When the Audience Becomes the Therapist

Performing stories of unending trauma becomes a race to the bottom

It was a wonderful production. Music, a celebratory pastiche of the dance and history of Puerto Ricans using narrative, poetry, and a live salsa band. The singers were mostly on point and the sense of joy covered the park like a shimmering light show. They even employed the first ever disco ball at the Pritzker.

Yet the rejoicing of a specific culture and family was consistently interrupted by interstitial tales of marginalization, the brutality of the police, the racism felt when immigrating to America—you know, the examples provided to prove the expense paid to exemplify resilience. As if the joy of sharing the cultural jewels of the crown weren’t enough without a bit a whining about how hard life has been or a birthday party peppered with stories of death and injury.

I found that, during each one of these heartfelt descriptions of horrible events at the hands of Others, I was suddenly bored. The tedium of hearing the same stories about the same injustices overshadowed any embrace of the rest of it. Like red onions, a little of this dance of personal and generational anguish goes a long way and even a bit too much makes the entire dish taste like a bowl of red onions with smatterings of other ingredients.

If you’ve ever been to a night of lesbian poetry, it's generally angry with poem after poem of personal betrayal and hurt, a litany of offenses made by a left behind partner, with an audience swimming in the same anguish and rage. The audience is both therapist and enabler for picking the scabs of typical relationship issues writ large as epic traumas.

In its own way, much of available art these days has become various versions of a lesbian poetry night—the stories of injustices experienced by family members long gone, overcoming illness, dealing with undiagnosed mental obstacles, and the ennui of a competition about how the performer’s pain is far more bitter than anyone else’s discomfort.