowed by a town hall–style
dis­cus­sion. I attend­ed a read­ing of Ajax in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts,
short­ly after the news media had pub­li­cized a 27 per­cent increase in
sui­cides among com­bat vet­er­ans over the pre­vi­ous three years. Some forty
people—Vietnam vet­er­ans, mil­i­tary wives, recent­ly dis­charged men and
women who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan—lined up behind the
micro­phone. Many of them quot­ed lines from the play as they spoke about
their sleep­less nights, drug addic­tion, and alien­ation from their fam­i­lies.
The atmos­phere was elec­tric, and after­ward the audi­ence hud­dled in the
foy­er, some hold­ing each oth­er and cry­ing, oth­ers in deep con­ver­sa­tion.
As Doer­ries lat­er said: “Any­one who has come into con­tact with
extreme pain, suf­fer­ing or death has no trou­ble under­stand­ing Greek dra­ma.
It’s all about bear­ing wit­ness to the sto­ries of veterans.”3
KEEPING TOGETHER IN TIME
Col­lec­tive move­ment and music cre­ate a larg­er con­text for our lives, a
mean­ing beyond our indi­vid­ual fate. Reli­gious rit­u­als uni­ver­sal­ly involve
rhyth­mic move­ments, from dav­en­ing at the Wail­ing Wall in Jerusalem to
the sung litur­gy and ges­tures of the Catholic Mass to mov­ing med­i­ta­tion in
Bud­dhist cer­e­monies and the rhyth­mic prayer rit­u­als per­formed five times a
day by devout Mus­lims.
Music was a back­bone of the civ­il rights move­ment in the Unit­ed
States. Any­one alive at that time will not for­get the lines of marchers, arms
linked, singing “We Shall Over­come” as they walked steadi­ly toward the
police who were massed to stop them. Music binds togeth­er peo­ple who
might indi­vid­u­al­ly be ter­ri­fied but who col­lec­tive­ly become pow­er­ful
advo­cates for them­selves and oth­ers. Along with lan­guage, danc­ing,
march­ing, and singing are unique­ly human ways to install a sense of hope
and courage.
I observed the force of com­mu­nal rhythms in action when I watched
Arch­bish­op Desmond Tutu con­duct pub­lic hear­ings for the Truth and
Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion in South Africa in 1996. These events were
framed by col­lec­tive singing and danc­ing. Wit­ness­es recount­ed the
unspeak­able atroc­i­ties that had been inflict­ed on them and their fam­i­lies.
When they became over­whelmed, Tutu would inter­rupt their tes­ti­mo­ny and
lead the entire audi­ence in prayer, song, and dance until the wit­ness­es could
con­tain their sob­bing and halt their phys­i­cal col­lapse. This enabled
par­tic­i­pants to pen­du­late in and out of reliv­ing their hor­ror and even­tu­al­ly to
find words to describe what had hap­pened to them. I ful­ly cred­it Tutu and
the oth­er mem­ber of the com­mis­sion with avert­ing what might have been an
orgy of revenge, as is so com­mon when vic­tims are final­ly set free.
A few years ago I dis­cov­ered Keep­ing Togeth­er in Time,4 writ­ten by the
great his­to­ri­an William H. McNeill near the end of his career. This short
book exam­ines the his­tor­i­cal role of dance and mil­i­tary drill in cre­at­ing
what McNeill calls “mus­cu­lar bond­ing” and sheds a new light on the
impor­tance of the­ater, com­mu­nal dance, and move­ment. It also solved a
long-stand­ing puz­zle in my own mind. Hav­ing been raised in the
Nether­lands, I had always won­dered how a group of sim­ple Dutch peas­ants
and fish­er­men had won their lib­er­a­tion from the mighty Span­ish empire.
The Eighty Years’ War, which last­ed from the late six­teenth to the
mid­sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, began as a series of guer­ril­la actions, and it seemed
des­tined to remain that way, since the ill-dis­ci­plined, ill-paid sol­diers
reg­u­lar­ly fled under vol­leys of mus­ket fire.
This changed when Prince Mau­rice of Orange became the leader of the
Dutch rebels. Still in his ear­ly twen­ties, he had recent­ly com­plet­ed his
school­ing in Latin, which enabled him to read 1,500-year-old Roman
man­u­als on mil­i­tary tac­tics. He learned that the Roman gen­er­al Lycur­gus
had intro­duced march­ing in step to the Roman legions and that the his­to­ri­an
Plutarch had attrib­uted their invin­ci­bil­i­ty to this prac­tice: “It was at once a
mag­nif­i­cent and ter­ri­ble sight, to see them march on to the tune of their
flutes, with­out any dis­or­der in their ranks, any dis­com­po­sure in their minds
or change in their coun­te­nances, calm­ly and cheer­ful­ly mov­ing with music
to the dead­ly fight.”5
Prince Mau­rice insti­tut­ed close-order drill, accom­pa­nied by drums,
flutes, and trum­pets, in his rag­tag army. This col­lec­tive rit­u­al not only
pro­vid­ed his men with a sense of pur­pose and sol­i­dar­i­ty, but also made it
pos­si­ble for them to exe­cute com­pli­cat­ed maneu­vers. Close-order drill
sub­se­quent­ly spread across Europe, and to this day the major ser­vices of the
U.S. mil­i­tary spend lib­er­al­ly on their march­ing bands, even though fifes and
drums no longer accom­pa­ny troops into bat­tle.
Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Jaak Panksepp, who was born in the tiny Baltic coun­try
of Esto­nia, told me the remark­able sto­ry of Estonia’s “Singing Rev­o­lu­tion.”
In June 1987, on one of those end­less sub-Arc­tic sum­mer evenings, more
than ten thou­sand con­cert­go­ers at the Tallinn Song Fes­ti­val Grounds linked
hands and began to sing patri­ot­ic songs that had been for­bid­den dur­ing half
a cen­tu­ry of Sovi­et occu­pa­tion. These songfests and protests con­tin­ued, and
on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1988, three hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple, about a quar­ter of
the pop­u­la­tion of Esto­nia, gath­ered to sing and make a pub­lic demand for
inde­pen­dence. By August 1991 the Con­gress of Esto­nia had pro­claimed the
restora­tion of the Eston­ian state, and when Sovi­et tanks attempt­ed to
inter­vene, peo­ple act­ed as human shields to pro­tect Tallinn’s radio and TV
sta­tions. As a colum­nist not­ed in the New York Times: “Imag­ine the scene in
Casablan­ca in which the French patrons sing “La Mar­seil­laise” in defi­ance
of the Ger­mans, then mul­ti­ply its pow­er by a fac­tor of thou­sands, and
you’ve only begun to imag­ine the force of the Singing Revolution.”6
TREATING TRAUMA THROUGH THEATER
It is sur­pris­ing how lit­tle research exists on how col­lec­tive cer­e­monies
affect the mind and brain and how they might pre­vent or alle­vi­ate trau­ma.
Over the past decade, how­ev­er, I have had a chance to observe and study
three dif­fer­ent pro­grams for treat­ing trau­ma through the­ater: Urban Improv
in Boston7 and the Trau­ma Dra­ma pro­gram it inspired in the Boston pub­lic
schools and in our res­i­den­tial centers;8 the Pos­si­bil­i­ty Project, direct­ed by
Paul Grif­fin in New York City;9 and Shake­speare & Com­pa­ny, in Lenox,
Mass­a­chu­setts, which runs a pro­gram for juve­nile offend­ers called
Shake­speare in the Courts.10 In this chap­ter, I’ll focus on these three groups,
but there are many excel­lent ther­a­peu­tic dra­ma pro­grams in the Unit­ed
States and abroad, mak­ing the­ater a wide­ly avail­able resource for recov­ery.
Despite their dif­fer­ences, all of these pro­grams share a com­mon
foun­da­tion: con­fronta­tion of the painful real­i­ties of life and sym­bol­ic
trans­for­ma­tion through com­mu­nal action. Love and hate, aggres­sion and
sur­ren­der, loy­al­ty and betray­al are the stuff of the­ater and the stuff of
trau­ma. As a cul­ture we are trained to cut our­selves off from the truth of
what we’re feel­ing. In the words of Tina Pack­er, the charis­mat­ic founder of
Shake­speare & Com­pa­ny: “Train­ing actors involves train­ing peo­ple to go
against that tendency—not only to feel deeply, but to con­vey that feel­ing at
every moment to the audi­ence, so the audi­ence will get it—and not close off
against it.”
Trau­ma­tized peo­ple are ter­ri­fied to feel deeply. They are afraid to
expe­ri­ence their emo­tions, because emo­tions lead to loss of con­trol. In
con­trast, the­ater is about embody­ing emo­tions, giv­ing voice to them,
becom­ing rhyth­mi­cal­ly engaged, tak­ing on and embody­ing dif­fer­ent roles.
As we’ve seen, the essence of trau­ma is feel­ing god­for­sak­en, cut off
from the human race. The­ater involves a col­lec­tive con­fronta­tion with the
real­i­ties of the human con­di­tion. As Paul Grif­fin, dis­cussing his the­ater
pro­gram for fos­ter-care chil­dren, told me: “The stuff of tragedy in the­ater
revolves around cop­ing with betray­al, assault, and destruc­tion. These kids
have no trou­ble under­stand­ing what Lear, Oth­el­lo, Mac­beth, or Ham­let are
all about.” In Tina Packer’s words: “Every­thing is about using the whole
body and hav­ing oth­er bod­ies res­onate with your feel­ings, emo­tions and
thoughts.” The­ater gives trau­ma sur­vivors a chance to con­nect with one
anoth­er by deeply expe­ri­enc­ing their com­mon human­i­ty.
