It’s difficult to know how to deal with traumatic, painful experiences. Do you bottle them up or do you share your feelings with someone? The answer, if you’re one of the young Americans who form the dance troupe performing their show Diaries in Dundee this weekend, is you get up on stage and tell the world about it.

From abuse to anorexia, abortion to divorce, the group of young men and women from Florida have been through some desperate times. They talked to Jack McKeown about never losing hope.

Sarah Swindell (middle of picture, with pink jumper on) is a stunningly attractive, talented young girl. A classically trained ballet dancer and gifted writer, the 26-year-old is deeply in love with her husband Rory (bottom right) and looks to have a very bright future ahead of her.

But things weren’t always this way. A decade ago Sarah was in the grip of anorexia. Her weight plummeted to just over four stones and she was on the verge of being hospitalised.

“My eating disorder started when I was about 12 and lasted five years,” she explains. “At it’s worst I was down to 60lbs. I’d been dancing since I was very little and by that point was dancing almost 24/7.

“In the studio you’re surrounded by mirrors and I guess I became obsessed with them. I was constantly trying to reach for perfection and I couldn’t see how sick it was making me.”

It wasn’t until she was 17 that Sarah began to recover, and she only did so by giving up her first passion in life. “I had to leave the dancing behind, at least for a while. So I forgot about dance for a couple of years and went to college.”

But even when her body began to heal and she regained her health after her awful weight loss, Sarah’s anorexia continued to trouble her.

“After I got better physically, I began to feel ashamed that I had put all this trouble on my family. My dad is a pastor and it must have hurt him that he spent his life helping other people with their problems but couldn’t help his own little girl.”

When she was 21, Sarah met Rory. Less than a year later, the couple got married and they have now been together for more than five years. Rory encouraged Sarah to write about her experiences and combine them with her love of dance. Two years ago she began writing Diaries.

“Sarah’s father is a pastor and we’re part of the same church group,” Rory (28) explains. “So between us we came across a lot of people who had been through some pretty rough experiences.

“In all of those cases, the people said that telling others about their problem was the best thing they did in order to help them come to terms with it and be able to move on.”

Sarah began documenting these experiences and writing them up in the form of a diary. That was two years ago, and since then the project has developed into a powerful stage performance.

The show, Diaries, consists of a series of four or five mini-stories, each based around a theme.

“The show has a lot of dance to it, across a range of different styles,” Sarah explains. “And the stories are presented as if they are pages taken from the person’s diary.

“The actor will stand on stage and deliver a monologue from their diary which outlines their story and tells how they feel.”

Each diary deals with a different theme, and Sarah regularly changes them around to keep the show varied and fresh. Sunday’s show will contain performances dealing with addiction, abortion, self-image and divorce.

“Sarah will be doing the diary about self image,” says Rory, “Which will be based on her experiences with anorexia. Not all of them are performed by the people who experienced them, but all of the stories are based on real people and real events.

“Of course, we’re careful not to put in stuff that could identify particular individuals, but one of the things that makes Diaries powerful is that the stories are real.”

Sarah’s father is the brother in law of the pastor of Dundee’s Gate Church and the group were invited to come to Dundee and put on their first international performance.

The show, which takes place on Sunday, will be preceded by a short preview in City Square on Saturday afternoon. “We want people to know that even though it’s for free our show doesn’t suck!” laughs Rory. “That way, hopefully people will want to come along on Sunday.”

The nine Americans, three men and six girls, range in age from 16 to 28. Since their arrival they have also persuaded several young people from Dundee to join in the performance. The group have spent all week practising at the Gate Church on Perth Road.

Among those starring in the section of the show that deals with divorce will be 17-year-old Amaris Brannon and 23-year-old Ryan McKenzie. “My parents divorced around seven years ago,” says Amaris, who also lost her brother in a tragic motorbike accident a year ago.

“They’d been married almost 20 years. It was very tough, especially when I found out my father was using drugs. My father moved out and that was hard, too. Particularly as a little girl, you need that security that a father gives you.

“I now know that telling people about the problems you’re having is the biggest thing you can do to heal yourself.”

Ryan’s parents divorced when he was 19 and at college. “Sarah asked me to do a scene with my girlfriend Grace, where we play a married couple who are arguing,” he explains.

“We both tell our diaries what’s going wrong, but neither of us is strong enough to tell the other. I think the fact that I watched my parents go through a divorce makes it easier for me to act out the role.”

Though Rory’s parents also split up when he was just a baby, in Diaries he plays the part of a man addicted to pornography. “I don’t think any guy can say he’s completely immune to that,” he says with a smile. “But guys who look at pictures of very young girls or guys who look at pornography excessively, all the time, their view of women becomes very skewed.

“They forget that the women doing all these poses and acts are maybe 0.01% of the population and that real women don’t behave like that. I think it makes them lose a little of their humanity and it certainly makes them less able to relate to women in a normal way.”

Altogether Sarah has about 15 different stories that she interchanges in Diaries. Perhaps the most disturbing tale, though one that will not be in the Dundee performance, deals with molestation.

“After one of the shows dealing with that topic one of the members of our church group came and told me he had molested his sister when they were both young,” Rory says.

“He had carried the guilt of this act inside him for years and you could see by his face what a relief it was to tell someone.

“We have an obligation where if something illegal has occurred and the people involved were underage at the time we must tell the family. He didn’t even know if his sister remembered, but he was instructed to tell her and apologise for what he did.

“Of course that was an unfortunate and nasty episode that happened when they were both young. It’s not the same as some 50-year-old man with a five-year-old—in that sort of case we would go to the police.”

So far the group have performed Diaries mainly in their home state of Florida and this is the first time they have taken the show abroad. Currently they are setting up a performance in Lima, Peru, where they also have contacts, and Sarah’s ultimate ambition is to be able to take the show to Broadway.

Despite the grim nature of many of the tales, Rory says that Diaries is an uplifting rather than depressing show. “It’s all about overcoming problems rather than wallowing in them.

“And the music is very upbeat and contemporary. We’ve got the Killers, John Mayer, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas, Lifehouse and Creed, and a lot of hip-hop style dance.

“We want people to come away from the show feeling good about themselves.”

Diaries is on at the Whitehall Theatre in Dundee on Sunday at 7.30pm. Free tickets are available at the Gate Church on 158 Perth Road

(tel 01382 221222) or by texting your name and the number of tickets you’d like to 07781 480 189.