Performer, storyteller and NIU English professor Loren Hecht opened up the realities of emotional abuse in relationships to her audience last night at the DeKalb Area Women’s Center in her one-woman show titled, “Intimate Cruelties.”

Hecht stood onstage in front of a black screen and shared her personal stories with music, laughter and real-life monologues. She opened the show while sitting behind her keyboard and singing lyrics like “You don’t know what you do to me” from the song “Unusual Way,” “I’d like to be a lion tamer,” from the song “Lion Tamer” and “go with him stay with him if you can … be prepared to bleed,” from the Joni Mitchell song “A Case of You.”

Hecht went on to tell her personal stories about Richard, who thought Hecht couldn’t do anything right; Ron the crack addict; Franklin the born-again Christian who believed in orgies and rationalized them as a paradox; David the intellectual who put a gun to Hecht’s head and Joe the unemployed moocher.

With Joe, Hecht realizes that she and Joe are alike.

“He’s willing to take, and so too, am I willing to take any man on any terms,” Hecht said. “He didn’t want to support himself because he didn’t value his life and I didn’t value the heart,” Hecht added.

Hecht also ended the performance with song, singing “I’ll fly away.”

Jamal Williams, a sophomore English major, felt that the song gave a sense of hope that Hecht wasn’t going to take the emotional abuse anymore.

Some audience members thought that Hecht did a great job presenting her reality.

“She was just very real,” said Jane Poppish, a junior communication major. “It’s good that she can be so humorous about something so horrible.”

Kim Johnson, a sophomore nursing major, thought that the show was insightful.

“It’s happening to a lot of people and a lot of people don’t talk about it,” Johnson said. “It’s good she’s able to let a lot of people into her life like that.”

Jan Woodhouse, a doctoral student, thought the show was powerful.

“The story may be about weakness, but the stuff isn’t weak,” she said.

Hecht said that she now lives by an important principle in her life.

“The tornado is a tornado and you should always ask yourself why is the tornado a tornado,” she said. “You should never ask if the tornado is a sunrise, and you should never assert that.”