"Have I turned my trauma into my USP?"

A brilliant artist asked me this last week. First came the sinking feeling in my stomach, caused by hearing out loud the question I had asked myself a thousand times. Then came the tightening in my chest as my heart tied itself in knots, trying to contain my rage at hearing someone with so much to give feeling solely defined by what has been taken from her.

Then I realised I should probably say something - and surprised myself with the realisation that I didn't have a ready-made answer. This is one of the most all-consuming worries of survivor life, especially for creatives - and one of the most othering perceptions people often have of survivors - and yet it isn't one of the questions I’ve been asked so often that I could answer it in my sleep.

Because I don't think it often comes as a question. For survivors, it's much more often a deep-seated fear we don't even dare to utter in case it comes true, or a secret we don't mention in case anyone around us still hasn't noticed.

And in others, it's often not a question, but a statement.

Sometimes it's a statement inside people's minds that they never say out loud, or at least not in front of the person themselves.

“She’s kind of exhausting.”

“He always brings up stuff that just makes people feel awkward.”

“I don't think our audiences really want to hear about this kind of thing.”

Sometimes it's a statement that comes right to us, but dressed up (and often intended) as something caring.

“You don't have to air your dirty laundry to get noticed, you know.”

“We love it, but we just don't have the resources to support someone like you or audiences like yours.”

“You’ve been through awful things, but I really hope you know that's not all you are.”

Every so often, we might get a whiff of it uncensored, when stuff reaches us that we weren't meant to hear or see.

“She has no evidence that this is needed other than her own experiences.”

“We knew he wasn't any good at this, but we had to hire him to reach our inclusivity targets.”

“Trauma isn't the same as talent.”

It's true: trauma isn't the same as talent. It's worth acknowledging, though, that a lot of traumatised people are very talented. Research* has found, for example, that artists who have had a lot of adverse childhood experiences go into deeper states of absorption when writing/acting/painting etc than those who have not, are more aware of making significant spiritual discoveries when creating, and associated the creative process more with a deeper engagement with the self and the world.

The artist who asked me if her trauma was her USP has a profound engagement with language as a writer: she mines words for their every possible meaning in a way that could just as easily change your worldview in just three words, as have you belly-laughing at wordplay you just didn't see coming. As a performer, the depth of her feeling emanates from her and creates a kind of glow that reaches every inch of the room.

Those are her USPs.

Has her trauma played a part in the depth of her engagement with her craft, the intensity of her feeling, the absolute need to communicate that comes across with such urgency and care? Most probably. Does she have every right to act on a compulsion to use her artistic USPs to communicate about experiences, from perspectives, that so often get overlooked? Of course she does.

Would we say that a landscape artist who almost exclusively paints the sky’s only claim to artistic talent is having been a pilot in a previous career? I shouldn’t think so. Would we accuse someone who chose to go into similar careers to their parents of being solely defined by their previous life experiences? Seems unlikely.

The issue here, I think, is deeper than overlooking the artistic talent of people who have had it hard. It’s a discomfort with acknowledging trauma in and among people in our presence. Often, when survivors reference traumatic experiences, they aren’t doing it because they want attention, or pity, or help. Those experiences are just their reference point for life, and engaging with the world. If a group of colleagues are chatting about their holidays and someone references having gone to Paris, for example, it’s perfectly acceptable for someone else to bring up having proposed to their spouse in Paris - but not for someone else to mention having been attacked in Paris. Not even if it’s referenced with the same casualness. But for that survivor, it’s their way into the conversation, just like the other colleagues with their more favourable experiences to mention.

So the result? Either stay quiet and be the boring one, the one with nothing to say - or be avoided as the one who takes up too much space when they’re invited. Cultural policing of ‘appropriate’ small-talk is just about the subtlest and most insidious form of survivor exclusion we have. When the topic raised is traumatic, too often we don’t hear the wit, the graciousness, the compassion, the intelligence, the cheekiness, the actual personality of the person speaking about it: all we hear is the trauma, and we decide the trauma must therefore be the person’s whole personality.

One of the gifts the arts gives us, is a space in which we feel more able to engage with challenging topics - because the safety net of fiction makes them bearable. But so often when we find out that the artist themselves has direct experience of that topic, a similar process seems to happen as in the social realm. We squirm. We feel like we’re being asked for something. Our discomfort stops us from looking for the artistic nature of the work as we do with other art with which we engage. So we decide that the artist is totally defined by their trauma - because that is all we take in.

Or at least, that’s what so many people seem to assume their experience will be - or what so many who decide what goes on our stages and screens think our audience’s experiences will be. And/or they assume that survivor artists will be too delicate to be rigorous with their work and get it to a really high standard.

But, the research I mentioned earlier not only identified that survivor artists experience deeper immersion in their work: they are also perfectly able to move between this immersed state of making, and a more detached mind frame from which they can assess their own work, take feedback and set goals. The commitment isn’t just to the experience of making, it’s to the finessing of the work until it offers what we want it to offer.

But this is the important thing: what we want it to offer. Not what gatekeepers think their audiences are capable of taking in, probably based on their own projections. Not what they think people will pay a premium to see. Not the sleekest, shiniest version of this story.

So sometimes survivor creativity looks a bit scruffier, a bit messier, a bit less ‘polished’ than other art. But that isn't because we’ve put less care into it. It's because our truths are scruffier, messier, less polished than the narratives that people who don't have to deal with the same contradictions and chaos every day perceive.

And, let’s face it: the fact that we so rarely can access comparable funding for our work also plays a part. But it would be just as deeply reductive to put the rawness of our work down to being low-budget as it would to put it down to lack of real artistry.

If we’re going to change the cultural and systemic exclusion of survivors from political change, societal improvement and everyday community life, we have to see them, hear them, as whole people. Being able to see them, hear them, as whole artists, is a crucial way into that. Those with power over our audiences need to lead by example in seeing the artistry that shines through lived experience, despite and because of how different it might look to their regular programming.

But if you don't have any power over what art gets circulated widely through a job role or social position, that doesn't mean you can't do anything. You're here now, reading this. You can follow the organisations working themselves to the bone to redress the balance. You can teach yourself to become comfortable enough with being in the presence of trauma to see the artistry and individuality in its survivor. You can be the person who responds to the artistic quality of survivor work rather than dismissing it as vanity projects or public therapy, the person who responds to references to traumatic experiences in everyday life with regard to the spirit in which they are made rather than your own level of comfort with experiences unlike your own.

Why not start by watching some of the work on our website, or reading about some of the live theatre shows we’ve done? And/or signing up for our mailing list, so you don't miss out on hearing about the next one?

It’s really way beyond time to make a change. Change happens faster when those with power over who tells stories leads it, but whoever you are, it starts with you.

This post wasn't about Sahar, another thoughtful, incisive, radically kind and disarmingly surprising artist we work with: but if you want to get a flavour of what one survivor artist’s process looks like, she will be running her third RAT LAB R&D workshop this Saturday. She is exploring the intersectional nature of spiritual abuse, with particular regard to how it can show up in South Asian communities and associated faith groups. Most RAT LAB attendees are survivors ourselves, but we welcome allies to participate as well. You're welcome just to rock up, but if you want to let us know you're coming and/or any support needs you might have, you can fill in this form or e-mail us at info@responseabilitytheatre.com.

*Thomson P and Jaque SV (2018) Childhood Adversity and the Creative Experience in Adult Professional Performing Artists. Front. Psychol. 9:111. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00111