“This above all- to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” – Polonius, “Hamlet” Act 1, Scene 3
When you think of Shakespeare what comes to mind? If you are a person who stutters/stutterer, does it invite you or alienate you? Do you look upon these beautiful and timeless words like an outsider looking in? “That’s not for me” one might think. The phrase ‘all the world’s a stage’ might trigger dread and not inspiration. Well, what if we who stutter brought a proverbial folding chair to this table? What if we explored and even embraced our unique voices and claimed these texts for ourselves?
I am a stutterer, a speech-language pathologist, and once upon a time I studied theatre in undergraduate. Since I was a pre-teen, I have been enchanted, and terrified, of Shakespeare. I remember listening to any performance I heard with a mixture of joy and jealousy. In middle school and high school, the practice of ‘going around the room’ and reading a passage was a slow building nightmare. I knew how I wanted the speech to sound, how it was ‘supposed’ to sound, but I inevitably would run into blocks. My one audition for a Shakespeare play in college was a disaster. And yet I still was drawn to it.
With these experiences in my mind, and with inspiration from many in different stuttering communities, I developed a ‘Shakespeare and Stuttering’ group program. This program is held on Zoom, for 5 weeks of 90-minute sessions. As of the writing of this blog, two cohorts have completed the program, with a total of 7 adults who stutter.
The program pulls inspiration and a foundation from Avoidance Reduction Therapy for Stuttering (ARTS), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), biblio-therapy, narrative therapy, and other approaches and ideas. We explore the nature of stigma and self-stigma around stuttering and our voices. The participants are challenged to look at their stuttering in ‘musical’ terms and not in comparison to a ‘norm’ or ‘ideal’. Discussion touches on what they personally feel or have felt is ‘off limits’ to them as people who stutter, what we feel are societal and our own biases of ‘eloquence’, ‘good oratory’, and ‘musicality’. We also talk about stuttering stereotypes and representation (or lack thereof) in movies and media.
The participants then choose from a selected list of Shakespeare’s speeches and sonnets. They can choose something ‘off menu’ if that speaks to them more. The process of working through the speeches is not unlike what one would see in an acting class. Influenced by Uta Hagen mostly, working on finding the truth in the words and the emotional resonance. Where is the authenticity in the text? Where can they connect themselves, their own experiences to it?
Alongside the text analysis and study, we focus in on where stuttering can fit in, and even enhance the performance. Stuttering is part of their truth, so it should be allowed space to add to and fill out the speech. A common follow up question after a participant ‘has a go’ is: what gifts did your stuttering give you? Through this, stuttering is not a barrier to accessing Shakespeare, but a feature that can deepen their connection to and performance of the speech. Voluntary stuttering is explored and completely accepted. Each participant is free to stutter on purpose as much or as little as they want. An interesting dichotomy emerged in the groups: some participants enjoyed the process of selecting when and where to voluntary stutter and were open about those choices. Other participants decided to keep those choices private. To them, no one needed to know if a stutter was voluntary or involuntary. To them, it is not for any listener to weigh in on if a stutter was ‘real’ or ‘fake’. Both directions were celebrated as they, in their own way, underscored that stuttering only added to the performance of the speech.
On the fifth week they perform the pieces, and I share with them a recording of their performance. While we go through these several times over several weeks, no memorization is required for performance.
To have some quantitative data on the impact of the program, participants were given an electronic copy of the Stuttering Self Stigma Scale (4S) from Michael Boyle, (2013) before and after. This is a questionnaire with a series of 1-5 scales and is broken down into three sections: 1) Stigma Awareness (score range 14-70), 2) Stereotype agreement (range 7-35), and 3) Internalized Stigma (range 12-60). The higher the score, the higher the self-stigma.
- For Stigma Awareness, the participants went from an average score of 49.83 to 44.17.
- For Stereotype Agreement, the participants went from an average score of 20.17 to 17.17
- For Internalized Stigma, the participants went from an average score of 31.33 to 25.67
Beyond the numbers, here is what participants said in reflection at the end of the program:
- “I became excited to stutter on my lines, especially some of the juicy ones.”
- “There is a joy in being my own director.”
- “I stretched myself beyond what I thought I could do. I was inspired by the others’ work. I have always been worried if I belong, this helped make connections.”
- “My stutter can be used to build suspense. I have a new perspective on my stuttering and acting I may do.”
- “I didn’t think I could do something this long out loud and not want to disassociate. I am more present with my stutter.”
- “I used all of myself to be expressive, I found I was less in my head.”
While many of us will never find ourselves on stage, holding a skull, and saying “Alas poor Yorick…”, we encounter Shakespeare in our schooling and have to deal with it. But beyond Shakespeare, we encounter explicit and implicit limits on what one can do while openly stuttering. Hopefully this program can be an addition to the many that seek to show that stuttering doesn’t deserve to just be tolerated but celebrated.
By Jack Henderson, MS CCC-SLP (he/him)
Jack@hendersonstutteringtherapy.com
Instagram: @hendersonstutteringtherapy
