A Lonely Realization
Support Resources and Spoiler Page

This page contains information about resources for people who are experiencing sexual violence or assault or intimate partner violence. Some resources are also appropriate for people experiencing other forms of domestic or gender-based violence.

This page is a living document:
please check back for additional information.

This page also contains a synopsis of the story of the play for people who will enjoy the event more if they have details about what happens before they go. If you want to be surprised, stop scrolling when you get to the words Warning! Spoilers Ahead! in big red letters.

 

Support & Resources

Sexual Assault and Intimate Partner Violence Resources

General Mental Health Resources

Warning! Spoilers Below…

Baseline Content Note

A Lonely Realization includes descriptions of the emotional impact of sexual assault and descriptions of grooming and inappropriate sexual behavior by teachers toward students.

Baseline Synopsis (See below for More Detailed Story Information)

A Lonely Realization follows our friend Legs, a young woman who has lost her voice as well as the rest of her body, after she is sexually assaulted by a classmate from her theatre program at the university. Although Legs is unable to speak, she is able to use text from plays she writes to share her swirling distress and trauma with her other classmates Frog and Mushroom as well as Tree, a professor from the university. Frog and Mushroom really don’t understand why Legs is so upset and why this whole situation should be impacting them. Through a series of rehearsals, where the script changes every single time the cast comes together, Frog and Mushroom gain some understanding of why Legs is upset, but whether they become stronger at supporting Legs, as bystanders as well as friends, remains to be seen.

We also follow the perfect 1950s couple, Hattie and Mort. While they have been living their perfect lives through enacting perfect gender-roles, something rotten has arrived in their dining room. On the night in question, Hattie brings the meatloaf to the table and finds a corpse lying in the middle of it. She and Mort try to ignore it. Then they consult a pamphlet. Then they call Corpse Control. Nothing works! Then Mr. Baum, Mort’s boss, invites himself to dinner. Hattie learns more about both Mort and Mr. Baum than she wants to know, and she leaves for good.

We see Legs in her bedroom at night, reliving the traumatic assault and remembering how another institution, her high school, ignored the actions of one teacher who groomed students for inappropriate relationships in the choir room and in the school auditorium.

In the end Legs has a Title IX hearing at the university, despite the resistance from Tree, who insists on prioritizing the assailant’s humanity until Legs’s story has been proved and someone at the university tells Tree what to think. Her classmate is punished with a three quarter academic suspension, but he is still allowed to graduate and may possibly still be allowed to work as a teacher. There are corpses here, and they still stink.

Why this Play? Why Now?

A Lonely Realization is a play exploring institutional and individual responses to sex and gender based violence through an absurdist lens. It is an investigation of the impact of sexual assault in artistic and educational spaces and a search for ways to address harm and trauma that will allow us to promote healing and recognition and to galvanize all community members, including ourselves as as artists, to action. In a world where women and femme individuals are losing legal rights to their bodies, especially their reproductive and sexual autonomy, a story about how individuals and communities learn to respond as bystanders and support the victims and survivors of sexual assault is an important creative teaching tool.

Frog Actor:

“But I just.
Don’t.
Understand.
Why the rest of us should have to suffer!!!!”

Synopsis

Prologue - Legs’s Bedroom

In a dark room, a woman rocks back and forth and jiggles her legs. As she starts to hear a loud rushing noise like traffic or a river which is flooding, she stands up and takes off her pants. She throws them on the floor and curls up on the bed.

Scene 1 - The Rehearsal Room

Tree, the director and a professor in the drama department, tells student actors Frog and Mushroom that the school couldn’t get the rights for the play they planned to produce and that the cast will perform a script written by another student, Legs. The character of Legs, who is sitting at the playwright’s table upstage, is a disembodied pair of pants. Frog and Mushroom complain about the change in the script, but after Frog gets the lead role, she becomes excited, especially since she will get to perform in the show opposite their classmate Rushing River. Frog reads the first monologue from the new script, which talks about the beginning of the world and how a happy rock is changed and worn down by a river which floods and destroys the rock. Tree asks the students what they think the play is about. Frog and Mushroom and the Stage Manager get into a conversation about teachers from their old high schools who had sexual relationships with their students. Tree hastily interrupts them and the cast takes a 10-minute break.

