Abstract: Trauma is pervasive in military culture; twenty years of war has led many in my community to face a breakdown in identity, agency, meaning and integrity. Cases of military sexual trauma, suicide, and interpersonal violence are on the rise and traditional interventions – like slide shows and lectures - do not drive much needed social change. As a military suicide prevention trainer and sexual assault victim advocate, I have witnessed the devastation of trauma firsthand, but as a theater director and rhetorician, I have also seen how theater brings people together, which helps ease the pain a little. In this dissertation, I take a transrhetorical approach (Wang) to demonstrate how trauma and theater work as Rhetorical Social Interventions (Opt and Gring) that restore hope and healing in three case studies, Social Impact Theater Project , Theater of War , and Depth of Our Souls . I build on Fallot and Harris’ original definition of trauma-informed care to introduce two new terms, Trauma-Responsive Rhetoric (TRR) and Trauma-Responsive Theater (TRT). TRR goes beyond simply being trauma-informed (TI); TRR calls on theater directors and community advocates to desperately believe broken identity, agency, meaning and integrity can be restored; relentlessly find ways to use TI to create social change; and wholeheartedly commit to integrating safety, trust, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, cultural competency, and post-traumatic growth into our rhetorical interventions. In the end, I identify twenty trauma-responsive techniques for theater programs and recommend a new model of collective healing. By sharing these findings with other communities outside the Department of Defense, I hope this project is a continued act of service to help people – military or not – feel a little less alone in our trauma response and recovery.