Ain’t That a Shame? Trayvon’s Trauma Revealed Through the Theatre of TNT

Ain’t that a shame how 15 seconds can change a life

and 500 years can change the culture?

Five days after a Florida jury found George Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin, Ahmed Al-Hassan, a young African American man, took center stage wearing a Black hoodie and carrying Skittles. Temporarily embodying the image of Trayvon, he spoke the above lines as he performed in the original devised theatre piece The Only Way Out Is the Way Through at the Illinois Childhood Trauma Coalition’s Second Annual Symposium on Child Trauma in the Public Sector. The costume change and the inclusion of this now-symbolic candy prop were a late addition to Al-Hassan’s monologue, borne of our collective need to publicly reference the Zimmerman verdict, which had left our group reeling. The text of the monologue, however, had been scripted months prior, outside of the context of the Martin shooting. Indeed, it originated in a written journal response to the prompt, “What is it to be a young man in Chicago?” and was later edited and shaped into this section of the performance piece. To align this monologue to the Martin/Zimmerman case, only the costuming needed to be changed—not the words. Al-Hassan’s monologue in The Only Way Out Is the Way Through grapples with the conditions that make it possible for a 17-year-old Black boy to be fatally shot without consequence as it simultaneously acknowledges that deaths like Trayvon’s are commonplace and unremarkable, both here in Chicago and across the nation. As Al-Hassan’s monologue queries, “Ain’t that a shame when the only chance offered is becoming a statistic?” (Truth N Trauma [TNT] Theatre Ensemble, 2013, p. 12).

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This article documents the theatrical work of Chicago State University’s (CSU) Truth N Trauma (TNT) program, a youth initiative that sought to stem the flow of violence within the predominantly African American communities of Chicago’s South Side through trauma training and artistic engagement. After providing a general overview to the program, we focus on the Theatre Component, which we facilitated. We briefly describe our theoretical framework and methodology to mark how the socially engaged, ensemble-based theatrical practice we employed engendered an honest, vulnerable space in which difficult conversations could occur and be shaped into artistic actions. By analyzing Al-Hassan’s monologue and interrogating its themes, its creation, and its effect in performance, we discuss the multiple narratives surrounding Black masculinity that emerge. These narratives not only help locate Trayvon Martin’s death historically, but also tie his death to those of previous Black male youths, including Emmett Till and countless other unnamed victims. More importantly, they speak truth to the dominant discourse that normalizes this murder of Black boys. Finally, we discuss the unique ability of performance to foster a space for healing.

The TNT program brought together faculty from CSU’s Counseling; Social Work; and Communications, Media Arts, and Theatre (CMAT) departments to facilitate the multi-disciplinary youth engagement program. ¹ A group of approximately 40 African American youth, aged 14 to 19, were selected from neighborhoods with high rates of violence to convene on the CSU campus for the 9-month program. All of the youth received six modules of intensive trauma training—designed to educate the participants about the clinical definition of trauma; the impacts of trauma on individuals, families, and communities; the emotional, physical, and behavioral manifestations of trauma in individuals; the linkage between trauma and violence; and most importantly, strategies of healing from trauma. To augment this trauma training, they also underwent training in critical consciousness and restorative practices. In addition, the youth participated in one of four program tracks: Trauma Training/Leadership, Participatory Action Research, Documentary Filmmaking, and Theatre. These smaller groups received intensive instruction in their discipline and each created youth-led products including a trauma training presentation, a research protocol, individual Public Service Announcements (PSAs), and the devised theatre piece The Only Way Out Is the Way Through.

The theoretical foundation for the TNT Theatre Component falls under the broad category of Theatre and Social Change. Central to such an approach is the belief that both the crafting and performing of theatre can effect change in its participants and its audience. Both the theatrical process and form enable this kind of intimate transformation. Because conflict lies at the heart of drama, performance functions dialectically: opposing forces or ideas play out in front of an audience. As theatre scholar Sonja Arsham Kuftinec (2009) notes, “Theatre provides a uniquely concentrated place where agonistic visions and individuals in conflict can meet” (p. 2). That is, theatre allows conflict to be publicly and safely interrogated and discussed, thereby opening dialogue around difficult issues. By placing the TNT participants in the role of both devisers and performers, we could ensure that they were able to set the terms of this dialogue, with each other and with the audience. The resulting performance was their staging, just as the script was their words. Theatre empowered them to speak and encouraged the audience to listen to what they had to say.

