Script Spotlight: Dead Girl Walking by Dave Tippett

This short, simple readers-theater script for four teenage girls is easy to produce, but it packs an emotional wallop. How do well-meaning people typically respond to the victims of sexual abuse and sex trafficking in our own communities? This play reveals the answer to that question in the voices of four characters with devastating firsthand experience.

Dave Tippett is an accomplished playwright who has written prolifically, especially for the church. He wrote this script after a local non-profit called The Daughter Project started a home for girls rescued from sexual slavery. He had also read a book by Theresa Flores called The Slave Across the Street.

We asked Dave, who also volunteers as a Helpline Specialist for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), why it is so common for people to judge these young women instead of reaching out to fully support them.

“I think even well-meaning people jump to their own story and assumptions about these victims without waiting to hear all the facts and circumstances,” Tippet said. “They also may just feel uncomfortable or ill-equipped in dealing with the high emotion and human costs involved.”

This script may be an effective way to introduce a discussion or sermon about how individuals or groups might make themselves available to listen, empathize, and offer help to people in our communities who have been sexually trafficked.

Dave and his wife Jill live in Gibsonburg, Ohio. He has contributed multiple scripts to the Skit Guys and worked on the product development team for Lillenas Drama for several years. His full-length, two-act play called “Thief of Hearts” is also available on Scriptmore.

You can order Dead Girl Walking now in the script shop.