The rise of the private art foundation: John Kaldor Art Projects 1969-2012

The idea of theater as a place for the collective integration of traumatic memories goes back to the ancient Greeks whose own large outdoor amphitheaters were surrounded by sacred groves and located in spiritual healing centers where men (most likely, only) took mineral baths, strolled under outdoor promenades and spoke to priests about their dreams. These priests were probably also actors in the tragic plays. Aristotle says the purpose of tragedy is Catharsis. Variously translated as \"purgation\" or, perhaps, more accurately as, \"clarification\", the term Catharsis denotes a powerfully transformative inner experience that happens to the watchers of the ancient plays, whose themes are of violence, incest, and revenge within the family and the city-state. In Greek tragedy, stories of transgression against accepted moral order are relived publicly in order that their traumatic effects on heroes, like Orestes, who does go mad, can be seen and purged. A chorus innocent of the crimes bears witness and laments. Most people treating trauma today take issue with the idea that a single cathartic event of remembrance or recognition is sufficient to undo the effects of physical and psychic violation. Judith Herman replaces catharsis as a goal of treatment with the steady, slow recovery of memories and, more importantly, their subsequent integration into a post-traumatic self. Creation of a detailed narrative, or survivor testimony, as a way to facilitate integration of traumatic memories has been used extensively with survivors of human rights abuses in Chile and around the world. In the presence of an empathic mental health worker, the survivor puts together a detailed narrative of the trauma story which is then read back, corrected and signed by the survivor, and deposited in an archive, video-taped or published. Dori Laub has used testimony with Holocaust survivors as a method of recovering memory and has written of this work in Testimony, co-authored with Shoshana Felman who writes about testimony from a literary perspective.

Chilean Testimonies: An Experiment in Theater of Witness

EVOLVING A THEATRE OF TRUTH By Susan Hayes, B.A. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2006 Major Director: Dr. Noreen C. Barnes Director of Graduate Studies, Dept. of Theatre This thesis explores the challenges of evolving a Theatre of Truth in the context of the immediate zeitgeist. The questions I address are the role of feminist theatre in a world dominated by global media and corporate omnipotence; the conflation of theatre and Realpolitick; the limitations of postmodern thought and critical theory, and the struggle not only of the marginalized, but of all of us to create an activist theatre in perilous times. After examining my response to directing a production of by Maria Irene Fornes, this project will also suggest that a theatre of specialized singular interests, such as feminism, racism, or gender-based concerns, is no longer sufficient to impact the audience of today. Instead, the work suggests that a fresh, revised look at theory, feminism, and "reality," as well as an attempt to unravel the psyche of the hegemonic political and social forces are vii necessary to reconceive a theatre that serves the new world. Building on the artistry of several contemporary playwrights, this thesis explores a theatre of Truth in action and looks at possibilities to open new avenues to empathy, transformation and liberation.

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Evolving a Theatre of Truth

Bangladesli Ingiliz yazar Tanika Gupta’nin 2002 yapimi oyunu Siginak, birbirleriyle ilintili iki acidan seckin bir oyun olarak ortaya cikar. Ilk olarak, girift ve celiskili karakterleriyle kurban, fail, ve kurtarici kavramlarinin geleneksel tanimlarina karsi cikar.  Ikinci olarak, oyun yerlesik olgulara karsi duran celiskili mekan algisiyla bu ozgurlestirici ve dusundurucu bakis acisini elde eder. Batili olmayan ulkelerdeki magduriyet hikayelerine karsi Bati ikiyuzlulugunu one cikararak, Batidan gelen elestirel bir bakis acisini ve Batinin artik guvenli bir siginak olmadigini gosterir.  Celiskili mekan algisi sayesinde oyun ayni zamanda paradigmalari degistirme olanagi saglar. Teorik kismi ve detayli metin okumasi olmak uzere iki ana bolumden olusan bu makale, Siginak oyununun Batili olmayan kurban ve Batili kurtarici kategorilerine karsi ciktigini ve bunu girift karakterleri ve celiskili mekan algisiyla ortaya kondugunu tartisir.

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Shifting the paradigm in victim-perpetrator relations and the ambivalent space in tanika gupta’s sanctuary

Gibson argues that the shape and content of ‘the story’ in applied theatre and performance work with people with dementia needs reimagining, pressing applied theatre and performance workers to either move away from reminiscence, the ‘right kind’ of dementia story, or at least away from unimaginative renditions of it. Only conceiving of (old) people with dementia in terms of who they were rather than who they are now or who they could be may constrict, not only their possibilities, but those of the narrative form itself. Gibson supports her claims through an analysis of TimeSlips, an innovative storytelling intervention, and by introducing the notion of ‘narra[tive]-theatrical spaces’ where performed narratives permeate every part of care homes, including their material and spatial dimensions, definitively shaping the lives of its inhabitants.

Mapping Applied Performance in Dementia Cultures

Karen Malpede's monologue, ‘Baghdad Bunker’, whose origins in an experience of vicarious empathy she describes in the following article, was first performed by Ruth Maleczech at La Mama in June 1991. It subsequently became the centrepiece of Malpede's play Going to Iraq, about life in New York during the Gulf War. Later, in The Beekeeper's Daughter, she addressed our lack of empathy in the face of ‘racial cleansing’ in the former Yugoslavia. Here, Karen Malpede uses both this latter play and a play by the dissident Croatian playwright Slobodan Snajder, Snakeskin, as examples of an approach to writing and experiencing plays she calls ‘theatre of witness’ – in which the witnessing imagination affirms connections ‘based upon the human capacities to experience compassion and empathy for the self and for the other as powerful, motivating forces’. Karen Malpede is a widely performed and published American playwright and director, currently with the Theatre Three Collaborative in New York, where she also teaches at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Her People's Theater in America (1972) was a seminal study of its subject, as was her Women in Theater (1984) of the feminist theatre aesthetic.

Theatre of Witness: Passage into a New Millennium

We Are Not a Muse...

Karen Malpede’s Troy Too, commissioned specifically for this collection, is a dramatic response to the first year of the Covid pandemic in New York City, the Black Lives Matter movement and the climate crisis, using found and created language and inspired by Euripides The Trojan Women. 

Karen Malpede

Papers

Theatre of Witness: Passage into a New Millennium

We Are Not a Muse...

Troy Too