Peppermint Creek examines rape culture in award-winning off-Broadway play

Next month, Peppermint Creek Theatre Co. will mount a production of “How to Defend Yourself,” a play about a group of sorority sisters who gather for a self-defense class after one of them is raped. Written by Liliana Padilla, the play premiered off-Broadway last year after winning the Yale Drama Series Prize in 2019.

In an article for Dramatics Magazine, Anita Martin writes that Padilla’s script “explores underlying social forces that help normalize and eroticize male violence against women.” Although the term “rape culture” never actually shows up in the script, the playwright defines it as “the systemic belief that you need to dominate another being in order to have power. That core belief spirals into different behaviors that create the conditions for violence.” In Martin’s article, Padilla remarks that rape culture “is something that is collectively held and therefore can be collectively transformed.”

Sally Hecksel will make her directorial debut with the Peppermint Creek production, opening Feb. 1 at the Stage One Performing Arts Center in Sycamore Creek Church’s Eastwood campus. An actress in her own right, Hecksel completed the theater studio program at Lansing Community College and has also worked as an assistant director and a stage manager. She’s often called in to work as an intimacy coordinator for local theater groups, helping to choreograph fight scenes and onstage violence.

“Advocating for actors and their wellbeing is something that I feel passionate about,” Hecksel said. “After this show, I’ve decided to shift to pursuing a formal intimacy coordination certification so that I can better help the local acting community.”

Hecksel has taken great care to make the show’s environment supportive, especially considering its topic, and she’s been blown away by the tenacity and transparency her actors have brought to the work.

“I’m grateful that the cast has been willing to have tough conversations with me and has been willing to explore so many facets and nuances of something that most folks have a difficult time confronting,” she said.

In addition to the script and the acting, Hecksel is especially excited for the audience to experience the music, designed by Nathan Tykocki.

“I think it will help us move through time during a specific moment in the show and will put the audience in the right headspace to process everything,” she said. “My goal with this show is to have cohesion between as many elements as possible. I want to fully immerse the audience in the world, even between scenes.”

This is Storm Kopitsch’s fifth production with Peppermint Creek. She plays Brandi, a sorority girl with a black belt in karate.

“All she wants is control over her life, and she feels like she’s never had that,” Kopitsch said. “It’s easy to stereotype her and put her in this box. But the more I dive into Brandi, the more I’m finding she’s one of the most complex characters in the show.”

Returning for his second Peppermint Creek show is relative theater newcomer TJ Kelly Jr., who plays Eggo.

“Eggo is Eggo,” Kelly said. “He’s a college frat boy. He might be an incel. He just wants the right answers to love. Eggo has a lot of love to give to anyone, and he’s perplexed as to why women don’t feel the same way back.”

Kelly hopes audience members will return home with a lot to think about.

“This show can get very heavy, but that’s a good thing. It may not have any answers, but I want people to go home and have conversations with friends and family members about why the show made them feel the way it did.”

Kopitsch agreed that the play challenges simple narratives and easy resolutions.

“We like to see the world in black and white, good and bad, but this play shows that there are far more variations of gray in between. All the characters have varying degrees of grayness. I want the audience to leave still considering who wins in the end. Who really wins?”

Hecksel said she hopes the audience will attend with curiosity and a willingness to explore this taboo subject.

“I truly believe that the only way to start disrupting rape culture is by addressing it openly,” she said. “There are quiet pieces of ourselves that may feel confusing or maybe contradictory when addressing this topic, and we may believe that to explore it aloud would paint us in a bad light. The reality is that everything is a gradient. There are certainly things that lean more to one side or the other, but I’m hoping that our community will see that this is something worth exploring and talking about.”