The Catharsis Origin Story by Christian Murphy
In 1998, Gail Stern (now DOCTOR Gail Stern) and I met after our two one-person plays won the “Shut Up and Laugh! Comedy Festival” at the Factory Theater in Chicago. I was a professional actor and writer. Gail was a rape victim advocate at a university and did stand-up comedy. Gail’s one-woman show tackled sexism, oppression, and sexual harassment but with a razor-sharp, subversive wit. I witnessed her extraordinary gift at strategically using humor as a pedagogical tool to inspire audiences to reflect on some of their own misunderstandings around these issues, but to do so without shame. After one of her shows, I overheard one college student wearing a fraternity shirt say to his friend, “Bro, she was hilarious and, damn, I think I’m now a feminist!”
Oirignal Promo featuring Christian Murphy and Gail Stern for Sex Signals in 2001.
We partnered on creating an interactive, semi-improvisational two-person show that explored gender role stereotypes, cultural expectations around dating and sex, and ultimately non-stranger rape, specifically on college campuses.
The play was originally called “The Sensitive Swashbuckler & Other Dating Myths,” and we workshopped it as a late-night show at Chicago’s Stage Left Theatre in the summer of 2000. Later, we changed the name of the show to “Sex Signals” when we realized no one under the age of 30 knew what a swashbuckler was.
 Original Poster to market Sensitive Sawshbuckler & Other Dating Myths at Stage Lett Theatre in Chicago in May 2000.
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 Poster from 2010 promoting Sex Signals on college campuses. |
Current Promo Poster for Sex Signals.
Catharsis Productions was also created then, primarily just so a school wouldn’t need to pay each of us separately when we presented a show. From 2000-2001, Sex Signals was presented at six colleges, and we were ecstatic.
Within a couple of years, the popularity of Sex Signals grew. To scale up, we hired and trained younger, hipper, and much more magnetic, relatable personalities than we were. Eventually, I finally retired as a presenter almost 15 years ago when I could no longer pretend to be a student (say, a 7th year senior) and frankly looked more like a student’s and frankly looked more like a student’s dad.
Twenty-five years after that first show, Gail and I are still partners in a company that’s grown quite a bit since those early days. We eventually created different versions of Sex Signals for each branch of the military. In the Amry script, you might find the male character saying, “It’s easy to get inside your own head worrying about everything. Meanwhile, she’s talking, but all you can do is picture her wearing nothing but an A.C.H. and a thin coat of C.L.P.” Get it? Neither did any of our civilian actors, but Soldiers did.
In the meantime, Gail earned her PhD in Curriculum and Design and wrote A Study of the Rape Prevention Program, Sex Signals: Exploring the Use of Humor as a Pedagogical Device in Challenging Rape-Supportive Attitudes and Behavior. Ok, maybe not the zippiest title for a paperback you’d buy at the airport, but the work she produced in this dissertation provides the research and credibility behind the use of the unorthodox approach of using “humor based-learning” to explore sexual violence prevention.
We’ve built several different live presentations, including The Hook Up, Got Your Back, Beat the Blame Game, Say What?!, Going Down, Love Bytes, Please Advise, The Force of Awesome Institute, and others to dynamically engage audiences to call out toxic attitudes and confront sexual violence. The company has delivered over 20,000 live presentations at over 1,000 colleges and universities and 200 military installations. During that time, we’ve benefitted from the talents of over a hundred presenters who were trained to deliver our programs to audiences all over the world.
Photo taken at Catharsis company conference in 2015.
In 2015, we created our first online training, U Got This!. Since then, we have increased our catalog of online programs, and almost 250 college campuses have rolled out Catharsis online training to over one million students and employees.
We are proud of how our programs have evolved through the years and humbled by how many students and military personnel we have been able to reach about these very important issues.
A quarter century of prevention work has allowed us to see much progress. The content shared in Catharsis programs today is light years ahead of the kind of content needed years ago, and it’s because there is a MUCH better understanding than ever before on what sexual violence looks like, and the roles we all have in stopping it.
As an example, in 2003, we spent much of our time confronting the common misunderstanding that most rapes were perpetrated by strangers lurking in alleys or hiding in bushes. Now, students know that by far the most common rape is perpetrated by a person who already knows the victim (and may already be engaging in other sexual activity that is consensual). Today, most students can not only define consent but also cite the elements that must be present for consent to exist. Most recently, we’ve seen statistics that indicate a dramatically higher percentage of students who claim asking for verbal consent before initiating sexual activity than those who did so twenty years ago, and certainly before we created our first program.
Below you will find the Catharsis Ethos that guides our efforts. Does it resonate with you?
In the coming months, we look forward to sharing with you more stories of where we have been and where we hope to go with prevention efforts. You will also be exposed to what other practitioners have learned over the years as well. We hope you are inspired by the work done by this collective as we continue to explore what still needs to be done in prevention education.
Company Photo taken June 2025 during the Company Conference.
THE CATHARSIS ETHOS
We believe in the power of honest, engageed conversation to reveal the truths our culture tries to deny.
We believe that that which has been hidden becomes embedded within our consciousness like a ghost haunting an old house.
We believe that genuine catharsis can purge those spirits from our collective community—to foster a culture no longer defined by past fears but driven by aspirations to equality.
BECAUSE WE ARE BATTLING ENTRENCHED ATTITUDES AND MYTHS.
We believe in the audacious goal of courageously leaping into challenging conversations that have been going on for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
We believe our fight is to challenge the notions that some people are condemned to be objects while others enjoy being actors; that some people are responsible for their vulnerability while others are entitled to take advantage of it; and that intervention is an optional, individual choice.
BECAUSE WE STRIVE TO FIND WAYS TO BUILD TRUST AND LOWER DEFENSES.
We believe that to enter this conversation effectively is to find the perfect angle; like an agile diver, cleaving the water with power and little splash.
We believe in humor, awkward silence, direct questions. And clarity. To model what it means to be humane and thoughtful.
BECAUSE WE MUST MEET OUR AUDIENCES WHERE THEY ARE AND TAKE THEM WHERE WE HOPE THEY CAN BE.
We believe that our mission is to engage our audiences with compassion for their weaknesses, and the courage to command their strengths in service of not only the greater good, but in the small, daily acts that will define their humanity.
BECAUSE WE BELIEVE A BETTER WORLD IS POSSIBLE.
Catharsis Productions
Catharsis Productions' mission is to change the world by producing innovative, accessible and research-supported programming that challenges oppressive attitudes and shifts behavior.