Why I Transferred

This is a long one and something I’ve struggled to share honestly.

It’s funny because I’ve told this story before. A bunch of times even and it only hurts sometimes.

Which always made me feel like maybe on the days it hurt, I was making it up. Was I crying for attention?

I told my counselor and she said that telling a story and experiencing it are different.

She’s right, of course. When I choose to tell it, I can pause for dramatic effect and laugh at the end to let everyone know I’m okay. When it’s forced on me, I can’t help but feel powerless all over again.

I was portraying Desdemona from Othello in an acting class. If you’re not familiar, Desdemona and Othello are married, she is set up so it seems like she’s cheating when she isn’t and he kills her for it. My scene was Desdemona telling her servant/only friend/only other woman in the play that basically she knows she’s going to be MURDERED but she’s cool with it because love and loyalty or whatever.

I wasn’t getting the full emotional gravity of the scene. Looking your own death in the face is more nuanced than I was playing her. Okay, fine. I’ll try again.

Nope.

My acting teacher called a boy up from my class to improv the scene where Othello accuses Desdemona of cheating. And, without my knowledge, he was told to hit me.

So he did.

I laughed (IN SHOCK).

It wasn’t good enough I guess. Again.

I was hit again and I dissolved.

I was standing in a classroom full of students and my professor was making this kid hit me. Why? Why why why why why why why why why oh my god why. Why did I deserve this? Why did I feel so powerless? Why was this man allowed to do this to me?

I can’t explain it. I started crying, only making myself feel weaker and more powerless than I already did. But I read through the scene, barely able to get the words out through the PANIC ATTACK I was having.

Apparently it was the best performance of my life. I was having a panic attack AND reliving my nearly-suicide attempt in a classroom of students. I just wanted to explain why I was so totally destroyed but I was only making everything worse. I was humiliated, I felt broken and alone and worthless.

One girl raised her hand.

“I don’t think you should have to beat your actresses to get them to do what you want. That’s not directing.”

One person in a class of ten? Twelve? didn’t think I deserved it.

We went to the head of the department.

That’s just how some older directors are, he said.

My professor apologized next time I saw him and asked for a hug (when I happened to be in costume as a slutty cheerleader). And I forgave him. Or at least I said I did. And maybe I thought I did at the time but I didn’t know then that that little voice in the back of my head telling me that this was NOT okay, that voice  was trauma.

I was traumatized. I watched a play about Othello a few months ago and watched that scene for the first time since I’d done it in an acting class.

I could feel it coming and I couldn’t help it, I started crying and then hyperventilating and then I had to run.

I burst out of that theater and had a panic attack on the pavement.

It sucked.

I couldn’t breathe, I was stuck relieving one of the worst moments of my life because I had to listen to Shakespeare. I’m an actor, I’m not getting away from Shakespeare.

I’m an actor, not a punching bag. I’m stuck with this trauma because one acting teacher refused to understand consent. And he thinks what he did was ‘worth it’ because I had a ‘break through’.

That is not teaching. It is abuse.