For over thirty years, Geese Theatre Company has been presenting Stay, a performance exploring the experience of living with domestic abuse.
Originally created for men convicted of abuse, it has seen many adaptations over the years, including versions developed for the military and for midwives, and is now more often used with professional audiences: police officers, social workers, judges and health practitioners.
Theatre can do something different to PowerPoint presentations, written case studies and policy documents. It allows audiences to engage with the complexity of an abusive relationship and witness how coercive control develops over time through everyday interactions, shifting power dynamics and patterns of behaviour designed to maintain control. Audiences are invited to consider how people experiencing abuse might adapt their behaviour in response to that control, and how children are affected.
When we performed Stay to an audience of professionals recently, we heard a familiar comment afterwards:
“I felt like I’d been holding my breath throughout.”
For a short time, audiences are given a sense of the vigilance that can characterise life in an abusive household: constantly reading mood, tone and atmosphere, never quite knowing what might happen next.
Whilst theatre can’t replicate the reality of living in an abusive household, it can help us understand why domestic abuse is about far more than individual incidents. It is about what life feels like when power and control shape everyday interactions.
If your team works with people affected by domestic abuse and would like to explore these issues through theatre, we’d be delighted to talk.
