Trauma Drama: Victims’ Traumatic Memories in Kay Adshead’s the Bogus Woman (2001) and Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Credible Witness (2001).

• Authors: Hildegard Klein
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In our contemporary society there exists a fascination with trauma and testimony. Thus, my paper looks at traumatised protagonists in the above-mentioned plays that testify to the manifold victimization of asylum seekers. First they were tortured and persecuted in their home countries, and then subjected to new traumatic humiliation in prison-like detention centres in Great Britain. Both plays assume a political position by appealing to the individual conscience of the audience who, through the characters’ outrageous narration, become witnesses to appalling violations of human rights.

Keywords

EN

Adshead; detention centres; persecution; testimony; trauma/asylum drama; Wertenbaker; witnesses.

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Gender Studies
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 11
• Issue: Supplement
• Pages: 62-73

Dates

published

2012-12-01

online

2012-12-28

Contributors

author

Hildegard Klein

• University of Malaga 29071 Málaga, Spain

References

• Adshead, Kay. The Bogus Woman. London: Oberon Modern Playwrights, 2001.
• Aston, Elaine. “The ‘Bogus Woman’: Feminism and Asylum Theatre”. Modern Drama, 46:1 (Spring 2003): 5.[Crossref]
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• Seltzer, Mark. “Wound Culture: Trauma in the Pathological Public Sphere”. October 80 (1997): 3-26.
• Sierz, Aleks. Rewriting the Nation. British Theatre Today. London: Methuen, 2011.
• Wald, Christina. Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia. Performative Maladies in Contemporary Anglophone Drama. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
• Wertenbaker, Timberlake. Plays Two: The Break of Day. After Darwin. Credible Witness. The Ash Girl. Dianeira. London: Faber and Faber, 2002.
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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10320-012-0006-9