In the aptly named Swallowing My Shout, writer and performer Tvinity/Theresa Cunningham takes the audience through generations of family trauma.
The 45-minute solo show, described as “a Black woman navigating life and love after a childhood of emoticons and sexual abuse,” opens with a gut-punch of a story about the narrator’s great-grandfather before shifting its focus to her own childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
This is not a show for people easily triggered by stories of abuse. It is, however, an artfully crafted narrative that largely holds the audience’s attention as the narrator lays bare the most devastating moments of her life, starting with abuse that began when she was just four years old.
The piece’s strengths lie in the quality of performance and storytelling, both of which are high. It’s not easy for a single performer to engage an audience for 45 straight minutes, but Cunningham did a solid job, crafting the piece as a series of short vignettes that progressed chronologically through her life. These vignettes were strengthened by Valerie Baugh-Schlossberg’s directorial choices, which incorporated movement and subtle prop and costume additions — a tube of lipstick, a red ballet skirt — to keep the performance from stagnating. Cunningham punctuates the dialogue with brief moments of lovely singing.
The storytelling lagged, unfortunately, when veering away from trauma. The few stories that weren’t rooted in trauma were far less interesting or impactful than the others, suggesting that we hadn’t fully embraced the storyteller as a fully fleshed-out human, but rather someone whose distress we were observing with detachment. The storytelling lagged a bit around the two-thirds mark, where a tonal shift or the introduction of a new storytelling element could provide a jolt of excitement to carry the audience through to the end, along with the storyteller. Similarly, the ending did not fully communicate to me that the narrator had “reclaimed her voice,” as described in the online program. A future iteration of this show could lean further into that aspect of the storytelling.
All in all, Swallowing My Shout is an impactful theatrical experience and well worth visiting. Cunningham’s résumé includes impressive local performing credits at some of the region’s best theaters, as well as a 2013 Helen Hayes win for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Musical. Swallowing My Shout gives audiences a chance to see her work up close.
Swallowing My Shout
By Theresa Cunningham
Running Time: 45 minutes
Dates and Times:
- Saturday, July 11, 3:30 PM
- Sunday, July 12, 2:30 PM (masks required)
- Wednesday, July 15, 9:00 PM
- Wednesday, July 22, 5:45 PM
- Sunday, July 26, 12:30 PM
Venue: Phoenix – UDC Mainstage Venue
Tickets: $15
More Info and Tickets
Genre: Solo
Company based: Maryland
Directed by: Valerie Baugh-Schlossberg
Performed by: Theresa Cunningham
The complete 2026 District Fringe Festival lineup is online here.
The 2026 District Fringe Festival calendar is online here.
