Orientation SHARE play replaces scene implying rape with groping

The content of Princeton’s annual SHARE play at Orientation was altered for the Class of 2030, after male actors expressed concerns about playing a character who was implied to be a rapist.

Theatre Intime and the SHARE office, which stands for Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources, and Education, collaborate each year to produce a play with the goal of educating students about matters of consent and the resources available to them if they are impacted by sexual assault or harassment. The play is performed during first-year Orientation as a required, core event. 

“The goal of the play is to build on the summer online training curriculum so first year students can recognize signs of interpersonal violence and abuse and learn how to intervene effectively and safely,” said SHARE director Jacqueline Deitch-Stackhouse in a statement to The Daily Princetonian.

The play, which has been titled “The Way You Move” since 2012, demonstrated a variety of unhealthy relationship dynamics including stalking and emotional manipulation. The climax of the play depicted a woman, Natalie, being groped by a male character, Max. Afterward, her friends introduced her to support resources through SHARE. 

In previous years, it has been implied that Natalie was raped by Max during a scene in which Max places a hand on her leg once she has seemingly fallen asleep before the stage fades to black. “We made a significant change in the scene that depicts a sexual assault, shifting from an act of nonconsensual sexual penetration to nonconsensual sexual contact,” Deitch-Stackhouse said.

This year marked the first departure from the plot involving rape since the first mention of the play in the ‘Prince’ in 1989, when it was previously titled “Sex on a Saturday Night.”

Play director Ren Dzyuba ’28 explained in a statement to the ‘Prince’ that potential actors were uncomfortable with playing Max and having to perform the scene where rape was implied. Multiple of these actors cited anxieties about being “misperceived by the freshman class as condoning the actions of the character.” As a result, they had to alter the script a week before the show was to go on. 

“About a week out from the show, I realized that there was a significantly unlikely chance that we could recruit an actor for Max with the state of the script,” Dzyuba said. “Taking the reasoning for no’s that I’d heard up to that point, I stayed up until about 3 a.m. that night restructuring the entire script.” 

Deitch-Stackhouse told the ‘Prince’ that SHARE also heard complaints from actors who performed roles that committed acts of harm in the play. 

“Some were identified by their character’s name when seen on campus long after their performances and felt uncomfortable with the negative association,” Deitch-Stackhouse said in a statement. 

In addition to the plot change, SHARE added a segment after the performance where the actors came out of character and introduced themselves to the audience, according to Deitch-Stackhouse.  

“By modifying the script and incorporating a talk back, we were attempting to support the cast of the play while still achieving the well-established learning objectives,” she added.

Although the change to the script was unplanned, Dzyuba believes it ultimately improved cast comfort and audience understanding of harassment and assault. In the revised version, Dzyuba explained that a greater emphasis was placed on characterizing Max as “nice,” with the goal of making him more complex to “show the audience that despite his intentions, his actions outweigh any excuse.”

“It was a priority for me to make sure that Max could be anyone, which reflects the reality that even nice people can be capable of serious harm,” Dzyuba said in their statement. 

In addition to the Natalie-Max plot change, the heterosexual female character named Anna was changed to a homosexual man named Adam, who experienced online and in-person sexual harassment. 

“At first, the change was only made to suit the cast. However, changes began to extend into altering some of Adam’s lines to account for the nuances of him experiencing harassment with consideration to both his gender and sexuality,” Dzyuba told the ‘Prince.’ “I hoped that this change could shine light on a form of harassment often experienced but not frequently discussed in queer communities on campus.”

Natalie DiStefano ’30, a first-year who watched this year’s version of the SHARE play, commented that the play defied her expectations. “I went into it thinking it would be boring, but I thought it was very informative and fun,” she said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’

Multiple other students declined to comment on the contents or impact of the play. 

Dzyuba explained that they feel that groping is often ignored over other serious forms of sexual assault. 

“While rape is still a common problem on college campuses, groping is often brushed off as an unfortunate event, and therefore often not recognized by the public as a form of assault,” they wrote in their statement. “However, it is both in the policy of the university as well as federal law that groping falls under the exact same legal severity as rape (especially in Title IX cases).”

“My hope is that the audience feels empowered to listen to themselves whenever they have a gut feeling that something unsafe or weird might be occurring to either themselves or a friend, and to either delegate, distract, or directly confront the possible conflict,” Dzyuba added.

SHARE will collect feedback about this year’s play over the next few months and use it to inform future edits to “ensure the program continues to evolve in ways that are educational as well as accessible,” according to Deitch-Stackhouse. 

Kimberly Hutchinson is a News contributor for the ‘Prince’ and a member of the Class of 2030 from Suwanee, Ga.

Riley Price is a News contributor for the ‘Prince’ and a member of the Class of 2030. 

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.