Silence is a potent but neglected force in contemporary abuse drama. In Shelagh Stephenson’s Five Kinds of Silence (1996; staged 2000), speech, pause, and the unsaid become fields where power is exercised, trauma is stored, and the self is shaped. This study traces the interplay of coercive control, traumatic repression, and the recovery of voice. It asks how silence serves patriarchal authority and carries the weight of abuse. Using communication theory, Freudian psychoanalysis, trauma studies, and feminist dramatic criticism, the study offers a close reading of selected scenes of interrogation, memory, and therapy involving Billy, Mary, Susan, and Janet. Five forms of silence are identified: oppressive, repressive, defensive, reflective, and emotional. The analysis shows that character’s live silence as imposed muteness, internalised denial, and self-protective withdrawal. Reflective silence remains ambiguous: it is both a mark of trauma and a fragile opening toward testimony. These patterns reorder household communication, entrench male authority, and persist in memory and affect long after Billy’s death. The study treats silence as traumatic discourse in contemporary drama. It advances a Differentiated Model of Traumatic Silence to account for these dynamics and calls for closer critical attention to the unspoken channels through which abuse is communicated.