The devising process, a way of crafting theatre where the group collectively writes the text and participates in creating the staging, necessarily foregrounds ensemble. Each individual contributes to the whole, and the whole is more important than any individual. At the very start of our time together, the entire ensemble determined our group rules. Primary among these were a commitment to honesty and vulnerability. We stressed the importance of candid expression in theatre, coupled with a willingness to risk embarrassment; we all pushed ourselves outside of our comfort zones, rightly believing that the group would be there to support anyone who needed it. This emphasis on ensemble reinforced the trauma training the participants received by allowing them to begin to center themselves and to trust in each other. As they learned through the trauma training the importance of meaningful relationships, they created through their theatrical experiments a safe, nurturing community. The theatre component provided a space for them to both envision and practice ways of connecting with each other, ultimately moving to a place of deep collaboration and support for each other. Indeed, it was the security of the ensemble that granted them the power of great risk-taking in their artistic choices. They were able to make extremely brave decisions in both text and staging because the ensemble provided safety and fortification.

The 9-month scope of the TNT program offered several benefits to our theatrical process, just as it presented us with unique challenges. It provided ample opportunity for fundamentals training in the basic skills of theatre as well as experimentation with advanced theatrical approaches such as Augusto Boal’s (1979, 2002) Theatre of the Oppressed and Anne Bogart’s (2005) Viewpoints, both of which were instrumental to our devising process. Following Boal, we used theatre both to reveal oppressions our youth faced in their everyday lives and to rehearse ways of overcoming those oppressions. For example, we played theatre games such as Columbian Hypnosis, in which one person leads a partner’s movements, to make visible the way power physically plays out on the bodies of the oppressed and also to de-mechanize those bodies, allowing participants to move in uncodified and surprising ways. We also incorporated many of Boal’s Image Theatre techniques into our process, recognizing that images are productively ambiguous. As Boal (2002) notes, “Dealing with images we should not try to ‘understand’ the meaning of each image, to apprehend its precise meaning, but to feel those images, to let our memories and imaginations wander” (p. 175). Images therefore provoke multiple meanings and emotions. Image Theatre became a rich conduit for exploring difficult topics among the ensemble.

Bogart’s (2005) Viewpoints, which sharpen the kinesthetic response of actors, provided a training system for our youth and served as an integral component of devising. Each day, we did grid work focusing on the multiple Viewpoints: direction, level, tempo, shape, gesture, duration, topography, architecture, and spatial relations. This training allowed the youth to deeply connect to their own bodies as well as to the ensemble. The Viewpoints work was not only physically demanding, but also it promoted deep focus and attentiveness to each other through one’s own grounded physical action. Bogart stresses that such work forces participants “to listen with the whole body, with the entire being” (p. 32). Viewpoints also strengthened the cohesion of the ensemble because the approach is “nonhierarchical, practical and collaborative in nature” (p. 15). As a process, Viewpoints built trust and connection among the participants. Finally, Viewpoints served as a compositional tool through which we created the staging. Notes Bogart, “it is writing on your feet, with others, in space and time, using the language of theatre” (p. 12). We were able to quickly, collectively craft evocative tableaus (fully composed stage pictures) to accompany the performance text.

Due to the extended length of the program, we were able to establish rehearsal routines that helped to solidify our ensemble-driven process and reinforce the feeling of safety we hoped to create. The most important of these routines was journaling: every day we took time to write, sometimes on a suggested prompt, sometimes on any subject. Participants were then able to share their writing (always at their discretion) and dialogue with their peers about what they had written. These journals served as the source material for our performance text. A second routine, a synthesis of the techniques of Boal and Bogart, was the incorporation of physical storytelling into each session. Participants grew accustomed to embodying ideas, concepts, and emotions through the creation of tableaus. These tableaus were derived from written or spoken roots, yet they exceeded the source material. Because the physicalization of abstract concepts is necessarily ambiguous, the tableaus allowed for new meanings to emerge. This combination of journaling and physical work not only anticipated the staging we would create, but also allowed specific ideas and moments to be transformed through the artistic process, to be made more abstract and therefore more universal.