Trau­ma­tized peo­ple are afraid of con­flict. They fear los­ing con­trol and
end­ing up on the los­ing side once again. Con­flict is cen­tral to theater—inner
con­flicts, inter­per­son­al con­flicts, fam­i­ly con­flicts, social con­flicts, and their
con­se­quences. Trau­ma is about try­ing to for­get, hid­ing how scared, enraged,
or help­less you are. The­ater is about find­ing ways of telling the truth and
con­vey­ing deep truths to your audi­ence. This requires push­ing through
block­ages to dis­cov­er your own truth, explor­ing and exam­in­ing your own
inter­nal expe­ri­ence so that it can emerge in your voice and body on stage.
MAKING IT SAFE TO ENGAGE
These the­ater pro­grams are not for aspir­ing actors but for angry, fright­ened,
and obstreper­ous teenagers or with­drawn, alco­holic, burned-out vet­er­ans.
When they come to rehearsal, they slump into their chairs, fear­ful that
oth­ers will imme­di­ate­ly see what fail­ures they are. Trau­ma­tized ado­les­cents
are a jum­ble: inhib­it­ed, out of tune, inar­tic­u­late, unco­or­di­nat­ed, and
pur­pose­less. They are too hyper­aroused to notice what is going on around
them. They are eas­i­ly trig­gered and rely on action rather than words to
dis­charge their feel­ings.
All the direc­tors I’ve worked with agree that the secret is to go slow
and engage them bit by bit. The ini­tial chal­lenge is sim­ply to get
par­tic­i­pants to be more present in the room. Here’s Kevin Cole­man, direc­tor
of Shake­speare in the Courts, describ­ing his work with teens when I
inter­viewed him: “First we get them up and walk­ing around the room. Then
we start to cre­ate a bal­ance in the space, so they’re not walk­ing aim­less­ly,
but become aware of oth­er peo­ple. Grad­u­al­ly, with lit­tle prompts, it
becomes more com­plex: Just walk on your toes, or on your heels, or walk
back­wards. Then, when you bump into some­one, scream and fall down.
After maybe thir­ty prompts, they’re out there wav­ing their arms in the air,
and we get to a full-body warm up, but it’s incre­men­tal. If you take too big
a jump, you’ll see them hit the wall.
“You have to make it safe for them to notice each oth­er. Once their
bod­ies are a lit­tle more free, I might use the prompt: ‘Don’t make eye
con­tact with anyone—just look at the floor.’ Most of them are think­ing:
‘Great, I’m doing that already,’ but then I say ‘Now begin to notice peo­ple
as you go by, but don’t let them see you look­ing.’ And next: ‘Just make eye
con­tact for a sec­ond.’ Then: ‘Now, no eye con­tact … now, con­tact … now,
no con­tact. Now, make eye con­tact and hold it … too long. You’ll know
when it’s too long because you’ll either want to start dat­ing that per­son or to
have a fight with them. That’s when it’s too long.’
“They don’t make that kind of extend­ed eye con­tact in their nor­mal
lives, not even with a per­son they’re talk­ing to. They don’t know if that
per­son is safe or not. So what you’re doing is mak­ing it safe for them not to
dis­ap­pear when they make eye con­tact, or when some­one looks at them. Bit
by bit, by bit, by bit …”
Trau­ma­tized ado­les­cents are notice­ably out of sync. In the Trau­ma
Center’s Trau­ma Dra­ma pro­gram, we use mir­ror­ing exer­cis­es to help them
to get in tune with one anoth­er. They move their right arm up, and their
part­ner mir­rors it; they twirl, and their part­ner twirls in response. They
begin to observe how body move­ments and facial expres­sions change, how
their own nat­ur­al move­ments dif­fer from those of oth­ers, and how
unac­cus­tomed move­ments and expres­sions make them feel. Mir­ror­ing
loosens their pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with what oth­er peo­ple think of them and helps
them attune vis­cer­al­ly, not cog­ni­tive­ly, to some­one else’s expe­ri­ence. When
mir­ror­ing ends in gig­gles, it’s a sure indi­ca­tion that our par­tic­i­pants feel
safe.
In order to become real part­ners, they also need to learn to trust one
anoth­er. An exer­cise in which one per­son is blind­fold­ed while his part­ner
leads him by the hand is espe­cial­ly tough for our kids. It’s often as
ter­ri­fy­ing for them to be the leader, to be trust­ed by some­one vul­ner­a­ble, as
it is to be blind­fold­ed and led. At first they may last for only ten or twen­ty
sec­onds, but we grad­u­al­ly work them up to five min­utes. After­ward some of
them have to go off by them­selves for a while, because it is so emo­tion­al­ly
over­whelm­ing to feel these con­nec­tions.