Frog Actor:

“The act of listening became something that could hurt.”

Scene 2 - Hattie and Mort’s House

Meet Mort and Hattie, the perfect 1950’s couple! Mort is a lawyer who works at the university. See Mort at the end of his work day, when he says goodbye to his boss Mr. Baum, and then drives home in his new Ford Edsel. Hattie is a housewife who wears many aprons. See Hattie dust, make meatloaf, and find a corpse (played by Legs!) on the dining room table. The corpse doesn’t smell very good. When Mort comes home, he and Hattie try to eat the lovely dinner she has prepared, but the pervasive smell of the corpse is making it hard to do. Mort finds a pamphlet with a phone number to call Corpse Control. Hattie calls, but they tell her to just sit tight and not do anything. But she’s welcome to call back and they will send more pamphlets!

Scene 3 - The Rehearsal Room

Frog rehearses the monologue from the beginning of Legs’s play about the flooding river, but she is having a very hard time remembering her lines. The Stage Manager and the Tree call for a 10-minute break, so that Frog can pull herself together, although Frog really wants to ask Legs to rewrite the scene. Mushroom interrupts Frog and tells her that it might not be a good idea to ask Legs to do anything, since Legs says their classmate Rushing River raaaaa…assaulted her. Frog is surprised, but maybe not too surprised. The two students discuss what they should do and they agree that Someone should do Something. Or maybe ask Legs what she wants. But then the break is over and they go back to rehearsing, without talking to Legs at all.

Scene 4 - Hattie and Mort’s House

When we last saw Hattie, she was calling back the people at Corpse Control! They aren’t very helpful, but they did send more pamphlets. When Mort asks what the experts recommended, Hattie tells him they are supposed to ignore the corpse, leave the corpse where it is, and to not touch the corpse (which is still being played by Legs.) Mort thinks this over and tells Hattie that they will just have to ignore it then and keep moving forward. They are looking for candles to cover up the pervasive smell of rot in the house, when the phone rings - it’s Mort’s boss Mr. Baum! Mr. Baum is going to offer Mort a promotion, but first he needs to come over to Mort and Hattie’s house for dinner! Just to make sure that Mort is made of the right stuff. Mort is very excited, and insists that the corpse must be hidden in the closet. Hattie goes shopping for lamb chops.

Scene 5 - Legs’s Bedroom

It is night time and Legs is very sad. It is extremely hard to feel secure in her own body. She writes and writes and writes, to try and make sense of what has happened to her, by writing many stories and revising plays. More than anything else, Legs tells us, she wants someone to just listen.

Scene 6 - The Rehearsal Room

Another day in the Rehearsal Room and Legs has the Stage Manager hand out a new script, especially since Frog can’t remember the lines from the other one. The new play is about the wife of Vladimir Lenin, at the beginning of the Russian Revolution. Frog objects - this isn’t the play she consented to perform! While the cast takes another 10-minute break for Frog to pull herself together, Legs tries to talk with the director Tree about how dangerous it is to have her assailant Rushing River in the rehearsal room, but Tree insists that her role is very limited and she has to wait for the university to tell her what to think.

Tree:

“I’m interested in believing survivors.
Especially when they can prove what’s happened.”

Frog and Mushroom return to the Rehearsal Room and get into a conversation about how Legs must be lying or making up the story about the rape. They agree it would be unprofessional to disrupt their relationship with Rushing River because of Legs’s story. Just then a young drama student Blade of Grass joins the conversation, surprising Frog and Mushroom with the news that the upcoming Title IX hearing might cause their play performances to be cancelled entirely. Frog is horrified - she has invited INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS to come see this show! It may not matter anyway, because the Stage Manager shows up with another completely different script - and this one is about The Great Gatsby! Frog wilts. End of scene.

