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Therapeutic Theatre Therapeutic Theatre: Trauma and Bodily Articulation in Post-War European Drama Anna Sigg Department of English McGill University, Montreal August 2015 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Anna Sigg, 2015 Table of Contents Abstract...........................................................................................................................................i Résumé..........................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................vi Introduction: Trauma, Therapy, and the Theatre…………………………..……...................1 Chapter 1: Samuel Beckett and the Tinnitus of Silence…………………………………44 Chapter 2: Antonin Artaud: The Body as Trauma Archive…………………………….112 Chapter 3: The Traumatized Body as Verfremdungseffekt and Theatre Event: Bertolt Brecht and Edward Bond…………………………………………...148 Chapter 4: When the Body Screams Back: Sarah Kane’s Blasted ……………….........184 Conclusion: Towards an Ethics of Authentic, Performative Empathy: The Trauma Body as Costume…....…………………………………….......217 Bibliography................................................................................................................................231 Sigg i Abstract Post-war European dramatists, such as Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Edward Bond, and Sarah Kane generate bleak social landscapes that are haunted by individual and communal traumas. Their plays are grounded in the physicality of the body and convey the therapeutic value inherent in performance. It is often the small bodily sounds, such as a war veteran’s noise-induced tinnitus, screams, epileptic fits, stuttering, or the simple sound of human breath that evoke, perpetuate, and arguably also counteract and release trauma. I explore how the characters in the plays and the actors on stage speak back to traumatic experiences through their own traumatized bodies. Examining the idea of performance as a therapeutic art form, this dissertation suggests that the body on stage literally and metaphorically “screams back” to trauma by emitting a countermelody of agency and resistance that is shared with the audience. Trauma cannot be fully healed, but it can be articulated and communicated through the body. Even posttraumatic reverberations or murmurs of the body—moments when trauma is perpetuated and repeated rather than counteracted—manage to articulate pain through an auditory gesture of memorialization. The body on the post-war European stage suffers from various posttraumatic symptoms, but healing and processing happen through the body, as well. The performance stage becomes a platform for somatic intervention and resistance, and, as a marker of presence and survival, the body acts as an anchor and resource in trauma healing. Exploring Beckett’s, Artaud’s, Brecht’s, Bond’s, and Kane’s plays as both literary texts and performance works through close readings, reviews, audio and video recordings, I study how trauma interpenetrates multiple levels and travels from the page, to the stage, and then finally to the audience. Sigg ii Given that these playwrights explore the link between trauma and bodily articulation and deconstruct the line between deliberate acts of agency and accidental bodily responses, they suggest that the psychological and physical effects of trauma are closely interconnected. These bodily countermelodies and “object voices” —manifestations of Lacanian objets a—both reenact and release trauma. The processing or transference of trauma occurs through a form of self- healing by listening to the body’s countermelodies and through a visceral trauma transference with the spectator, who feels the trauma physically in his own body. Trauma, at a psychological level, always happens at a distance from the body, and the representation and release must occur through equal amounts of closeness and distance, too. Since traumatized individuals are always “actors” and the bodies they inhabit are alienating “costumes” they feel obliged to wear, the act of reclaiming the body often happens through play-acting or an exchange with the spectator so the traumatic experience’s temporal momentum can be slowed down and processed. Intervention and resistance often only occur when the audience itself is traumatized by the performance and ends up “speaking back” to the trauma by coughing, screaming, laughing, or walking out of the theatre during the show. Moving away from the realm of talk therapy, my dissertation highlights the significance of reclaiming the body and listening to its countermelodies. Beckett, Artaud, Brecht, Bond, and Kane explore the same issues and ideas with regard to the processing, representation, and