#HealMeToo: Insights, Art & Activism to Change Our Culture

Artist and Chief-of-Staff at The Moth, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Patrice Miller, director, joined Hope Singsen to discuss their project, Devil In A Box, which was presented to sold out houses at The #HealMeToo Festival.

Equal parts poetic theater and feminist stand-up, Devil in a Box follows the journey of a young American woman from sexual assault, through the French justice system and into life after trauma. A frightening yet joyous tale, Sarah Jane chronicles the complexities of it all with disarming honesty, beaucoup d’humour, and a 24 oz. can of Miller Lite.

By turns frank, hilarious, and inspiring, Sarah Jane and Patrice share with Podcast listeners about:

• The story of how Devil in a Box started as a performance art piece and evolved over years in tandem with Sarah Jane's court case and recovery process
• Ways that working on the piece both were and weren't always healing for Sarah Jane
• How the Devil in a Box team has developed a method of collaboration that engages them all in a healing process 
• Patrice's insights as a self-declared “lazy witch” on the magic of imagination and the healing similarities between making magic and making art
• The “go to” skills that help Sarah Jane, Patrice & Hope in moments of challenge, like:
  • Finding friends you can really talk to, 
  • “Trying on” ideas for yourself to act “as if” you were already “healed”, 
  • Stretching yourself by taking a “contrary action,” 
  • Learning ways to step back from dark thoughts that might otherwise spiral and seem larger than they are
  • How to honor your own ways of surviving and start seeing the next things you could do to have a fuller life, even while healing
  • Coming to accept that being a survivor will always be in one’s life, but it doesn’t have to control things, as you figure out how you want to dialogue with it
  • Observing tricky moments “in neutral” in order to avoid making things worse, and come back to it later

 The #HealMeToo Podcast is hosted by Hope Singsen--the artist, creativity researcher and survivor-activist who founded the #HealMeToo Festival in NYC this Spring. 

On the episode details page for this interview, you'll find many testimonials about Devil in A Box, as well as a video teaser for the show. While you're there, you can also link to other  #HealMeToo Festival performance videos, and sign up on our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Subscribe now. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Find the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms.

Interview recorded & prepped by Delaney Hafener
Edited by Hope Singsen
Music performed by Micah Burgess:
If I Can by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor
Rockabye by Hope Singsen, Dillon Kondor & Micah Burgess
Gorgeous Fire by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor

Support the show

An audio drama excerpt from the solo play with music, SKIN, created and performed by Hope Singsen, the artist, survivor/activist, and founder of the #HealMeToo Festival. Director: Jessi D. Hill, Stage Manager: Yve Carruthers.

In SKIN, two things threaten a grad student’s dissertation on Virginia Woolf: her hot new girlfriend and her own dark past.

Frank and funny, this queer love story with music explores some of the ways art helps us heal, tracking a woman’s road back toward intimacy and wholeness after sexual violence. Racing to write herself into a happier future, both work and sex get more inventive as she strives for a love greater than any she’s known before. But after you learn to guard against life, can you open up again?

Directed by Jessi D. Hill. Music by Hope Singsen, Bob Parins, Micah Burgess and Dillon Kondor. 

Content warning: early life sexual violence.

Includes text from Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork, by Deane Juhan, as well as excerpts from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.

You can also watch video of this excerpt at the top of the Episode Details Page. While there, you can also hear #HealMeToo Podcast Episode 7, where Hope and two sex & relationship experts explore why healing can be so confusing, as well as ideas that help, Plus, another Podcast Extra, a recording of a talk Hope gave on "How Live Arts Impact Audiences," where you can learn surprising facts about the neuroscience of trauma and ways the arts can help.

While you're there, join our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Closing music credit: Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor, performed by Micah Burgess.

Subscribe now. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Listen and subscribe to the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms. 

Support the show

Listen to a recording of a talk Hope gave at the national conference of the Alliance for Arts in Research Universities (A2RU) in November 2018, about the ways she is using her solo play with music, SKIN, to hopefully impact and even help audiences to heal, and how she is demonstrating those impacts through audience research.

