Janine Nabers' The Peterson Show is many things—an uproarious comedy about feuding former child stars; a thinly-veiled send-up of behind-the-scenes scandals from the Golden Age of Black sitcoms; and a harrowing character study of a recovering addict unearthing deep-buried trauma. The new play from the Emmy nominee and Swarm creator—currently performing at L.A.'s Atwater Village Theatre—has become a word-of-mouth hit among theatergoers who arrive ready to laugh and depart reckoning with the darkness behind their favorite childhood shows.
The story follows five fictional TV siblings in the midst of their former patriarch’s sexual-misconduct trial, as simmering rivalries give way to devastating secrets ready to see the light. Nabers began working on the script as Bill Cosby’s trial spurred the Black community to reckon with their cultural idol’s shifting legacy, which remains a divisive subject to this day. To tell this story, Nabers put the spotlight on the two women closest to her fictional TV creator: one who blocked out the hurt to survive, and one who’s now determined, decades later, to bring the truth to light.
As The Peterson Show runs in L.A. until October 26, Nabers shared an exclusive essay with Marie Claire about how her own experience with dissociative amnesia inspired her latest effort to speak truth to power through comedy.
Content warning: The below contains references to sexual assault. If you or someone you know has been affected, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or visit rainn.org for confidential support.
When I was 24, I thought I was dying.
I had just gotten home from a waitressing shift when the sharpest needle-like pain I’ve ever felt in my life pierced my heart. I could barely breathe, let alone walk. As I slowly fell to the floor, with the heaviness of what felt like death weighing down on me, I army-crawled to my phone and called my friend Tai, who lived across the street. By the time I had finished saying whatever it was I said to her, I blacked out. Tai ran over as quickly as she could, and within what felt like seconds, I was on a gurney being lifted into an ambulance.
I was at the hospital for hours. Test after test after test. Nothing. Then, like a ghostly apparition, a young woman who couldn’t have been much older than me appeared in my room, holding my medical file.
She closed the door before speaking softly, almost as if we were sharing a secret, "You’ve been to this hospital before.”
I stared at her blankly.
Before.
Seven months earlier, I went on a date with a guy who sexually assaulted me. That night I also got pregnant.
Eight weeks after the assault, I felt like death. I could barely stay awake. Everything ached. I remember lying on my roommate Fabiola's bed saying things like, "What the fuck is wrong with me? Do I have cancer?" I complained morbidly to anyone who would listen, “I’m dyyyyying!” until finally my other roommate Kate called her doctor and handed me the phone.
“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” I laughed at the doctor's question.
“Lady, there's no way I'm knocked up. Unless I’m, like, Mary and the baby is Jesus.”
I had completely blocked out the night in question... the doctor said nothing. Her silence was deafening.
The term for this, I’ve since learned, is dissociative amnesia.
Dissociative amnesia is a body's visceral response to trauma. It's basically a giant "Fuck Off" button that takes alllllllll the bright and shiny horrors you've experienced and zaps them away. Making all the saucy sad triggers dormant and invisible. Poof!
After my assault, I carried on business as usual. "Bad dates happen, right?!” I told myself after taking an HIV test. I threw myself into my writing at school, went on a couple bad dates with guys who were weirded out when I’d randomly sob for no fucking reason, and casually deleted an email from my rapist telling me if I ever tried to contact him again, he’d kill me. Yup. Business as usual. That’s how disassociated I was.
By the time I found myself back at the hospital where I had my abortion at several months earlier, my body was attacking itself. The pain was unbearable. I felt like I was having a heart attack.
That evening, I left the hospital with nothing but a giant medical bill that took me five years to pay off. There is no medicine that can treat the worst night of your life. The only thing that would heal me in the end was time and acceptance (and lots of weed and therapy).
I'm also a comedy writer who has been paid to write dookie jokes for a living. I’m not precious when it comes to anything sad. Funny people know that sadness and humor go hand-in-hand. A good laugh and a good cry both lead to the same salty-ass tears.
As a TV writer and playwright, I'm drawn to stories that can make you laugh while asking you to sit through something equally uncomfortable. For me, humor is a way into those harder truths. It disarms the audience, challenges their expectations, and hopefully in the end, stays with them.
The Peterson Show is a play I started writing in 2017. Around that same time was the 20th anniversary of Martin’s series finale, where Tisha Campbell's sexual harassment lawsuit against her co-star Martin Lawrence resurfaced (an accusation that Lawrence has denied to this day). That, and the then-ongoing Cosby trial became food for thought. After examining other Black sitcom scandals and setting them all inside one TV family, the play finally had its legs.
I survive as a storyteller, mother, and advocate for women by standing firm to my belief that our stories as women matter, our voices endure, and no one defines our worth.
On the surface, The Peterson Show is a comedy about five former child actors and their sitcom mother returning to the TV show that made them famous. But underneath, it's a memory play about the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive the trauma we cannot yet face. In my play, each character has built a different relationship to the past: one has buried it, one has rewritten it, one has romanticized it, one has turned it into performance, and one has spent years trying to preserve it. But as patient as memory can be, it's also a weapon that lurks in the dark…waiting to pull the trigger.
I wrote The Peterson Show because I know what it's like for the body to remember before the mind is willing to. I also wrote it because our stories of abuse are often overlooked. And they’re overlooked by men in power.
A few days after debuting The Peterson Show, the only white male critic who reviewed it (the rest were women or people of color) flattened a Black character’s abuse story into something he could dismiss. Because entitled men still think they can decide what our stories are worth.
When the man who raped me threatened to hurt me if I ever questioned him again, I deleted his number. I backed off and shut away the memory for my own sanity and survival. It wasn’t until many years later that I came to terms with that night and what happened.
Now, I survive as a storyteller, mother, and advocate for women by standing firm to my belief that our stories as women matter, our voices endure, and no one defines our worth.