The trau­ma­tized kids and vet­er­ans we work with are embar­rassed to be
seen, afraid to be in touch with what they are feel­ing, and they keep one
anoth­er at arm’s length. The job of any direc­tor, like that of any ther­a­pist, is
to slow things down so the actors can estab­lish a rela­tion­ship with
them­selves, with their bod­ies. The­ater offers a unique way to access a full
range of emo­tions and phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions that not only put them in touch
with the habit­u­al “set” of their bod­ies, but also let them explore alter­na­tive
ways of engag­ing with life.
URBAN IMPROV
My son loved his the­ater group, which was run by Urban Improv (UI), a
long-stand­ing Boston arts insti­tu­tion. He stayed with them through high
school and then vol­un­teered to work with them the sum­mer after his
fresh­man year in col­lege. It was then that he learned that UI’s vio­lence
pre­ven­tion pro­gram, which has run hun­dreds of work­shops in local schools
since 1992, had received a research grant to assess its efficacy—and that
they were look­ing for some­one to head the study. Nick sug­gest­ed to the
direc­tors, Kip­py Dewey and Cis­sa Cam­pi­on, that his dad would be the ide­al
per­son for the job. Luck­i­ly for me, they agreed.
I began to vis­it schools with UI’s mul­ti­cul­tur­al ensem­ble, which
includ­ed a direc­tor, four pro­fes­sion­al actor-edu­ca­tors, and a musi­cian.
Urban Improv cre­ates script­ed skits depict­ing the kinds of prob­lems that
stu­dents face every day: exclu­sion from peer groups, jeal­ousy, rival­ry and
anger, and fam­i­ly strife. Skits for old­er stu­dents also address issues like
dat­ing, STDs, homo­pho­bia, and peer vio­lence. In a typ­i­cal pre­sen­ta­tion the
pro­fes­sion­al actors might por­tray a group of kids exclud­ing a new­com­er
from a lunch table in the cafe­te­ria. As the scene approach­es a choice point
—for exam­ple, the new stu­dent responds to their put-downs—the direc­tor
freezes the action. A mem­ber of the class is then invit­ed to replace one of
the actors and show how he or she would feel and behave in this sit­u­a­tion.
These sce­nar­ios enable the stu­dents to observe day-to-day prob­lems with
some emo­tion­al dis­tance while exper­i­ment­ing with var­i­ous solu­tions: Will
they con­front the tor­menters, talk to a friend, call the home­room teacher,
tell their par­ents what hap­pened?
Anoth­er vol­un­teer is then asked to try a dif­fer­ent approach, so that
stu­dents can see how oth­er choic­es might play out. Props and cos­tumes help
the par­tic­i­pants take risks in new roles, as do the play­ful atmos­phere and the
sup­port from the actors. In the dis­cus­sion groups after­ward stu­dents respond
to ques­tions like “How was this scene sim­i­lar or dif­fer­ent from what
hap­pens in your school?” “How do you get the respect that you need?” and
“How do you set­tle your dif­fer­ences?” These dis­cus­sions become live­ly
exchanges as many stu­dents vol­un­teer their thoughts and ideas.
Our Trau­ma Cen­ter team eval­u­at­ed this pro­gram at two grade lev­els in
sev­en­teen par­tic­i­pat­ing schools. Class­rooms that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the UI
pro­gram were com­pared with sim­i­lar non­par­tic­i­pat­ing class­rooms. At the
fourth-grade lev­el, we found a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive response. On
stan­dard­ized rat­ing scales for aggres­sion, coop­er­a­tion, and self-con­trol,
stu­dents in the UI group showed sub­stan­tial­ly few­er fights and angry
out­bursts, more coop­er­a­tion and self-asser­tion with peers, and more
atten­tive­ness and engage­ment in the classroom.11
Much to our sur­prise, these results were not matched by the eighth
graders. What had hap­pened in the inter­im that affect­ed their respons­es? At
first we had only our per­son­al impres­sions to go on. When I’d vis­it­ed the
fourth-grade class­es, I’d been struck by their wide-eyed inno­cence and their
eager­ness to par­tic­i­pate. The eighth graders, in con­trast, were often sullen
and defen­sive and as a group seemed to have lost their spon­tane­ity and
enthu­si­asm. Onset of puber­ty was one obvi­ous fac­tor for the change, but
might there be oth­ers?
When we delved fur­ther, we found that the old­er chil­dren had
expe­ri­enced more than twice as much trau­ma as the younger ones: Every
sin­gle eighth grad­er in these typ­i­cal Amer­i­can inner-city schools had
wit­nessed seri­ous vio­lence. Two-thirds had observed five or more inci­dents,
includ­ing stab­bings, gun­fights, killings, and domes­tic assaults. Our data
showed that eighth graders with such high lev­els of expo­sure to vio­lence
were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more aggres­sive than stu­dents with­out these his­to­ries and
that the pro­gram made no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in their behav­ior.