Watch a video excerpt from SKIN on the Episode Details page on our website healmetoopodcast.com. You can also read the text of Hope's talk at the A2RU conference on Hope's Blog. While you're there, join our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Closing music credit: Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor, performed by Micah Burgess.

Subscribe now. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Listen and subscribe to the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms. 

Support the show

Sex educator, relationship advisor & co-founder of iOS advice app, okayso.app, Elise Schuster, and Valeria Koutmina of The Art Therapy Project use the Festival performance of Hope Singsen's solo play with music, SKIN, as a jumping off point to consider common questions about the healing process.

Along the way, Elise and Val share professional perspectives as Hope offers examples from personal life as well as within her play, SKIN, to illuminate: 

• Why it takes so dang long to recover from impacts of sexual violence
• Why it can be confusing to recognize these impacts 
• Why it's often hard to know how "healed" we really are, and what to expect from the healing process
• Why it takes time to change behaviors after they’re set, and how our assumptions about the process can make it more difficult 
• Ways that sexual trauma can create challenges around identity, shame, safety, trust, sex itself, learned helplessness, self-doubt, and an impression our bodies are vehicles for pain 
• How our cultural ideas about sexuality can get in the way for survivors and non-survivors alike
• How practicing saying no can lead us to feel more empowered and safe to say yes
• How we work hard to be ok, but feel as if we are “broken” and needing to be "fixed," which contributes to a feeling of helplessness -- even as we feel we have to present ourselves as unharmed
• How nonverbal art-making within a therapeutic relationship can help because it works in the same parts of the brain where trauma was originally stored
• The grief and loss that needs to be acknowledged as we learn to tolerate the feelings -- taking breaks and bringing humor into it
• Why relapse is part of recovery and can help you practice changing your perspective from “I am this” to understanding “I do this,” which gives us more space to change what Brenee Brown calls “the story we are telling ourselves” 
• Ideas to help practice new ways of healing, like:
  • Cultivating self-compassion instead of self-blame and helplessness
  • Recognizing that the healing process doesn’t make rational sense, and celebrating strengths that emerge, like the ability to reach out for help
  • Taking breaks to put aside the work and feelings sometimes to get some distance

The #HealMeToo Podcast is hosted by Hope Singsen--the artist, creativity researcher and survivor-activist who founded the #HealMeToo Festival in NYC this Spring. 

On the episode details page for this interview, you'll find Elise and Val's biographies and links to okayso and The Art Therapy Project. You'll also find a page with videos of many performances at the Festival, and can join our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Soon, we'll also drop audio and video excerpts from Hope's performance of SKIN in the #HealMeToo Festival.

Subscribe now. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Find the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms.

Interview recorded & prepped by Delaney Hafener
Edited by Hope Singsen
Music performed by Micah Burgess:
If I Can by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor
Rockabye by Hope Singsen, Dillon Kondor & Micah Burgess
Gorgeous Fire by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor

Support the show

Artists and audiences alike describe feeling changed by visual, narrative, musical, and performance works of art. The shift can be slight, but it can be profound, too. What's happening in our minds and bodies when we engage with the arts, to allow that transformation to occur? Are there special ways art-making can help address the neurobiological effects of trauma, in particular? And might engaging with art, individually and as a culture, help inspire the changes we wish to bring about?

Hear Tony-winning performer & playwright Tonya Pinkins and  Lindsay Lederman, the Clinical Director of The Art Therapy Project, discussing Tonya's project from the #HealMeToo Festival, Truth And Reconciliation of Womyn, while exploring the neuroscience of trauma and the process of healing through the arts.

A few of the topics they discuss:

• The neuroscience of trauma and of healing
• Why Tonya asserts we have the ability to “change the past”
• What art therapy is, how it works, and why it lets you work through past trauma at “a step away” so it may be less overwhelming--and sometimes more effective than addressing things “head on”
• How imagination and being creative in many aspects of life can open the locked parts of the brain
• How our neurons start to fire in new ways while we experience art, like putting footsteps down in a new path
• How art can help us recover our sense of joy after trauma
• Why artistic activities access feelings and memories through the body, to help us address experiences that were not captured in language at the time 
• Why trauma of many kinds leaves survivors with a sense of shame, and how witnessing art and performance can help address that shame
• How and why creating or viewing art that presents new and different ways of imagining the future may help change the way we respond to things that trigger or frighten us, even when we disagree with the artwork we’re responding to

The #HealMeToo Podcast is hosted by Hope Singsen--the artist, creativity researcher and survivor-activist who founded the #HealMeToo Festival in NYC this Spring. 