Through this process, deep friendships formed among the participants as they came to relish their time together each week. Initially, the youth were hesitant to truly open up to each other. Although the group rules called for honesty and vulnerability to engender a full range of expression, the youth were unsurprisingly reluctant to adhere to the rules they had set. By incorporating techniques derived from Boal and Bogart, the youth learned to express themselves without talking, using their bodies to convey meaning instead. Learning to share their stories physically built a strong bond among them, and as they progressed, gestures and movements came with little hesitation. When we began to talk through the images they had created, they finally were able to freely share their words. They found similarities among their stories, which made them even more eager to confide in each other. The more they moved and shared together, the more they trusted and supported each other.

On the other hand, the extended time frame translated into much shorter working sessions: rather than meeting with the youth for an intensive block of time, each week we met for two 3-hour sessions (which were in reality 2.5 hours or less because they included a check-in, check-out, and a dinner break) and a 6-hour period on Saturday. While the frequency of these sessions was excellent, they also proved a challenge: this is not a lot of rehearsal time for devising. More profound, however, was that the 9-month length of the program meant that several of our participants did not complete the program in its entirety. In addition to our two undergraduate student workers, Al-Hassan and a young Black woman, both of whom participated alongside of our youth in all large and small group activities, our ensemble was comprised of 11 youth: 8 young women and 3 young men. We retained the women for the majority of the process; all of the women performed at least twice, though we eventually lost three participants in the final month of the program. The young men, however, did not fare as well. One young man quit within the first month; it quickly became evident that he was pushed into the program by his mother and therefore was not particularly engaged. A second young man participated for several months, learning some skills yet leaving before we were deeply involved in any devising work. Our third young man, however, impacted our group much more deeply.

As opposed to the other two young men, who were only marginally invested in the program and in the ensemble, our third young man brought a lot of energy to the group and contributed greatly to the staging and writing process. He participated in one of our first performance opportunities, at a family event hosted one Saturday on the University campus. At this event, we highlighted our process and staged several short (15 seconds or less) scenes and tableaus. Many of these tableaus, composed to “define” vocabulary words taken from the trauma training, would eventually become part of the finished staging of The Only Way Out Is the Way Through. However much we valued his participation in the ensemble and sought to create a safe space in which he could thrive, this young man’s personal situation interfered with his ability to consistently attend program sessions. Because he did not have a permanent home, he moved frequently and had to rely on different family members and guardians to assist him physically, financially, and emotionally, with varying degrees of success. His frequent moves also forced him to cross gang lines, which greatly impacted his safety and at times made it impossible for him to attend. Obviously, the instability he faced affected him tremendously. After the early event at CSU, he stopped attending for a period, during which we began the difficult work of composing the text and the staging of the piece. He then returned to participate in the writing of what would become Al-Hassan’s monologue before leaving the program entirely.

It is through the participation and loss of this young man—particularly in his ghosted absence in the crafting and performance of the monologue—that the links to Trayvon Martin, Emmett Till, and other Black boys who could not be protected become starkly apparent. Indeed, our young participant was roughly Trayvon’s age and, like Trayvon, he faced similar pressures among his peer group of teen boys in addition to the greater threats of violence he encountered in the world around him. And, though our youth was not murdered, we lost him to troubled circumstances that disproportionately affect young Black men. We were denied his creative input; we were denied the chance to see him grow as an artist and an individual. Even more profound linkages to the historical legacy of the devaluation of Black males emerge as we critically analyze the monologue our youth co-authored from several different perspectives: through the text of the monologue itself, through an examination of the writing process out of which the monologue was written, and through Al-Hassan’s performance of that monologue wearing the hoodie, with the Skittles in hand.

Thematically, the monologue specifically addresses several issues that are profoundly—and almost exclusively—experienced by Black males. The entire text of the monologue follows below:

Daddy wasn’t around, my Brothers ran wild and I’m stuck

trying to survive. I look around and I think about my future:

prison, 6 feet under, fast money, loose women . . . Just a life full of a whirlwind of distractions.

