1st Edition

Theatre Responds to Social Trauma Chasing the Demons

Edited By Ellen W. Kaplan Copyright 2024
264 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

264 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

264 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book is a collection of chapters by playwrights, directors, devisers, scholars, and educators whose praxis involves representing, theorizing, and performing social trauma. Chapters explore how psychic catastrophes and ruptures are often embedded in social systems of oppression and forged in zones of conflict within and across national borders. Through multiple lenses and diverse... Read more

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

 

PART I

Introduction

1. Theatre and Social Trauma: Introduction and Overview

Ellen W. Kaplan

2. The Story Before the Script: Documenting and testifying to trauma histories of incarcerated persons

Julie Kriegler

 

PART II

Exiles: Loss of Language, Loss of Home

3. Weaving Personal Trauma in Video Opera “THE WArDROBE”: Transdisciplinarity and Womanhood

Nerina Cocchi

4. Lampedusa Beach: A Voice from the Depths of the Sea

Anna Botta

5. Interview with playwright Lina Prosa

Anna Botta and Nerina Cocchi

6. The Theater of Arístides Vargas: Antidote Against Death

María Estela Harretche

7. Bearing Witness to the “Unspeakable”? Poetry writing in the aftermath of the Êzîdî Genocide

Mairead Smith

 

PART III

Theatre Companies Wrestle with Social Trauma

8. A Serpent’s Tale: The Work of El Teatro Indigena de la Sierra Tarahumara

Gabriel Harrell

9. Witness Theater: The Power of Embodied Storytelling

Sally Grazi-Shatzkes

10. Resistance: Theatre as Protest and Reckoning

Jean-Remy Monnay

11. Life Suspended: Theatre as Social Practice in Afghanistan

Abdul-Hakim Hashemi Hamidi

12. Contemporary Kenyan Theatre as a Response to the Traumas of Colonialism

Aroji Otieno

13. Community as Theatre: Shakespeare Festival in St. Louis and Community Partnerships

Mariah L. Richardson

14. Interviews with Dominic Dupont and Marjolaine Goldsmith of Theater of War

Ellen W. Kaplan

15. Trauma and Morality in Classical Greek Drama: Trauma and Authentic Accountability Before the Christian Era

Len Berkman

 

PART IV

Processes of Embodiment

16. Interview with Carol Gilligan

Ellen W. Kaplan

17. Interview with Trenda Loftin

Ellen W. Kaplan

18. Pedagogies of Embodied Healing: Devised Theatre and Reciprocal Empathy

Zoe Rose Kriegler-Wenk

 

PART V

Closing the Gaps: Social Trauma and Text

19. Empathy, Imagination, and Embodiment: Turning Document into Fiction

Alex Poppe

20. Calls to Action: Collaboration across Difference

Catherine Filloux

21. AFTERWORD

            Ellen W. Kaplan

Index

Biography

Ellen W. Kaplan is Professor of Acting and Directing at Smith College, a Fulbright Scholar, Fulbright Senior Specialist, an actress, director, and playwright.