What is it about?
This essay explores the positioning of the theatre spectator as witness to violence and trauma, and the ethics of that spectatorship, to consider the relationship between knowledge (communicated to the spectator, by the performance) and action (by the spectator, in response to the performance). Trauma’s resistance to mimetic representation means that it is often the originary violence that is represented on stage. This violence is temporally distinct from the trauma which proceeds from it but by evoking particular qualities of violence (such as its suddenness and unpredictability) the spectators may experience intellectual or visceral glimpses of the fear and confusion associated with traumatic violence. The staging techniques discussed here – the diegetic evocation of the Nazi death camps, the performative evocation of contemporary atrocities – seek to elicit this response from the audience to heighten empathy with victims and to provoke a conscientious engagement with their situations. The production under discussion is of Harold Pinter’s one act play, Ashes to Ashes, staged at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto as part of the SummerWorks Festival in August 2007, directed by Vahid Rahbani for Lemaz Productions, and dedicated to the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi. Kazemi was arrested for taking photographs of a student protest and died in custody in Teheran in July 2003, and her case has been covered extensively in the Canadian media. Her family and the local Iranian community have been campaigning for the truth about her death to be made public, and for her body to be returned to her family for burial.
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Why is it important?
The question of spectatorship is an important one, particularly when the spectator is being invited or interpellated into a performance that addresses human rights abuses. This production by Lemaz Theatre Company offered a useful illustration of some techniques for positioning the spectator as a witness, who gains knowledge through their spectatorship. The play's final coup de theatre reminds the audience that they now know about human rights abuses, and it leaves them with the question of what (if anything) they are now obliged to do about it.
Perspectives
This production remained with me for a long time, and I felt compelled to write about it. Pinter's short play 'Ashes to Ashes' forms the basis of the work, but is slightly adapted with the inclusion of prologue action and a final closing image that is not in the text. The staging very cleverly played with questions of what we can and can't see; of what we hear; of how we make sense of the information we are given, and of what we are ethically obliged to do to keep each other safe. Since writing this, I have become very interested in the question of vulnerability, as written about by Judith Butler, Erinn Gilson, and Ann V Murphy.
Dr Lisa Fitzpatrick
University of Ulster
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Performance of Violence and the Ethics of Spectatorship, Performance Research, March 2011, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2011.561676.
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