“How to Defend Yourself” had me shaking by the end of it. There are very few pieces of media I can say that about. It evoked such strong emotions in me that I was still thinking about it hours after the actors had taken their final bow.

“How to Defend Yourself” is a 2018 play written by Liliana Padilla, a writer who explores community, the body, power and healing. This play has won the Yale Drama Series prize, was an International Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist and was featured on The Kilroy’s list.

The play is currently being shown at the Clarence Brown Theatre’s Lab Theatre on campus. It is centered around a self-defense workshop led by sorority girls Brandi — played by theater major Molly Brennan — and Kara — played by theater and Italian major Alana Mara. As their sorority sister recovers in the hospital after being violently assaulted, they are trying to teach other women self-defense techniques in the hopes of preventing them from becoming victims.

This play is the definition of mood whiplash, hitting you with moments of laugh-out-loud humor before just as quickly hitting you with sobering truths. The scenes in this play range from incredibly touching, intense and outright tear-jerking as the characters work through trauma, shame and insecurity.

To me, the play is a story of solidarity and fear. It is also about the complexities of female friendships and how those bonds get women through hard times. In addition, it shows the complexities of the character’s relationships with the men in their lives, and the way the men try to support them but are also complacent in their oppression.

Each character in this play is incredibly three-dimensional, avoiding being sorted into simply “good” or “bad.” I wasn’t able to come out of this play entirely liking or disliking any one character.

You see a sometimes comforting, sometimes horrifying reflection of real life in this play’s characters. Whether it be in one of the characters who is an incel or the shy characters with low self-esteem or the more confident and abrasive characters — I saw in each one someone who I’ve known at some point in my life.

The setting and the costume design is incredibly ordinary, as it should be. The scenic and costume designers did a great job of bringing the show to life. Literally, it feels like real life, from the flyers stuck on a billboard in the background to the athletic attire of the girls attending the workshop. The setting grounds you in reality, denying audience members the comfort of being able to separate the conflict of the story from real life.

Despite the characters, setting and costuming all being great, what I loved most about this play was its plot. It doesn’t hand-feed you any easy conclusions. The relationships between the characters are incredibly messy, and the discussions around consent are even messier.

“How to Defend Yourself” takes off the kid gloves and clearly depicts the terrifying reality of being born female in a patriarchal society, especially on college campuses. It also lays plain the silent fear many women walk around with every single day, and the grief that the loved ones of sexual assault victims face.

This play is nowhere near interested in making excuses for abusers. It focuses on the stories of the victims and the pieces one has to pick up after their bodily autonomy has been violated.

This play evoked all sorts of emotions from me. I was on a roller coaster, going up and down hills of disgust, delight, amusement, horror, empathy, sympathy and comfort. It also made me viscerally angry.

I don’t think I would’ve felt so strongly if the actors didn’t do an amazing job of portraying the characters’ struggles. Every actor’s performance was phenomenal. As each of the actors carried the characters with them, they also carried the story of a real person out there somewhere who has been in their shoes.

You can tell the actors practiced well for this production. Their voices carried a million different emotions. When a character broke down and cried, I wanted to cry with them.

If you are able to go see this play, I highly recommend it. However, please heed the content warnings if you are thinking of attending. This play goes through intensely upsetting subject matter, such as sexual assault and the trauma associated with it. It is also meant for mature audiences as it contains profanity, substance use and sexual topics. This is not a play suited for children.

Tickets are available on the Clarence Brown Theatre’s website, and the box office is also open from Tuesday to Friday from 12-5 p.m. Since it is a Lab Theatre performance, student tickets are free. The play runs through Nov. 10 so if you want to go see it, you still have a few days left.