Secret Survivors

Secret Survivors is an interview-based theater project featuring adult survivors of child sexual abuse telling their personal stories on stage. Due to social taboos, very few survivors ever share their stories publicly. The majority of survivors never report their abuse to state authorities, and many never tell anyone at all. Conceived for Ping Chong and Company in 2009 by Amita Swadhin, an anti-violence activist and survivor, Secret Survivors represents the diverse ways this violence occurs and grapple with the many reasons that most survivors remain silent.

Secret Survivors seeks to use direct personal narrative to show that this violence is wide-spread, to represent the diverse ways this violence occurs, and grapple with the many reasons that most survivors remain silent.

Secret Survivors National Initiative

In order to expand the impact of Secret Survivors beyond the theatrical production, Ping Chong and Company created a national initiative to use theater to  raise awareness of child sexual abuse and encourage prevention and advocacy to end it.  In 2012, Ping Chong and Company released Secret Survivors: Using Theater to Break the Silence, a documentary film directed by Melanie Vi Levy, which explores the Secret Survivors theater production, and includes voices of survivors and advocates working in the field of child sexual abuse prevention. The documentary was released with an accompanying toolkit, a resource for facilitating workshops and discussion around child sexual abuse. Additionally, Ping Chong and Company created a training initiative to support non-arts organzation around the country in creating their own productions modeled on PCC’s original Secret Survivors production, featuring the voices and experiences of child sexual abuse survivors. Productions were created in Oregon, New York, Michigan, Minnesota, and Mexico. In the decade since Secret Survivors was released, the documentary has been screened in dozens of communities, and the toolkit is in use by over 100 community organizations, as tools for community-based dialogue and action.

For more information about Secret Survivors, or to purchase the toolkit, please contact Sara Zatz: sara@pingchong.org.