The Trau­ma Cen­ter team decid­ed to see if we could turn this sit­u­a­tion
around with a longer and more inten­sive pro­gram that focused on team
build­ing and emo­tion-reg­u­la­tion exer­cis­es, using scripts that dealt direct­ly
with the kinds of vio­lence these kids expe­ri­enced. For sev­er­al months
mem­bers of our staff, led by Joseph Spinaz­zo­la, met week­ly with the UI
actors to work on script devel­op­ment. The actors taught our psy­chol­o­gists
impro­vi­sa­tion, mir­ror­ing, and pre­cise phys­i­cal attune­ment so they could
cred­i­bly por­tray melt­ing down, con­fronting, cow­er­ing, or col­laps­ing. We
taught the actors about trau­ma trig­gers and how to rec­og­nize and deal with
trau­ma reenactments.12
Dur­ing the win­ter and spring of 2005, we test­ed the result­ing pro­gram
at a spe­cial­ized day school run joint­ly by the Boston Pub­lic Schools and the
Mass­a­chu­setts Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tion. This was a chaot­ic envi­ron­ment
in which stu­dents often shut­tled back and forth between school and jail. All
of them came from high-crime neigh­bor­hoods and had been exposed to
hor­ren­dous vio­lence; I had nev­er seen such an aggres­sive and sullen group
of kids. We got a glimpse into the lives of the innu­mer­able mid­dle school
and high school teach­ers who deal dai­ly with stu­dents whose first response
to new chal­lenges is to lash out or go into defi­ant with­draw­al.
We were shocked to dis­cov­er that, in scenes where some­one was in
phys­i­cal dan­ger, the stu­dents always sided with the aggres­sors. Because
they could not tol­er­ate any sign of weak­ness in them­selves, they could not
accept it in oth­ers. They showed noth­ing but con­tempt for poten­tial vic­tims,
yelling things like, “Kill the bitch, she deserves it,” dur­ing a skit about
dat­ing vio­lence.
At first some of the pro­fes­sion­al actors want­ed to give up—it was
sim­ply too painful to see how mean these kids were—but they stuck it out,
and I was amazed to see how they grad­u­al­ly got the stu­dents to exper­i­ment,
how­ev­er reluc­tant­ly, with new roles. Toward the end of the pro­gram, a few
stu­dents were even vol­un­teer­ing for parts that involved show­ing
vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty or fear. When they received their cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion,
sev­er­al shy­ly gave the actors draw­ings to express their appre­ci­a­tion. I
detect­ed a few tears, pos­si­bly even in myself.
Our attempt to make Trau­ma Dra­ma a reg­u­lar part of the eighth-grade
cur­ricu­lum in the Boston pub­lic schools unfor­tu­nate­ly ran into a wall of
bureau­crat­ic resis­tance. Nonethe­less, it lives on as an inte­gral part of the
res­i­den­tial treat­ment pro­grams at the Jus­tice Resource Insti­tute, while
music, the­ater, art, and sports—timeless ways of fos­ter­ing com­pe­tence and
col­lec­tive bonding—continue to dis­ap­pear from our schools.
THE POSSIBILITY PROJECT
In Paul Griffin’s New York City Pos­si­bil­i­ty Project the actors are not
pre­sent­ed with pre­pared scripts. Instead, over a nine-month peri­od they
meet for three hours a week, write their own full-length musi­cal, and
per­form it for sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple. Dur­ing its twen­ty-year his­to­ry the
Pos­si­bil­i­ty Project has accrued a sta­ble staff and strong tra­di­tions. Each
pro­duc­tion team is made up of recent grad­u­ates who, with the help of
pro­fes­sion­al actors, dancers, and musi­cians, orga­nize scriptwrit­ing, scenic
design, chore­og­ra­phy, and rehearsals for the incom­ing class. These recent
grads are pow­er­ful role mod­els. As Paul told me: “When they come into the
pro­gram, stu­dents believe they can­not make a dif­fer­ence; putting a pro­gram
like this togeth­er is a trans­form­ing expe­ri­ence for their future.”
In 2010 Paul start­ed a new pro­gram specif­i­cal­ly for fos­ter-care youth.
This is a trou­bled pop­u­la­tion: Five years after matur­ing out of care, some 60
per­cent will have been con­vict­ed of a crime, 75 per­cent will be on pub­lic
assis­tance, and only 6 per­cent will have com­plet­ed even a com­mu­ni­ty
col­lege degree.
The Trau­ma Cen­ter treats many fos­ter care kids, but Grif­fin gave me a
new way to see their lives: “Under­stand­ing fos­ter care is like learn­ing about
a for­eign coun­try. If you’re not from there, you don’t speak the lan­guage.
Life is upside down for fos­ter-care youth.” The secu­ri­ty and love that oth­er
chil­dren take for grant­ed they have to cre­ate for them­selves. When Grif­fin
says, “Life is upside down,” he means that if you treat kids in fos­ter care
with love or gen­eros­i­ty, they often don’t know what to make of it or how to
respond. Rude­ness feels more famil­iar; cyn­i­cism they under­stand.
