If the opening shows of D.C.’s theater season are any indication, more actresses should consider carrying mace.

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Or rather, their characters should. In the first round of openings alone, rape—or the suggestion of it—factors into five mainstage shows, and several more plots hinge on what could be termed sexually violent situations. In each show, the actual act is handled differently, from the stylized brutality onstage in Synetic Theater’s Macbeth to the swirling rumors of an offstage sexual assault in Parade at Ford’s Theatre.

In every case, rape is used to convey the rock-bottom baseness of human nature.

“As far as a female character goes, this is the worst thing that could happen,” says Matt Gardiner, director of The Hollow at Signature Theatre. “It’s so intimate. And yet it is frequently used.”

Earlier this year, Arena Stage drew praise for its production of Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about violence women face in the war-torn Congo. But sexual assault is not reserved for serious straight plays. Gardiner points out that Anita is gang-raped in West Side Story, and Aldonza is assaulted in Man of La Mancha. What’s interesting is that shows involving rape now running in D.C. are mostly musicals, and mostly new. Fela! is launching its national tour at Shakespeare Theater; The Hollow is a world premiere; and Cry for Peace, another play about violence in the Congo, is a work-in-process that got a staged reading at Georgetown University.

In every case, directors took great care to convey what happens to their characters using means they feel are dramatically effective, yet not so graphic as to send sensitive viewers running to the doors.

“It’s challenging,” Gardiner says. “You want the audience to feel uncomfortable — but not so uncomfortable that it takes you out of the play completely. It’s a delicate balance.”

In Cry for Peace, there’s already been so much violence by the time a female character describes being raped, the audience is not surprised. Director Ping Chong, who developed the show at Syracuse Stage, cast members of New York’s Congolese community in every role.

“I believe in letting the people these horrible things happened to speak,” Chong says. “That’s the power of documentary theater.”

Fela! also uses the testimonial approach, but testimonies are slightly fictionalized, and the impact is much more visceral. The violence occurs in Act 2, and up to that point, the musical has been mostly an Afrobeat song-and-dance extravaganza. But in 1977, Nigerian troops invaded the musician’s compound, violently attacking many of the singers 27 wives. In the musical, Fela has fewer leonine women stroking his ego, but after the raid scene — depicted with flashes of lighting, music and movement — each actress has a silent moment in a blinding spotlight. Above the stage, a corresponding mugshotlike image of each woman appears on a screen. The actresses are made up as if badly beaten, and to the left of each image, text written in first person describes what happened to them, going into great detail that includes genital mutilation.

These are Fela!’s only silent moments, a chilling space of stillness in an otherwise frenetic show.