On the episode details page for this interview, you'll find Tonya and Lindsay's biographies and links to Art Therapy resources. You'll also find a page with videos of many performances at the Festival, and can join our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Soon, we'll also drop an audio and video montage of work from Tonya Pinkins' amazing project in the #HealMeToo Festival -- http://tinyurl.com/hm2trwTruth And Reconciliation of Womyn.

Subscribe now. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Find the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms.

Interview recorded & prepped by Delaney Hafener
Edited by Hope Singsen
Music performed by Micah Burgess:
If I Can by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor
Rockabye by Hope Singsen, Dillon Kondor & Micah Burgess
Gorgeous Fire by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor

Support the show

Part 2 continues the #TheatreToo conversation, as 5 industry leaders answer audience Q&A and:

• Recount their personal stories of empowerment through whisper networks
• Describe ways LIT, ART/NY and even the Calisto app are working to organize the information in offline "whisper" networks  and increase accountability
• Share a story of trauma getting triggered during the creative process, and finding support through sharing stories 
• Explore some of the obstacles that prevent people from taking advantage of complaint processes 
• Address ways economic exploitation of labor in theatre dovetails with harassment
• Offer resources to help artists and arts organizations create culture change in their rehearsal rooms  

Panel Moderators:

Rachel Dart, Stage Director and Co-Founder, Let Us Work

Stephanie Swirsky, Playwright and Co-Founder, Let Us Work

Panelists:

Hope Chavez, Creative Producer + Programs Manager at A.R.T./New York

Yvette Heyliger, Playwright, Producing Artist and Activist

Aimee Todoroff of League of Independent Theater & Artistic Director, Elephant Run District

Subscribe today. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Listen and subscribe to the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms.

On the episode details page for this interview, you'll find additional details or can link to our page with videos of many performances at the Festival, plus join our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Audio recorded and prepped by Delaney Hafener
Episode edited by Hope Singsen
Music performed by Micah Burgess:
If I Can by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor
Rockabye by Hope Singsen, Dillon Kondor & Micah Burgess
Gorgeous Fire by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor

Support the show

How are theatre artists organizing to take the "whisper" out of the network? In Part 1, five knowledgable leaders discuss their work to address and prevent sexual harassment and assault within the theatre industry:

• Programs that support independent artists to shift our culture and practices, especially in freelance and nonunion contexts
• The advantages and disadvantages of a whisper network compared to traditional HR channels, and new ways of bringing our "whispers" forward
• Upstander/bystander techniques that bring issues into the open in productive and transformative ways to help create safer spaces
• The tiny yet impactful culture shifts we all can create in our creative spaces, regardless of what "top-down" approaches are implemented by arts administrators and organizations 

Panel Moderators:

Rachel Dart, Stage Director and Co-Founder, Let Us Work

Stephanie Swirsky, Playwright and Co-Founder, Let Us Work

Panelists:

Hope Chavez, Creative Producer + Programs Manager at A.R.T./New York

Yvette Heyliger, Playwright, Producing Artist and Activist

Aimee Todoroff of League of Independent Theater & Artistic Director, Elephant Run District

Subscribe today. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Listen and subscribe to the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms.

On the episode details page for this interview, you'll find additional details or can link to our page with videos of many performances at the Festival, plus join our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Audio recorded and prepped by Delaney Hafener
Episode edited by Hope Singsen
Music performed by Micah Burgess:
If I Can by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor
Rockabye by Hope Singsen, Dillon Kondor & Micah Burgess
Gorgeous Fire by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor

Support the show

Hear 3 survivor advocates doing amazing work to help #HealMeToo in our culture:

• Offering bystander training with surprisingly simple techniques to intervene and deescalate harmful situations in the earliest stages.
• Working with men and boys to cultivate healthy masculinity.
• Illuminating the ways unconscious bias defines "who is worthy of help," leading to harm. 
• Ways to support people as they process allegations of harassment and assault.  
• Strategies to center trans and gender nonconforming people and concerns within single-sex identity groups.
• How Restorative Justice practices can offer communities a path to healing without going through the courts, while engaging all parties in true accountability and remediation.