Scene 7 - Hattie and Mort’s House

Mort and Hattie are very nervous - Mr. Baum is coming to dinner! While Hattie tries to roast a leg of lamb and make sure the house is clean, Mort picks up Mr. Baum and drives him home. Mr. Baum really likes looking at Hattie and eating roast lamb. The phone rings. Hattie answers it, while Mort carves the lamb and Mr. Baum talks about how good looking Hattie is. Hattie comes back from the phone call. She is not happy. While Mr. Baum is in the bathroom, Hattie tells Mort that she knows he has been having an affair, because his girlfriend just called. Hattie takes off all her aprons, picks up the car keys, and leaves. Mort feeds Mr. Baum dessert and finds out that he is going to have to wait a long time to find out about a promotion. Mr. Baum invited himself over for dinner because his wife walked out on him. He leaves. Mort is very sad.

Mort:

“Why were you making those snide little comments?”

Hattie:

“You mean talking?”

Scene 8 - Legs’s Bedroom

It is night time. Legs is still writing and trying to make sense of her world when Clock asks her what time it is. Clock shows Legs a number of scenes from when she was in high school, learning from a choir teacher who was a sexual predator. Legs knew that the teacher paid a lot of attention to certain students, but since the teacher didn’t pay attention to her, she didn’t ever know what was going on in the choir room, the office, the auditorium or the chair where other students were being groomed.

Legs:

“I always thought it was weird, but what can you say?”

Scene 9 - The Rehearsal Room & The Title IX Hearing

Back in The Rehearsal Room, Frog is still distressed by the constantly changing scripts - this misunderstanding between Legs and Rushing River shouldn’t be affecting HER process. Mushroom is not very sympathetic. They begin to rehearse a scene from the new script about Mrs. Lenin, as young Blade of Grass runs a projector which shows a train running across Russia. Between lines from the Mrs. Lenin script, we hear a voiceover of the Title IX Investigator from the school, reciting facts about the circumstances leading up to Rushing River’s sexual assault of Legs. The scene from Mrs. Lenin is a story of consent - Lenin’s wife Nadezhda is attracted to a German officer Buhring and he asks her if she would like to be seduced, but she says “No”, and he leaves.

Frog, who is playing Nadezhda, stops the scene - she is feeling stuck. Legs tries to explain what is happening for the character, but Frog doesn’t get it. They try to start rehearsing again, but when Tree comes in the room and asks how it’s going, Frog loses it and demands that they return to the original script about the forest and the rock and the rushing river and the frog. Tree agrees they should resume working on the forest play. Mushroom is appalled - won’t they even ask Legs what she wants before they change scripts again? Legs says she wants people to care. Tree thanks Legs for all her input, but they will be going back to the forest script and Legs should enjoy her Title IX hearing tomorrow. The Stage Manager calls for another 10-minute break.

Legs:

“Anything can happen to you and all that will be offered is silence….”

Scene 10 - The Rehearsal Room, The Hearing Room, and Legs’s Bedroom

Legs sits at a table in the Hearing Room , which is also the desk in her bedroom AND the playwright’s table. We hear the voiceover of the Hearing Officer summing up the results of the Title IX Investigation. Legs makes her closing remarks: she describes the feeling of dread she carries with her wherever she goes and asks for Rushing River to be expelled from the university as the only fitting consequence of his actions. The other characters appear, one at a time: Clock remembers the actions of the high school choir teacher; Daisy from The Great Gatsby; Frog Actor; Nadezhda Lenin, who says “I forgot, he takes no for an answer in this draft.”

The Hearing Office concludes that the appropriate disciplinary action is a three quarter suspension for Rushing River. He will still graduate. He may still teach. Legs and Clock and Nadezhda sit together quietly considering what happens to stories that no one wants to hear or believe or choose to remember.

End of Play

Legs:

I want to hold something

To hear something

That says “It was never right that this happened.

It will never disappear and it will always be wrong.”