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A thoughtful audience member
comments on that performance:
"As to the subject matter, of rape,
incest, identity, sexual identity, and personal freedom, Cheryl has done us all the tremendous favor of not theatricalizing the subject but, rather, humanizing it. So much work takes advantage of survival stories by heightening them towards some other moral digression or effect, which often serves to strengthen the stigma attached by society on women and men who have survived sexual or violent trauma.
Cheryl's work, on the other hand, serves to humanize, or rather, normalize the experience, if that's fair to say. It removes the stigma by speaking frankly, and in the absence of a heavy-handed moral agenda. This is such an important contribution to the lexicon, because with more work like this, we might be able to speak the word incest or rape in social circumstances without being ignored, embarrassed, or worst of all, judged. And if we reach that point, we might then reach a point of prevention. Her play does not judge, she is not embarrassed in presenting her experiences, and she makes us so comfortable that we cannot ignore her. She has brought us a step closer to prevention.
I left her show with the quiet ruminations of an adult seeking her sexual and personal freedom in a world that prevents sexual and personal freedoms, from all kinds of directions, and especially for women - but this is not a journey unique to survivors or even to women. That she brings us there with the lessons learned from a more difficult experience than most of us have survived, gives us the courage to confront our own, perhaps less complex, journeys."
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