"The Hidden Issues" play production

During this three week civic Winter Term, I was in the class All The World's A Stage. We visited multiple theaters and had multiple visitors speak with us, such as actresses, theater directors, and a Goodman Theater tour guide. We discussed themes, situations, and definitions of Power, Identity, Oppressed people having a voice. I was able to also explore characters dissimilar to me, which I really enjoyed. I also found immersive theater very interesting because it requires a whole new interaction of audience and cast. I worked together with my group multiple times to create small performances. We learned and viewed different types of stages such as Thrust, Prosemium, and Black Box. Our final presentation consisted of my group and I each developed characters that related with the themes we talked about. All of us contributed in the creation of set design, costume design, script writing, and light and sound production. The summary of our play is four college students reuniting after a holiday break, and through soliloquies their mental disorders, life context, and other conflicts are revealed. The character's name I created is Sage, in the production we titled, "The Hidden Issues".

Sage's Soliloquy

"A 'turn-on' is just a theory to me, I don’t really understand arousal. In the end, it has me feeling somewhat lonely. Like, a girl put her hand on my thigh one time, and looked into my eyes, expecting a reaction. I wasn’t really sure what she wanted me to do, smile? Was that where I was supposed to be “turned-on”? She got really close to my face too. Yeah, she was pretty, but I didn’t even know her. How was I supposed to wanna kiss her if I didn’t even know her?

You see, I am capable of romance. And no, I’m not gay, and I know I’m not gay. Sex… just does nothing for me. Nothing.

But there’s something else that does it for me… I get these flashbacks, to fighting, knuckles on bone. It’s supposed to hurt, but instead I just taste static in my mouth. Bruises go away eventually. This always returns. I wouldn’t call it PTSD, just an abrupt return to memories that offers me the adrenaline I want. On the outside, I’m just staring into space clenching my hands or grinding my teeth or something. Yeah, adrenaline. It associates me with reality again, I can really feel my body then, it’s like a drug.

I was arrested at one point for assault and battery at age 15, my anger was uncontrollable at that point. Sitting in the cop car, I didn’t feel anything. I felt no emotion until I saw my sister’s eyes well up with tears when she saw me in cuffs. I was able to go through a program for peer jury, and after a long process, got my charge expunged. I can’t afford therapy, although I am BPD diagnosed. I’m used to it though, this is how it is.

Even sometimes I feel disconnected from my closest family members, I forget how I loved them in the first place, it’s concerning. I’m not sure how to react to the hollowness.

But I get flashbacks to being arrested too, sidewalk gravel in my cheek, right at the school parking lot; white moms that came to pick up their kids staring at me. They were staring, but I wasn’t there.

Now that I’m here, in college, I’m the first with a set goal to graduate with a degree, some of my family has attended but never gotten a degree, and... I sold drugs at one point. It paid for my first year. I have to find a stable well-paying job for the rest.

I never know what’s going to happen, but now I just feel myself changing on the inside, switching between different selves that nobody sees. I only trust my family. That’s it. Truly."

The purpose of this soliloquy is to expose the character's inner self that experiences things that no one would know unless they were told. Being asexual is not very common, 1% of the population is asexual, so I wanted to explore that trait of sexual orientation that not many people know about, especially since sexual attraction is a universal feeling. 1.4% of the adult population experiences Borderline Personality Disorder, and some of the symptoms may be seen in teenagers because of the natural hormonal experience behind adolescence, but exiting teenage hood and still feeling things like an unstable sense of self, irritability, mood swings, or emptiness changes life. There are other aspects to my character's identity such as being bi-racial, specifically, Mexican and African-American. I connected some of Sage's experiences from their life to real-life statistics such as, "According to recent data by the Department of Education, African American students are arrested far more often than their white classmates." and that “Students of color face harsher punishments in school than their white peers, leading to a higher number of youth of color incarcerated. Black and Hispanic students represent more than 70 percent of those involved in school-related arrests or referrals to law enforcement. Currently, African Americans make up two-fifths and Hispanics one-fifth of confined youth today.” 

I also gave my character a low economic status, giving a voice to how their goal, in this case getting a college degree, doesn't reflect their decision-making (selling drugs). That doesn't necessarily make them a criminal or someone to be put away. Sage does reflect some parts of my own identity, so I can relate to some of their concerns. Overall, this term has allowed theatrical expression of creativity and getting to know other peers that I wasn't familiar with before.

Works Cited:

Kerby, Sophia. “The Top 10 Most Startling Facts About People of Color and Criminal Justice in the United States.” Center for American Progress, 29 May 2015, www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/11351/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-color-and-criminal-justice-in-the-united-states/.

“NAMI.” NAMI, www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-conditions/borderline-personality-disorder.

“10 Things You Need to Know about Asexuality.” LGBTQ Life at Williams, lgbt.williams.edu/homepage/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-asexuality/.