So you think you a gangsta? Nigga you ain’t nothing never

gone be nothing . . . yea, that’s what my father, my teacher,

and the police told me. Bump all them cuz little do they

know . . . that won’t stop me.

Everybody on the streets are in competition I see:

How you get that? How you get this? Plzz, don’t worry ‘bout me!

You talk behind my back but chu always in my face again

Smiling, playing, wanting to be my friend.

We can point the finger at the perceived problems

but distribute no assistance to fix it. Everyone. Not me, but I can admit that I need some help.

NO. Move around because your faker than artificial. I’m

authentic and official, and for the bullshit, I keep tissue.

I try, he try, we try . . . But still my brothers are claimed.

Ain’t that a shame, we ‘posed to be working together

Ain’t that a shame, we stay killing our own brothers

Ain’t that a shame, your excuse is that chu never lack

Forget a block! Wanna shoot? Take yo’ bitch ass to Iraq!

Remember that.

Ain’t that a shame how 15 seconds can change a life and 500

years can change the culture? They consider me a misfit.

Show yourself, not by what they label you, but by resisting

that label.

Ain’t that a shame when the only chance offered is becoming

a statistic?

Look around and you’ll see that a lot of my brothers have

taken the choice of mental captivity offered by the man.

Brothers become thugs, friends become gangs, and fathers

become absent baby daddies.

Where did that come from? Where did you come from? (TNT Theatre Ensemble, 2013, pp. 11-12) ²

Limited options and diminished expectations, labeling from outside forces, concerns about authenticity and inauthenticity, and the constant threat of violence in myriad forms circulate as themes throughout the piece. Interestingly, the questions that end the monologue, “Where did that come from? Where did you come from?” (TNT Theatre Ensemble, 2013, p. 12) gesture toward the historical legacy of these issues. That is to say, they give voice to the awareness that the contemporary stereotyping and pigeonholing of Black males is nothing new; rather, this degradation has long been practiced in our nation. Moreover, these questions suggest that the violence levied against Black males is located within an historical continuum. Just as the performance of this monologue allowed Al-Hassan to temporarily reanimate Trayvon, the words of the monologue help to resurrect the many other young Black men whose deaths Trayvon’s murder recalled. First among these slayed young men is Emmett Till.

The similarities between the two murders, Trayvon Martin’s in 2012 and Emmett Till’s in 1955, reveal how little the constructions of Black masculinity have changed. In both cases, young boys were perceived to be dangerous. That is to say, their Black maleness, already aligned with the savage criminal, eclipsed their youth. Rather than seeing innocent boys, the murderers saw in them the dire threat of a grown man on the attack. Zimmerman, a decade older than Martin and armed, felt the need to protect himself and his neighborhood from “these assholes [who] always get away” (Weinstein, 2012). Similarly, J. W. “Big” Milam and Roy Bryant, the murderers of Emmett Till, spoke of the affront they endured under Till’s refusal to proclaim his own inferiority, noting that they suffered as they “stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me” (Huie, 1956, p. 50).

Zimmerman, Milam, and Bryant seemed to perceive the threats against them as bodily and they responded in kind, yet the hazard these boys posed was far more symbolic than it was physical. In the case of the Martin shooting, Trayvon represented the changing demographics of the once middle-class gated community of The Retreat at Twin Lakes. The 2008 recession caused several owners to foreclose and the subsequent rental clients were characterized as “low-lifes and gangsters” (Robles, 2012), according to former block captain Frank Taaffe. In the Till case, the threat was regional: Northern Negroes visiting the South were unaware of the social codes and did not know to “stay in their place” and thus “stir[red] up trouble” (Huie, 1956, p. 50). Yet it was also political and electoral; Whites feared what could potentially happen should African Americans achieve equality. Notes Milam, “Niggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control the government. They ain’t gonna go to school with my kids” (Huie, 1956, p. 50). Thus, Trayvon and Emmett were seen as potentially taking over and taking from the White society that surrounded them.