healing of trauma as psychologists and therapists who specialize in the recently more common body- centered approaches to posttraumatic stress disorder. Thus, my project participates in a recent, interdisciplinary ontological shift. It is grounded in various traditional psychological approaches Sigg iii to trauma (Freud, Lacan, Caruth), but it also reflects the current interdisciplinary emphasis on the body in new experimental, body-oriented treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder. Résumé Les dramaturges européens de l’après-guerre, tels que Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Edward Bond et Sarah Kane, façonnent des paysages sociaux particulièrement mornes où les traumatismes tant sociaux que collectifs prédominent. Leurs pièces sont ancrées dans la réalité physique du corps et mettent l’accent sur la valeur thérapeutique inhérente à la représentation théâtrale. Ce sont souvent les sons émis par le corps – comme l’acouphène d’un vétéran de guerre, les cris, les crises d’épilepsie, le bégaiement ou, tout simplement, le bruit de la respiration – qui évoquent et perpétuent les traumatismes, voire les neutralisent ou permettent de les évacuer. Cette thèse examine la manière dont le corps traumatisé des personnages de théâtre et des comédiens sur scène réagit aux expériences traumatiques qu’il a vécues. Explorant l’idée de la représentation théâtrale comme un type d’art thérapeutique, je suggère que, sur scène, le corps « répond » littéralement et métaphoriquement au traumatisme en produisant et en partageant avec l’auditoire un contre-chant qui est la manifestation d’une volonté propre ainsi qu’une forme de résistance. S’il est impossible de se remettre complètement d’un traumatisme, le corps permet toutefois de l’exprimer et de le communiquer. Même les « échos » post- traumatiques – les moments où un traumatisme se perpétue et se répète au lieu d’être neutralisé – permettent d’exprimer la douleur au moyen d’un acte de mise en mémoire sonore. Dans le théâtre européen de l’après-guerre, le corps souffre de divers symptômes post- traumatiques, mais il est également le centre du processus de guérison et de gestation. La scène devient un endroit qui favorise l’intervention et la résistance somatiques, tandis que le corps, en Sigg iv tant qu’indice de présence et de survie, sert à cibler et à faciliter la guérison. Prenant en considération, à partir d’analyses de textes, de comptes-rendus critiques, d’enregistrements audio et vidéo, les pièces de Beckett, d’Artaud, de Brecht, de Bond et de Kane en tant qu’œuvres littéraires et scéniques, j’étudie comment le traumatisme se manifeste à des niveaux variés et navigue de la page à l’auditoire en passant par la scène. Ces dramaturges, en réfléchissant au lien entre le traumatisme et son expression corporelle et en mettant à mal la frontière entre acte délibéré et réaction accidentelle, suggèrent qu’il existe une forte corrélation entre les effets physiques et psychologiques du traumatisme. Ces contre-chants corporels et ces « voix-objets » – manifestations de l’objet a lacanien – reproduisent le traumatisme tout en permettant de l’évacuer. La gestation et le transfert du traumatisme sont rendus possibles par une forme d’autoguérison basée sur l’écoute des contre- chants du corps et par un transfert viscéral vers les spectateurs, qui font à leur tour l’expérience du traumatisme dans leur propre corps. Sur le plan psychologique, le traumatisme se produit toujours à distance du corps. Or cette mise à distance est également nécessaire à sa représentation et à son évacuation. Puisque les individus traumatisés sont toujours des « comédiens » et que les corps qu’ils habitent ne sont que des « costumes » aliénants qu’ils se sentent contraints de porter, la réappropriation du corps passe souvent par l’expression théâtrale ou un échange avec l’auditoire afin de freiner le surgissement de l’expérience traumatique et d’appréhender celle-ci. Bien souvent, ce n’est qu’à partir du moment où ils sont eux-mêmes traumatisés par la représentation que les spectateurs interviennent et résistent : en « réponse » à cette expérience, ils finissent par tousser, par laisser échapper des cris ou des rires, ou encore par quitter le théâtre au milieu de la pièce. Sigg v S’éloignant du domaine de la thérapie par la parole, ma thèse met l’accent sur la réappropriation du corps et l’écoute de ses contre-chants, ce qui constitue une approche nouvelle du traumatisme dans les études littéraires et théâtrales. À l’égard de la gestation, de la représentation et de la guérison du traumatisme, Beckett, Artaud, Brecht, Bond et Kane soulèvent les mêmes problèmes et
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