A Space to Speak: Therapeutic Theater to Address Gender-Based Violence

Abstract

This article examines the experience of eight graduate students in the drama therapy program at Lesley University when creating and performing a theater piece centered around gender-based violence. The performance piece, A Space to Speak, used the performers’ real-life stories to highlight their vastly different, yet strikingly similar, experiences and invited the audience to examine their own relationship to those stories. A description of the process used to create and perform the piece is followed by a discussion of the impact the process had on the performers and audience members.