This vigilante justice was, in both cases, condoned by the police and the legal system. Zimmerman was not arrested until 6 weeks after he fatally shot Trayvon, and only then after public outcry had reached a fever pitch; over 1 year later, he was acquitted of the crime. Milam and Bryant, on the other hand, were quickly indicted and brought to trail, and just as quickly found not guilty. In essence, then, the devaluation of Black maleness was sanctioned by law. Indeed, the monologue expresses the weight of this burden and calls attention to the way this inferior status is perpetuated, stating, “Nigga you ain’t nothing never gone be nothing . . . yea, that’s what my father, my teacher, and the police told me” (TNT Theatre Ensemble, 2013, p. 11). It is important to note that this inferior status is enforced by outside forces. That is to say, regardless of what the speaker thinks of himself, others see him as less than.

When the monologue was originally composed and staged, we needed to create a moment that functioned both dramaturgically and logistically. Because several of the female performers had already delivered monologues, this moment needed to highlight a male perspective, balancing out the thematic thrust of the performance by drawing focus to the pressures young Black men face. On a practical level, we also needed this moment to solve the problem of bringing our young man on stage. Because he had not been present for several sessions, we had already blocked the first portion of the performance without him. We simply did not have time to rework what we had created to include him in the staging. However, we felt it was important to make his delayed entrance to the piece impactful rather than arbitrary. Therefore, we planned to “smuggle” him onstage, distracting the audience with movement by our female ensemble members to provide cover as the youth entered. Standing directly behind Al-Hassan, he was undetectable by the audience until he spoke his first words, at which point he spun forward, seeming to appear out of Al-Hassan. Through this staging, the internal conflicts Black men face became externalized between the two male actors.

Interestingly, we determined the staging before we finalized the text, and this physical storytelling impacted the meaning we sought to create. Having blocked the entrance, we sent the two male performers off to improvise the dialogue. We specifically asked them to dramatize the competing pressures experienced by Black males. The text was derived from their journal responses to the writing prompt “What is it to be a young man in Chicago?” Al-Hassan’s response featured a more loping, graceful, poetic cadence and was quite contemplative, focusing on the future he hoped to create for himself despite perceptions society placed on him. In contrast, the youth wrote with the percussive style of rap lyrics and his response was outwardly focused and accusing; it condemned an unidentified interlocutor for wrongs committed. The two men found that their separate pieces blended quite easily; by trading sections following the natural breaks in the material they had written, they crafted a compelling dialogue.

In effect, one took the role of affirmation and the other negation: Al-Hassan’s text expressed an inner view that he wanted the world to see in him, while the youth voiced what the world assumed it saw in him. One wanted to be seen as good, the other was seen (and saw others) as bad. When this piece changed from dialogue to monologue with the departure of the youth, the distance between good and bad was condensed and the view became distorted, leaving only the bad. The text hints at how this external, negative view of Black manhood predominates when it states, “We can point the finger at the perceived problems, but distribute no assistance to fix it” (TNT Theatre Ensemble, 2013, p. 12), an idea we visually reinforced in the staging by having the entire ensemble point at Al-Hassan.

This marking of Black men as a dangerous problem exemplifies what law professor and Nation columnist Patricia J. Williams (2013) calls “The monsterization of Trayvon Martin,” wherein race becomes the means to reverse perpetrator and victim. Based on the stereotypes that are so deeply ingrained in our culture, Zimmerman became a meek weakling as the young Martin became an overpowering thug, just as Milam and Bryant were brave protectors of Southern culture and Till was the aggressor. The monologue text explores how this constant barrage of negative stereotyping becomes internalized by young Black men, leading them to become the very problem that society already sees in them: “Look around and you’ll see that a lot of my brothers have taken the choice of mental captivity offered by the man. Brothers become thugs, friends become gangs, and fathers become absent baby daddies” (TNT Theatre Ensemble, 2013, p. 12). External perception and self-perception become blurred.

