Event Description:
April 3, 10, 17, 24
Four Video Installments
Available every Friday in April - Sexual Assault Awareness Month
Go to seeingrape.com for video links
Any questions email Shonna Trinch at strinch@jjay.cuny.edu
Seeing Rape 2020: John Jay College student-playwrights create innovative theater performed by professional New York City actors.
Post- Show Talkback & Reception
Seeing Rape 2020 is honored to debut this year in April to help draw attention to Sexual Assault Awareness month. In addition to our goal of eradicating rape, we seek to encourage conversation, dismantle stereotypes, and share the wisdom of John Jay College students about how sexual violence occurs and its aftermath. As our world attempts to flatten the epidemiological curve of the Coronavirus infection, we are unable to gather in the Gerald Lynch Theater for this year’s performances. While we are saddened by the loss of this and many of life’s other wonders, we are heartened by the collective spirit shown by all those willing to sacrifice for the greater good.
In the context of this crisis, however, we find it critical to continue the Seeing Rape program. Each Friday in April, four different installments of all-new plays, each written by John Jay students and performed by professional NYC actors, will grace our virtual stage. These web-based performances had their genesis as a final class project in the interdisciplinary John Jay course Seeing Rape, taught by Professors Shonna Trinch and Barbara Cassidy. Guided by the disciplines of Linguistics, Anthropology and Theater, our students embarked on a study of what it means to see (and not to see) rape and sexual assault in law, politics, literature, war, religion, education, and in all sorts of moments of everyday life.
The theater is a metaphor for human experience. It is both a concept and a physical space where collectively, human beings can represent their world, but also create it anew. In this frightening time of Coronavirus, the age-old adage, “The show must go on” takes on real meaning. First, it reminds us that even though immediate measures must be taken to combat this pressing public health concern, those maladies that plagued us before also remain. In fact, during quarantine and social distancing, many people who suffer violence in their homes find themselves at an even greater risk now. And second, the theater is a place where we can remember and remind others of our sapient powers to think, to create, to problem solve, and to represent. Together, we will find a way to go on, and our hope is that we come through this crisis more united and aware of our interconnectedness as a species and to the world that we all share.
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