It's Not My Fault Staged Reading & Talk Back

Presented by The Collective Mic Productions as part of 2025 Philly Theatre Week! It’s Not My Fault is a poetic short play about 4 different individuals all struggling with surviving sexual molestation and or rape. They do not know each other and they are in different stages of their lives but they all have one thing in common. They all feel that what happened to them was their fault.Karen is a fourteen year old girl who was raped by her boyfriend. He convinced her that this was what she really wanted. Abdul was molested by a friend’s mother back when he was eleven and over the years has had many conversations with his younger self as he continues to try to sort out his feeling about the incident in light of society’s view that it wasn’t molestation but rite of passage instead if it was an older female and younger male. Monica is a middle-aged woman experiencing nightmares and anxiety issues concerning memories of being raped by a neighborhood friend as a teen and being force by her family to drop the charges. Cynthia is a young woman who was raped at a party and is struggling to believe that she is worthy of love afterwards.Each person shares their story that they believe is theirs alone as the play strives to show that they are not. This is achieved through a combination of dramatic monologues, music, dance and artistic images taking the audience through an emotional rollercoaster of feeling and emotions. Each character slowly begins to understand that they are not alone and the pain and anguish that they are suffering will never be their fault.