How I Learned to Drive

If you can, and are on the fence about what to see this weekend, I recommend How I Learned to Drive at Custom Made.

It’s not a story that can be acknowledged only once, not something that can be seen and then checked off a list. The topics of sexual assault, abuse, victimized sexuality are ongoing conversations and (re)discoveries.

And the way Custom Made has produced this play (intimate yet theatrical and stylized enough to allow the audience to maintain an examining distance) belongs to the genre of revisitation.

While the hypersexualized family and the 11 year old sexual abuse are no doubt real experiences for many and assist a theatrical telling of the story, they or any other grand and clear plot device are not necessary for an audience member’s recognition of one or more elements of how she or he was educated incorrectly/carelessly and painfully into her or his own sexuality. All that is needed is one of the few least graphic (conversations) scenes between Lil Bit and Uncle Peck:

“This is just wrong”
“Someone will get hurt”

“I’m confused”
“Family is family”

And maybe my favorite line from Lil Bit: “Are you okay?”

If you come to the play believing the goal is to determine who is good and who is bad, please re-evaluate the conversation open to you: Although every character (well written and well acted) offers a real human being with goodness and badness in many interpretations, this story is not about anyone except Lil Bit. Uncle Peck and all other characters serve only to assist Lil Bit in her making known to herself (and to anyone who cares enough — about her or about themselves — to keep actively listening and asking questions) how it is that she could simultaneously wholeheartedly love and wholeheartedly hate someone. Of course Uncle Peck is Bad. Of course the family played its own indecent and traumatizing part in catalyzing the calamity before it happened. There are no spoilers here.

What the play uncovers is the intricacies of a young soul’s confusion (of love and hate; of good and bad), in the face of one of the most pivotal moments of self (sexual) discovery, and how that vulnerable moment is too often not understood and wholly abused and betrayed, even by those who may profess (and indeed believe they have) love.

It’s a telling of a story in order to understand an experience that too easily turns confusion into shame. Lil Bit’s conversation with herself (directed to the audience) is her expression and evaluation for purposes that are entirely her own.

She (We) just need(s) an audience to care enough to listen.