Undesirable Elements: Secret Survivors

Our first step is to create a theater production featuring five survivors, based on a six-day-long writing workshop. We will host a work-in-progress reading for potential donors as well as colleagues in the theater community, to receive critical feedback. We are submitting proposals to conduct presentations about our work at conferences nationwide, and are seeking out funding opportunities from foundations and government sources. We will also host events to raise money and build a community of supporters.
As we move into the production phase, we hope to hire muralists to engage survivors in a visual art project, and to capture stories from audience members who are inspired to share (such as postcards and/or a website to collect testimonials). We will also conduct public education workshops, using our collective expertise as professional development and popular education trainers, to increase understand about the broader social context of child sexual abuse. Finally, we will create a DVD based on our performance footage, and pair it with toolkits for public service practitioners who work with survivors (social workers, educators, prosecutors, doctors, etc.) and for survivors nationwide who want to host similar narrative-based performances in their home cities. In the long-term, we envision a multi-city tour that combines our performance and workshop/training model for survivors/allies/practitioners, and helps establish local productions of other survivors' stories.

Child sexual abuse survivors are survivors of secrets - many-layered taboos that keep most victims silent while they endure violence. We live in a world where media bombards us with graphic images of sensationalized violence against children. Yet, many media representations or even public service ads teach us about "stranger danger" but do not address that most perpetrators of child sexual abuse are family members or otherwise trusted figures in their victims' lives. State responses to this violence focus on temporarily locking perpetrators up without working on their rehabilitation. Furthermore, many survivors who press charges are re-traumatized by racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism, xenophobia or other discrimination they may face from state officials during the prosecution process. In short, child sexual abuse persists because of social culture and institutions that do not focus on survivors' realities or encourage survivors' healing. A movement to end child sexual abuse must address these factors.

Ping Chong & Company has over 30 years of history creating theater works of the highest artistic quality and social integrity. The company partners with organizations ranging from regional theatres and national performing arts centers to local YMCAs and social service agencies to realize projects and ensure their national reach and impact.
Already, the Secret Survivors project has reached out to local and national survivors' advocacy groups, through personal connections based on our past work in anti-violence movements and organizations. We are exploring a partnership with an organization that is archiving stories of survivors who have confronted violence in their lives successfully, and with a mural collective who may be willing to collaborate with survivors to create the set design for our theater production. We are also building alliances with theater companies and performance spaces who may want to host a production of our show. Finally, we are reaching out to foundations, local elected officials, and supportive private sector professionals to explore potential funding opportunities.

We will create a full-scale theater production, educational DVD, and replicable writing workshop. These materials will be available for national distribution and touring, increasing awareness of the scope and nature of child sexual abuse by sharing survivors' stories in their own words. We will support public service professionals in adopting survivor-informed practices, and will support other survivors in using our model to share their own narratives publicly.

Our work will create an easily replicable tool for survivors to share their stories through many media - on stage, in writing, through visual art, and through experiential workshops. The formation of survivors' communities combined with the dissemination of a critical mass of survivors' narratives to mainstream media and to public service practitioners can potentially create a cultural shift that breaks taboos against naming child sexual abuse. This work can also result in a better social understanding of this violence, thus leading to better intervention and prevention strategies for our society as a whole.