In a live taping at the #HealMeToo Festival, Festival Founder and Artistic Director Hope Singsen interviewed:

• Amanda Burden, a power-based personal violence interventionist and community educator who serves on the board of directors for okayso, a free app for iOS that connects users with personal questions to experts they can trust for quick, personalized support and advice. 
• Eric McGriff, the Prevention Coordinator for the Crime Victims Treatment Center. 
• Nastia Gorodilova, a practitioner of Restorative Justice and a Senior Coordinator of Systems and Training with the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault.

Subscribe now. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Listen and subscribe to the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms.

On the episode details page for this interview, you'll find guest bios, and can link to our page with videos of many performances at the Festival, plus join our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Interview recorded and prepped by Delaney Hafener
Edited by Hope Singsen
Music performed by Micah Burgess:
If I Can by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor
Rockabye by Hope Singsen, Dillon Kondor & Micah Burgess
Gorgeous Fire by Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor

Support the show

Meet performers from the #HealMeToo Festival Opening Night, including teens from Katie Cappiello’s GoodCapp Arts Ensemble and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School’s Smash Arts Productions. 

On this Podcast Extra, you'll hear:

• Excerpts from a movement storytelling piece, titled Through the I’s, which was devised and performed by JKO's Smash Arts students under the direction of their teacher Elisa De Gregorio as part of a Roundabout Theatre Company residency with Teaching Artists Jason Jacobs, theater, and Nick Moore, sound design. Their text is from the transcript of survivor Emily Doe’s testimony in the Brock Turner case, and includes a description of her rape kit exam. The music is Lady Gaga’s anthemic Till It Happens To You. Full credits at tinyurl.com/hm2teens 
• Then, GoodCapp Arts Ensemble shared a number of scenes from Katie Cappiello’s plays on Opening Night, including 16-year old performer, Lola, who performed Emma's Story, a monologue from Katie’s play The Naked Truth. This recording is from Equality Now's 2016 'Make Equality Reality' gala, where the piece was originally developed. 
• Finally, you'll hear GoodCapp Arts performers Caleb, Alphonso, Rayshawn, Jordan and Fred, talking about how working on and performing Katie’s play Now That We’re Men helps them examine and change damaging ideas about masculinity.  

You can watch video of all these performers on the Episode Details page for Episode 2 with Katie Cappiello on our website healmetoopodcast.com. While you're there, join our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Closing music credit: Hope Singsen & Dillon Kondor, performed by Micah Burgess.

Subscribe now. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Listen and subscribe to the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms. 

Support the show

2 experts in the art of personal storytelling fielded questions from our live audience about how audience interactions with storytellers may contribute to healing -- for the audience, for the performers, and ultimately for the culture. In the process, they shared stories of encountering resistance, the value of empathy and the art of listening, and times that audience interactions could be guided toward transformational encounters.

• Sarah Austin Jenness, Executive Producer of The Moth -- a 21 year old arts organization and home of The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth Podcast, and over 600 live storytelling events worldwide each year, and
• Playwright Katie Cappiello, whose plays about teen sexuality, based on their own first-hand accounts, have been widely toured and praised.

Subscribe now. Let's talk about how we can #HealMeToo.

Listen and subscribe to the #HealMeToo Podcast on Apple Podcasts at bit.ly/hm2pod. Or visit healmetoopodcast.com to find links to other platforms.

On the episode details page for this interview, you'll find Sarah and Katie's biographies, plus video of Katie Cappiello's teen actors discussing rape culture, masculinity, and what feminism means to them as young men and people of color.

You'll also find a page with videos of many performances at the Festival, and can join our email list to hear about future pop-up #HealMeToo Festival events.

Interview recorded & prepped by Delaney Hafener
Edited by Hope Singsen
Closing music performed by Micah Burgess:
Rockabye by Hope Singsen, Dillon Kondor & Micah Burgess

Support the show