As Grif­fin points out, “Aban­don­ment makes it impos­si­ble to trust, and
kids who have gone through fos­ter care under­stand aban­don­ment. You can
have no impact until they trust you.” Fos­ter-care chil­dren often answer to
mul­ti­ple peo­ple in charge. If they want to switch schools, for exam­ple, they
have to deal with fos­ter par­ents, school offi­cials, the fos­ter-care agency, and
some­times a judge. This tends to make them polit­i­cal­ly savvy, and they
learn all too well how to play peo­ple.
In the fos­ter-care world, “per­ma­nen­cy” is a big buzz­word. The mot­to is
“One car­ing adult—that’s all you need.” How­ev­er, it is nat­ur­al for teenagers
to pull away from adults, and Grif­fin remarks that the best form of
per­ma­nen­cy for teens is a steady group of friends—which the pro­gram is
designed to pro­vide. Anoth­er fos­ter-care buzz­word is “inde­pen­dence,”
which Paul coun­ters with “inter­de­pen­dence.” “We’re all inter­de­pen­dent,”
he points out. “The idea that we’re ask­ing our young peo­ple to go out in the
world com­plete­ly alone and call them­selves inde­pen­dent is crazy. We need
to teach them how to be inter­de­pen­dent, which means teach­ing them how to
have rela­tion­ships.”
Paul found that fos­ter-care youth are nat­ur­al actors. Play­ing trag­ic
char­ac­ters, you have to express emo­tions and cre­ate a real­i­ty that comes
from a place of depth and sor­row and hurt. Young peo­ple in fos­ter care?
That’s all they know. It’s life and death every day for them. Over time,
col­lab­o­ra­tion helps the kids become impor­tant peo­ple in one another’s lives.
Phase one of the pro­gram is group build­ing. The first rehearsal estab­lish­es
basic agree­ments: respon­si­bil­i­ty, account­abil­i­ty, respect; yes to expres­sions
of affec­tion, no to sex­u­al con­tact in the group. They then begin singing and
mov­ing togeth­er, which gets them in sync.
Now comes phase two: shar­ing life sto­ries. They are now lis­ten­ing to
one anoth­er, dis­cov­er­ing shared expe­ri­ences, break­ing through the
lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion of trau­ma. Paul gave me a film that shows how this
hap­pened in one group. When the kids are first asked to say or do
some­thing to intro­duce them­selves, they freeze, their faces expres­sion­less,
their eyes cast down, doing any­thing they can to become invis­i­ble.
As they begin to talk, as they dis­cov­er a voice in which they them­selves
are cen­tral, they also begin to cre­ate their own show. Paul makes it clear the
pro­duc­tion depends on their input: “If you could write a musi­cal or play,
what would you put in it? Pun­ish­ment? Revenge? Betray­al? Loss? This is
your show to write.” Every­thing they say is writ­ten down, and some of
them start to put their own words on paper. As a script emerges, the
pro­duc­tion team incor­po­rates the stu­dents’ pre­cise words into the songs and
dia­logue. The group will learn that if they can embody their expe­ri­ences
well enough, oth­er peo­ple will lis­ten. They will learn to feel what they feel
and know what they know.
The focus changes nat­u­ral­ly as rehearsals begin. The fos­ter kids’
his­to­ry of pain, alien­ation, and fear is no longer cen­tral, and the empha­sis
shifts to “How can I become the best actor, singer, dancer, chore­o­g­ra­ph­er,
or light­ing and set design­er I can pos­si­bly be?” Being able to per­form
becomes the crit­i­cal issue: Com­pe­tence is the best defense against the
help­less­ness of trau­ma.
This is, of course, true for all of us. When the job goes bad, when a
cher­ished project fails, when some­one you count on leaves you or dies,
there are few things as help­ful as mov­ing your mus­cles and doing
some­thing that demands focused atten­tion. Inner-city schools and
psy­chi­atric pro­grams often lose sight of this. They want the kids to behave
“normally”—without build­ing the com­pe­ten­cies that will make them feel
nor­mal.
The­ater pro­grams also teach cause and effect. A fos­ter kid’s life is
com­plete­ly unpre­dictable. Any­thing can hap­pen with­out notice: being
trig­gered and hav­ing a melt­down; see­ing a par­ent arrest­ed or killed; being
moved from one home to anoth­er; get­ting yelled at for things that got you
approval in your last place­ment. In a the­atri­cal pro­duc­tion they see the
con­se­quences of their deci­sions and actions laid out direct­ly before their
eyes. “If you want to give them a sense of con­trol, you have to give them
pow­er over their des­tiny rather than inter­vene on their behalf,” Paul
explains. “You can­not help, fix, or save the young peo­ple you are work­ing
with. What you can do is work side by side with them, help them to
under­stand their vision, and real­ize it with them. By doing that you give
them back con­trol. We’re heal­ing trau­ma with­out any­one ever men­tion­ing
the word.”