An analysis of the writing process reveals how prevalent this battle of perception is for Black males in our society. As noted above, the writing prompt from which the monologue text was derived was quite general. As Al-Hassan notes, “The situation was so vague when I wrote it. It was not pinpointed, it was really, really vague. But to see it apply to so many different things . . . ” (personal communication, February 20, 2014). In crafting the text and staging, Al-Hassan and the youth called attention to the tremendous weight of the negative stereotypes that are placed upon Black males, perceived to be dangerous thugs rather than full human beings. That the monologue so easily became about Trayvon in the wake of the verdict demonstrates the commonality of the experience. Al-Hassan remarks on this swift move from the personal to the more universal, noting “I was writing about myself, [he] was writing about himself . . . and it still merged and it created something that we didn’t even know we were talking about” (personal communication, February 20, 2014). Through their stories, they uncovered a deep truth about race in the United States. Although it is more comforting to believe that the miscarriage of justice around Trayvon’s death and the views that enabled Zimmerman’s acquittal were an unfortunate anomaly to blot the record of our supposedly post-racial society, the monologue text and creation suggests that such prejudice is, in fact, the norm. Furthermore, it is a prejudice that fuels murderous acts committed against Black males. Finally, the monologue speaks of the futility of attempts to break this cycle of violence, proclaiming, “I try, he try, we try . . . But still my brothers are claimed” (TNT Theatre Ensemble, p. 12). Black male life will necessarily be cut short, lost to the battle.

Al-Hassan’s performance in the hoodie honored the loss of our final male participant as representative of the deaths of so many young Black men. He felt a responsibility to hold their voices and to tell their stories through theatre:

We lost so many people, so many males within our group, we finally get one who writes something, and he’s gone! So it was just like, can I just let him go like that? Like . . . that’s all my point. Everybody’s like, am I my sister’s keeper, or, am I my brother’s keeper? Do I just let his stuff go like that? Or do I really try to get it into myself and really put him on the stage? You don’t have to see him to see . . . him. You don’t have to see Trayvon to see Trayvon. (A. Al-Hassan, personal communication, February 20, 2014)

In one respect, his performance opened up several lines of thought surrounding Trayvon’s death, both within Al-Hassan and in the audience. States Al-Hassan:

actually . . . wearing the hoodie, or—It’s not like I haven’t worn that before. So to actually put it on and then express what everyone else was feeling, what people are not feeling, what they don’t wanna say or don’t wanna think . . . (Personal communication, February 20, 2014)

Rather than seeking to fix meaning, theatre and performance makes possible multiple interpretations. Moreover, it allows both performer and audience to access what is often left unsaid, including difficult conversations about race. In another respect, his embodiment of Trayvon engendered a space for mourning the all-too-common losses of Black life. Notes Al-Hassan:

I needed to get my sadness out. And it wasn’t my sadness, it was everyone’s—that no one wanted to address, within the people on the stage, the people in the TNT group, the people in the audience, or the world in general. (Personal communication, February 20, 2014)

By putting on the hoodie and holding the Skittles, Al-Hassan invited the audience to grieve along with him, thereby forming a connection through the image of Trayvon that had so recently been a source of division and rupture.

Such moments demonstrate how theatre can allow us to collectively heal. For our participants, this first occurred within the rehearsal space. The writing and sharing of their stories—most of which described heartbreakingly painful occurrences in their young lives—forged the links that held them together as an ensemble. The participants bore witness to the hardships each had endured. They extended kindness to each other as they validated for each other the feelings that they shared. In putting these stories on stage, the ensemble members gained their artistic voice. They became conduits of restoration. Empowered through performance, the youth were able to guide the audience toward the healing they themselves had already undergone.

As the work of the TNT Theatre Ensemble demonstrates, theatre creates a safe space in which difficult dialogues can take place. The performance of The Only Way Out Is the Way Through allowed Black youth to share their stories, which too often go unheard. Theatre’s ability to speak for the overlooked and absent provides a space of resistance against the dominant discourse that undervalues certain lives, including that of Trayvon Martin. In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, Al-Hassan’s brief embodiment of Trayvon on stage gave voice to the voiceless even before he delivered the text of the monologue. The monologue itself, in text and performance, provides insight into the processes that make the murder of young Black men—Trayvon, Emmett, and so many more—unremarkable. It identifies our nation’s long history of invalidating Black men as equal citizens and full human beings, which stems from slavery forward to today. By bringing these issues to light, it also enables healing, inviting the audience to collectively grieve the inequality that literally kills Black men. But more than that, the monologue stands as a call to action: something must change. And this change can only happen once we see these common stories of violence against Black men as what they are: shameful.

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