When Lights Dim, ‘Secrets’ Come Out : Theater: As the action unfolds, characters--and the audience--grapple with the painful topic of incest.

A beat-up leather couch sits in the middle of the stage. Frayed duct tape, resembling bandages covering a wounded, brown animal, crisscross the fabric.

As the lights dim, the audience begins to learn that this battered piece of furniture serves an important and therapeutic purpose in the battered lives of seven rage-torn characters.

“Shattered Secrets” does not mince memories. As the action unfolds, characters willingly grapple with their recollections of incest. The only way through the maze, they discover, is to trigger each incendiary memory, testing the levels of pain found there.

Performed each Monday night at Santa Monica’s Powerhouse Theatre, “Shattered Secrets” completed its second year of performances this week. With no budget except income from $10 admission fees, the play has become a rallying point for incest victims and their support groups, therapists and others undergoing similar recovery processes.

“The play is a valuable recovery tool for incest survivors,” said Jim, a member of the audience who declined to give his last name, after a recent performance. “It breaks through the taboo of incest in a safe way that says you can talk about what happened to you. It helped me realize I was sleep-walking through life, and that I was out of touch with many of the emotions the play’s characters feel. Seeing it really gave me a connection with my past.”

Therapists say the play can help incest survivors jump-start a program of recovery--in some cases by making them acknowledge and confront the problem for the first time. “If people are in a state of denial about childhood incest, the play, with its powerful theatrics, tends to bring them out of denial,” said Steve Uribe, a Los Angeles therapist. Uribe has recommended the play to 12 of his clients, and recently took a group of eight to see it. He said he knows of other therapists who have done the same.

“It’s not an easy play to watch because of all the feelings it brings up, like abandonment, grief, rage, loss of innocence and trust, shame and humiliation,” Uribe said. “There’s the pervasive feeling among incest survivors that they’re at fault--they were somehow not good enough. But the play sends the message that the blame must be placed where it belongs--on the perpetrator.”

Playwright Libbe HaLevy, without elaborating, acknowledges that the play is based in part on personal experience. She began work on it five years ago after attending a five-day incest recovery workshop.

“Through writing the play, I discovered ways to talk about my own past,” said HaLevy, 40, a Beverly Hills resident who has written 17 plays staged in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. “I suddenly started tearing down walls of denial, and it felt safe to discuss what was really going on. . . .

“I rigged the play to include every incident of acting out (drug use, violence) that I had experienced, witnessed, heard about through friends or in other ways knew that was true for survivors,” said HaLevy, who also conducts workshops that use writing exercises to help participants grapple with their memories of incest.

“Shattered Secrets” is structured around a 12-step meeting format where individuals share past experiences and recovery tools. The sharp-edged characters, multiethnic and damaged in a multitude of ways, wear the effects of their abuse like plated armor.

Gary, a muscular black prostitute, uses sex to manipulate others. Carolyn, a lesbian who makes caring for others her full-time career, helps watch over Tom, a grown-up little boy who uses laughter to deal with a buried emotional life. Sylvia and Carlos, the real scene-grabbers of the group, unleash rage that nearly flays the Naugahyde off the theater seats.

Plastic bats, which are never used in traditional 12-step groups, are wielded by characters to pummel the rage and humiliation they feel as victims. The tattered couch receives most of their thunder, but their wrath erupts into war when Sylvia accidently whops Carlos, triggering a full-court press of his four personalities, usually hidden within his timid personality. Carlos, now in the persona of aggressive Paco, attempts to sexually molest Elizabeth, whose personality fluctuates somewhere between Patty Duke and Sally Field. Gary, deciding to heighten the drama, slits his wrist.

In the words of HaLevy: “This is a 12-step meeting from hell.”

“It scared me,” said Jim, 43, who lives in Los Angeles and attended the play with fellow members of an incest recovery group that meets weekly. “It overpowered me. After Carlos has his psychotic split and the rage built to the breaking point, all I could think of was: ‘This is just like being back at home.’ ”

The fear and rage on the stage clearly strike many responsive chords in the audience. HaLevy and director Jerry Craig estimate that a substantial majority of their viewers are drawn to the play because their lives or their families have been scarred by incest.

Some patrons, having seen the play numerous times, have gone to work for the show. Cathleen Corey, now the play’s archivist, estimates that she has seen the play 35 times. “It was like seeing different pieces of myself within each of the characters,” said Corey, 35, who is a banker in Los Angeles. “As the months progressed, more memories began to surface.”

HaLevy said the publicity surrounding the McMartin preschool molestation trial helped her write the play because it connected her with buried memories. “For the first time there were stories in the media that were sympathetic to the kids’ position,” HaLevy said. “This was turning my frame of reference inside out. I did not know there was language, like the word perpetrator , that could be applied to what happened to me.”

HaLevy joined forces with Craig, founder of the Hispanic Theatre Project in Los Angeles, when she went shopping for a theater. “I’ve been working on this play for three years, and it wasn’t until the second year that I got in touch with my own incest issues,” said Craig, 34, a veteran actor and director of the New York and Los Angeles stages. The Hispanic Theatre Project, founded in 1983, creates outlets for theater work for minority actors and is the sponsor of “Shattered Secrets.”

During the course of the run, Craig said five actors discovered incestuous events in their own childhoods and either “freaked out” or became so angry that they had to be let go. Some actors are recruited through 12-step meetings HaLevy and Craig attend. Others who have seen the play request auditions.

“I knew Libbe from a 12-step meeting I go to, and she asked me to come see the play,” said Bibi Besch, who plays Sylvia.

“A lot of people are frightened of the material, which is evidenced by how few people in the industry have seen it,” said Besch, who has appeared in such films as “Star Trek II,” “Steel Magnolias” and “Tremors.” “The subject matter is very raw. It’s not usual for a woman to be exhibiting the kind of rage and raw emotion seen in Sylvia.

“I don’t think people want to view this kind of anger in a woman. But lots of women have told me that they can really identify with Sylvia’s rage.”

“Shattered Secrets” will begin a series of tours, starting in West Berlin, on Sept. 1. “There was a woman from Germany in Los Angeles who approached me for translation and production rights when the play first opened,” said HaLevy, adding that the German company has three performance dates scheduled in Berlin and hopes to tour the country.

On Oct. 6, the American company will launch a one-week Northern California tour, beginning at Humboldt State University in Arcata. HaLevy and Craig are also planning a Southwest tour, pending completion of a Spanish translation this fall.

Meanwhile, the weekly performances will continue in Santa Monica.

“We’ll keep doing the play until there’s no need to do it,” Craig said. “Which probably is not a week from next Saturday.”