SENTENCED TO SHAKESPEARE
For the teenagers attend­ing ses­sions of Shake­speare in the Courts, there is
no impro­vi­sa­tion, no build­ing scripts around their own lives. They are all
“adju­di­cat­ed offend­ers” found guilty of fight­ing, drink­ing, steal­ing, and
prop­er­ty crimes, and a Berk­shire Coun­ty Juve­nile Court judge has
sen­tenced them to six weeks, four after­noons a week, of inten­sive act­ing
study. Shake­speare is a for­eign coun­try for these actors. As Kevin Cole­man
told me, when they first turn up—angry, sus­pi­cious, and in shock—they’re
con­vinced that they’d rather go to jail. Instead they’re going to learn the
lines of Ham­let, or Mark Antony, or Hen­ry V and then go onstage in a
con­densed per­for­mance of an entire Shake­speare play before an audi­ence of
fam­i­ly, friends, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem.
With no words to express the effects of their capri­cious upbring­ing,
these ado­les­cents act out their emo­tions with vio­lence. Shake­speare calls for
sword fight­ing, which, like oth­er mar­tial arts, gives them an oppor­tu­ni­ty to
prac­tice con­tained aggres­sion and expres­sions of phys­i­cal pow­er. The
empha­sis is on keep­ing every­one safe. The kids love sword­play, but to keep
one anoth­er safe they have to nego­ti­ate and use lan­guage.
Shake­speare was writ­ing at a time of tran­si­tion, when the world was
mov­ing from pri­mar­i­ly oral to writ­ten communication—when most peo­ple
were still sign­ing their name with an X. These kids are fac­ing their own
peri­od of tran­si­tion; many are bare­ly artic­u­late, and some strug­gle to read at
all. If they rely on four-let­ter words, it’s not only to show they’re tough but
because they have no oth­er lan­guage to com­mu­ni­cate who they are or what
they feel. When they dis­cov­er the rich­ness and the poten­tial of lan­guage,
they often have a vis­cer­al expe­ri­ence of joy.
The actors first inves­ti­gate what, exact­ly, Shake­speare is say­ing, line by
line. The direc­tor feeds the words one by one into the actors’ ears, and they
are instruct­ed to say the line on the out­go­ing breath. At the begin­ning of the
process, many of these kids can bare­ly get a line out. Progress is slow, as
each actor slow­ly inter­nal­izes the words. The words gain depth and
res­o­nance as the voice changes in response to their asso­ci­a­tions. The idea is
to inspire the actors to sense their reac­tions to the words—and so to
dis­cov­er the char­ac­ter. Rather than “I have to remem­ber my lines,” the
empha­sis is on “What do these words mean to me? What effect do I have on
my fel­low actors? And what hap­pens to me when I hear their lines?”13
This can be a life-chang­ing process, as I wit­nessed in a work­shop run
by actors trained by Shake­speare & Com­pa­ny at the VA Med­ical Cen­ter in
Bath, New York. Lar­ry, a fifty-nine-year-old Viet­nam vet­er­an with twen­ty-
sev­en detox hos­pi­tal­iza­tions dur­ing the pre­vi­ous year, had vol­un­teered to
play the role of Bru­tus in a scene from Julius Cae­sar. As the rehearsal
began, he mum­bled and hur­ried through his lines; he seemed to be ter­ri­fied
of what peo­ple were think­ing of him.
Remem­ber March, the ides of March remem­ber:
Did not great Julius bleed for jus­tice’ sake?
What vil­lain touch’d his body, that did stab,
And not for jus­tice?
It seemed to take hours to rehearse the speech that begins with these
lines. At first he was just stand­ing there, shoul­ders slumped, repeat­ing the
words that the direc­tor whis­pered in his ear: “Remember—what do you
remem­ber? Do you remem­ber too much? Or not enough? Remem­ber. What
don’t you want to remem­ber? What is it like to remem­ber?” Larry’s voice
cracked, eyes to the floor, sweat bead­ing on his fore­head.
After a short break and a sip of water, back to work. “Justice—did you
receive jus­tice? Did you ever bleed for justice’s sake? What does jus­tice
mean to you? Struck. Have you ever struck some­one? Have you ever been
struck? What was it like? What do you wish you had done? Stab. Have you
ever stabbed some­one? Have you ever felt stabbed in the back? Have you
stabbed some­one in the back?” At this point Lar­ry bolt­ed from the room.
The next day he returned and we began again—Larry stand­ing there,
per­spir­ing, heart rac­ing, hav­ing a mil­lion asso­ci­a­tions going through his
mind, grad­u­al­ly allow­ing him­self to feel every word and learn­ing to own
the lines that he uttered.
