After being sexually assaulted at a party, a young woman questions her passion and excellence for theater while preparing to star in her local theater's production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Suzie lays on her bathroom floor, flooded in blue lights. She has just been sexually assaulted. Ben, her best friend, finds her and reaches out to help her, but she flinches away.

Weeks later, she goes to the theater for opening night of A Streetcar Named Desire, where Suzie is playing Stella. Suzie sits with Ben at the lighting booth and confides in him about her anxiety. Ben reminds her that she’s confident and talented. Suzie doesn’t remember that version of herself.

During the play, Suzie is overwhelmed with emotions and she messes up her line. She has an anxiety attack backstage. She takes a breath, realizing that she is here because she loves theater, and is not going to let anything get in the way of her success. She goes back onstage.

The audience is erupting in cheers. She did it. She runs off stage in joy. Ben runs in to check on her. She laughs, which

turns into a sob and opens her arms to him. They hug. She’s not who she was but she is herself.

To me, Disco Town is a place where you can't escape the broken fragments of yourself, but you use that to your advantage and create something beautiful.

We want to tell a story that uplifts the voices of survivors of all kind. PTSD is often looked at as a joke but we want to connect people who have and have no experience with it to help create a better understanding of its long lasting effects and how we can create safe environments for all with it. We want our viewers to see themselves in Suzie. We want to tell a story in which growth and stability is found in every day life despite what Suzie has been through. We think this will be important for our community because of this and want to show victims that hope is never lost and that community and friends is everything.

Here's why we need to reach our $7k minimum fundraising goal in order to make Disco Town.

Catering & Crafty: Feeding our cast and crew is an essential part our film's budget. We will be working ten hour days for five days straight. We need to give our team nutritious meals and snacks in order for them to feel and work their best throughout the film process.

Location: The theater location in our film is a key part of telling our story. It must showcase the scenes it appears in, and assist in highlighting how big the performance is that Susie leads.

Art: A big part of our film is the art design involved and the recreation of A Streetcar Named Desire. We need set construction and design, props, and costumes to make a realistic scene of the climax in the play and film.

Cast: It's important to us that our cast is compensated adequately, especially due to the crucial roles they play in our film.

Transportation: Everywhere we film will require the transportation of equipment which will need a small U-Haul to ensure safe and smooth transportation from our college to our shooting locations. We also need to transport our cast and crew members to our shooting locations.

Our stretch goal is an additional $1k. Having this additional contribution will help us ensure our taxes are covered as well as assist us in being able to submit to more festivals and get our message out there.

But before we can add that, we have to reach our $7,000 goal, so please donate what you can and share on Facebook and Instagram and follow @discotownshortfilm.

Pre-Production: Our pre-production process has been taking place since mid September to this coming December 12th. This process involves fundraising, securing our locations, casting, art design and set construction planning, and more.

Production: We will be shooting fromo December 13th-18th in the Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania area. This is when our pre-production efforts come together.

Post-Production: Beginning in January, our team will start the editing process. This includes coloring, sound mixing, cutting sequences, composing score, and picture lock. This process completes in April.

Premiere: In late April, our film will be shown at the Temple University Senior Showcase. Everyone who contributes to our campaign is more than welcome to join us. We are so excited for you to create this beautiful film with us and see it come to fruition!

Senior year of high school, I got a beloved teacher and our director suspended from the school for sexual harassment against me. Sexual assault has always been sadly a pilar in my life, but this experience was extremely detrimental to me. It took a place and an activity that was so extremely exciting and personal to me was ruined by my talents being cast aside for the chance to ask me if I was alright, asking what happened. I remember standing on the stage, and the teacher, illegally, stood in the back of the theater watching while he was not allowed on campus, in a black suit, his arms crossed, underneath a giant cross hanging on the wall. The fear of standing on a stage is something I’ve not fully been able to overcome yet since. 

Even though, I still persist, and like Suzie, I use my experiences and my past to enforce my morals and ethics into my art in ways I have never been able to do before. I invite challenges and wrap myself into my art. I obviously wish my trauma had never happened to me, but every day I am reminded of it, my art, theater, and film take me to a place of acceptance and tranquility, somewhere I love to be and bathe in. 

This film is for the little girls and boys who didn't have anyone that believed them. For the people who think they do not have the space to come forward for their truth.

As Suzie is using A Streetcar Names Desire to try and continue her life as normally as possible, I am doing the same with Disco Town.