Girl Talk Theatre: Helping Homeless Women Find Their Voices On Stage

When Stephanie Cotton-Snell, an actress and theatre professional, moved to Boston almost four years ago, one thing troubled her about her downtown neighborhood. On sidewalks where thousands of people walked each day, homeless people sat with all of their worldly possessions in garbage bags—and no one even bothered to look in their direction. Raise money for this problem and other problems.

Cotton-Snell knew that she couldn’t forgive herself if she simply became blind to the problems the homeless community in her very own neighborhood was facing, so she decided to look for a solution instead.

“For me, there was no question that the homeless population was one that I felt a lot of passion for,” Cotton-Snell says. “They’re often ignored by our community, and people don’t understand the complexity of the problems that they face.”

Cotton-Snell has a background in theatre performance, and had done a one-woman show based on a traumatic experience in her past. “Not only was it cathartic for me,” she says of that show, “but I’ve opened up a door of understanding” for the audience members. She believed that, by giving the women in Boston’s homeless community the opportunity to turn their own experiences into theatre performances, she could help them to express themselves and to step out of the shadows and make people take notice.

So, in 2007, Cotton-Snell founded a local nonprofit organization called Girl Talk Theatre , which provides free weekly drama classes to women in local homeless shelters over the course of several months, and culminates with a performance of plays written and acted by the homeless women themselves, based on their own life experiences.

“I thought the most difficult issue would be getting them to open up to me,” Cotton-Snell says of the women, but “they’re ready to explode with their stories, because no one asks them.”

Since Cotton-Snell founded the group on her own almost two years ago, it has grown tremendously. She now has seven board members, and a large group of volunteer assistants. Cotton-Snell has taught classes in three local shelters, and has directed six Girl Talk Theatre performances. “The population of women in the classes is almost unprecedented,” she says. “The women want this moment so badly.”

While all of the women’s stories have been inspiring, one incident is particularly memorable to Cotton-Snell. One day, a woman attending one of her drama classes showed up covered in bruises. She had been badly beaten by a boyfriend. But over the course of her time in Girl Talk, the woman managed to transform that horrific experience into something positive. She got out of the relationship, and then turned her experience into a monologue that she performed onstage in front of a crowd of people.

“It gave her the chance to look back and realize why she was in that relationship,” Cotton-Snell says. “Women in the audience would look at her and say, ‘she got through it, and she survived.’”

Some of the monologues deal with dark and disturbing issues, but the majority are light-hearted. “We give them an opportunity to tell sweet and funny stories from their pasts,” says Cotton-Snell. “They reveal that part of themselves that’s been difficult, but also stories about their favorite Christmas, or their first date.”

When Boston area audiences come to the shows, she says,  “I receive feedback like ‘I’m amazed, homeless women are just like us!’ People who have come in to hear gory stories of homelessness and are interested in that factor walk away with an entirely different view.  Our performances are so much bigger than that.”

Make a donation to GirlTalk Theatre through Razoo.

By Kathryn Hawkins