At the end of the pro­gram Lar­ry start­ed his first job in sev­en years, and
he was still work­ing the last I heard, six months lat­er. Learn­ing to
expe­ri­ence and tol­er­ate deep emo­tions is essen­tial for recov­ery from
trau­ma.
• • •
In Shake­speare in the Courts, the speci­fici­ty of the lan­guage that is used in
rehearsal extends to the stu­dents’ off­stage speech. Kevin Cole­man notes
that their talk is rid­dled with the expres­sion “I feel like …” He goes on: “If
you are con­fus­ing your emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences with your judg­ments, your
work becomes vague. If you ask them, ‘How did that feel?’ they’ll
imme­di­ate­ly say: ‘It felt good’ or ‘That felt bad.’ Both of those are
judg­ments. So we nev­er say, ‘How did that feel?’ at the end of a scene,
because it invites them to go to the judg­ment part of their brain.”
Instead Cole­man asks, “Did you notice any spe­cif­ic feel­ings that came
up for you doing that scene?” That way they learn to name emo­tion­al
expe­ri­ences: “I felt angry when he said that.” “I felt scared when he looked
at me.” Becom­ing embod­ied and, for lack of a bet­ter word, “en-lan­guaged,”
helps the actors real­ize that they have many dif­fer­ent emo­tions. The more
they notice, the more curi­ous they get.
When rehearsals begin, the kids have to learn to stand up straight and
walk across a stage unself­con­scious­ly. They have to learn to speak so that
they can be heard in all parts of the the­ater, which in itself presents a huge
chal­lenge. The final per­for­mance means fac­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. The kids
step out onto the stage, expe­ri­enc­ing anoth­er lev­el of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, dan­ger,
or safe­ty, and they find out how much they can trust them­selves. Grad­u­al­ly
the eager­ness to suc­ceed, to show that they can do it, takes over. Kevin told
me the sto­ry of a girl who played Ophe­lia in Ham­let. On the day of the
per­for­mance he saw her wait­ing back­stage, ready to go on, with a
waste­bas­ket clutched to her bel­ly. (She explained that she was so ner­vous
she was scared she’d throw up). She had been a chron­ic run­away from her
fos­ter homes and also from Shake­speare in the Courts. Because the pro­gram
is com­mit­ted to not throw­ing kids out if at all pos­si­ble, the police and tru­ant
offi­cers had repeat­ed­ly brought her back. There must have come a point
when she began to real­ize that her role was essen­tial to the group, or
per­haps she sensed the intrin­sic val­ue of the expe­ri­ence for her­self. At least
for that day, she was choos­ing not to run.
THERAPY AND THEATER
I once heard Tina Pack­er declare to a room­ful of trau­ma spe­cial­ists:
“Ther­a­py and the­ater are intu­ition at work. They are the oppo­site of
research, where one strives to step out­side of one’s own per­son­al
expe­ri­ence, even out­side your patients’ expe­ri­ence, to test the objec­tive
valid­i­ty of assump­tions. What makes ther­a­py effec­tive is deep, sub­jec­tive
res­o­nance and that deep sense of truth and verac­i­ty that lives in the body.” I
am still hop­ing that some­day we will prove Tina wrong and com­bine the
rig­or of sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods with the pow­er of embod­ied intu­ition.
Edward, one of the Shake­speare & Com­pa­ny teach­ers, told me about an
expe­ri­ence he’d had as a young actor in Packer’s advanced train­ing
work­shop. The group had spent the morn­ing doing exer­cis­es aimed at
get­ting the mus­cles of the tor­so to release, so that the breath could drop in
nat­u­ral­ly and ful­ly. Edward noticed that every time he rolled through one
sec­tion of his ribs, he’d feel a wave of sad­ness. The coach asked if he’d
ever been injured there, and he said no.
For Packer’s after­noon class he’d pre­pared a speech from Richard II
where the king is sum­moned to give up his crown to the lord who has
usurped him. Dur­ing the dis­cus­sion after­ward, he recalled that his moth­er
had bro­ken her ribs when she was preg­nant with him and that he’d always
asso­ci­at­ed this with his pre­ma­ture birth.
As he recalled:
When I told Tina this, she start­ed ask­ing me ques­tions about
my first few months. I said I didn’t remem­ber being in an
incu­ba­tor but that I remem­bered times lat­er when I stopped
breath­ing, and being in the hos­pi­tal in an oxy­gen tent. I
remem­bered being in my uncle’s car and him dri­ving through red
lights to get me to the emer­gency room. It was like hav­ing sud­den
infant death syn­drome at the age of three.
Tina kept ask­ing me ques­tions, and I start­ed to get real­ly
frus­trat­ed and angry at her pok­ing away at what­ev­er shield I had
around that pain. Then she said, “Was it painful when the doc­tors
stuck all those nee­dles in you?”
At that moment, I just start­ed scream­ing. I tried to leave the
room, but two of the oth­er actors—really big guys—held me