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Terrorism, Government and Post-9/11 Docudrama

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Terrorism, Government and Post-9/11 Docudrama UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Terrorism, Government and Post-9/11 Docudrama by Timothy James Hamilton A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS DEPARTMENT OF DRAMA CALGARY, ALBERTA DECEMBER, 2007 © Timothy James Hamilton 2007 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-38090-1 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-38090-1 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada iii ABSTRACT This thesis examines the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the resulting "War on Terror" as catalysts for the resurgence in the West of political docudrama, which uses real-life events as a means for exploring and criticizing the governmental response to 9/11. This study is concerned with four plays which are definitive of the genre: David Hare's Stuff Happens (2004), Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo's Guantanamo: 'Honor Bound to Defend Freedom' (2004), Robin Soans' Talking to Terrorists (2005), and Richard Norton-Taylor's Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry (2005). These plays not only tell real stories of people affected by these governmental actions but also use various dramatic devices in order to encourage the audience towards greater political engagement. As I will argue, these plays have had a positive effect on political debate, informing and also inspiring their audiences. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to thank my thesis supervisor, Dr. Penny Farfan, for her academic mentorship and support throughout my studies at the University of Calgary. I have greatly appreciated her patience and thoughtful advice. I would also like to thank my undergraduate professors at the University of Wisconsin for their encouragement and wisdom when I was first considering further education in the field. I feel privileged to have benefited from the fine instruction of all of these scholars at both universities. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the arts for their engaging discussion and encouragement. The contributions of Samer Al-Saber, Peter Aitchison and Allison Campbell have been especially helpful and inspiring. Eva, thank you for everything you've done to make the thesis process easier. Thanks to Nate for helping me to clear my head with email discussions about baseball, politics and everything else that brothers talk about. Finally, to my parents, Tom and Alice Hamilton, thank you for your never-ending support and love. V DEDICATION To Mom and Dad: Thanks for everything. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Approval Page ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv Dedication v Table of Contents vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER TWO: "THAT WAY WE CAN DO ANYTHING": STUFF HAPPENS 10 CHAPTER THREE: "THREATENING MY CIVIL LIBERTIES": GUANTANAMO: 'HONOR BOUND TO DEFEND FREEDOM' 39 CHAPTER FOUR: "IT COULD BE YOU": TALKING TO TERRORISTS 60 CHAPTER FIVE: "HOW WE CONTROL OUR MILITARY": BLOODY SUNDAY: SCENES FROM THE SAVILLE INQUIRY 78 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION 95 BIBLIOGRAPHY 100 1 Chapter One: Introduction The status quo of war changed drastically on September 11, 2001, when nineteen hijackers declared war on the United States by crashing two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked airliner, which was allegedly intended for either the White House or the Capitol Building, was retaken by passengers, yet crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Three thousand people were killed. Madrid was also the target of a terrorist attack in 2004, and London in 2005, each attack killing scores of people. These attacks marked a radical shift in Western perceptions of self: as John Lewis Gaddis writes, "It was not just the Twin Towers that collapsed on that morning of September 11,2001: so too did some of our most fundamental assumptions about international, national, and personal security" (80). Gone was the notion of invincibility that these powerful nations had previously held. The citizens of these and other countries were faced with an unseen enemy: one without borders, without governments, and without traditional war tactics. With a new era of terrorism underway, the United States and much of the rest of the world changed in a way that had not been seen for generations. The United States quickly entered into a "War on Terror" which took its military forces into Afghanistan in 2001 and eventually into Iraq in 2003. Issues of national security and the government's role in providing it quickly became central to the public debate, with the Iraq war, Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, torture, domestic wiretapping, and the battle over the Bill of Rights being widely discussed. In 2004, President George W. Bush was reelected by a slim majority after running a nearly single-platform campaign: national security. Great Britain, one of America's closest allies, also took extraordinary steps in 2 the name of national security, as did many other countries afraid of experiencing their own 9/11. As Stuart Croft explains, the artistic response to 9/11, the ensuing "War on Terror," and the role of the government and military has been enormous. A number of feature and independent films have addressed the subject, most of them highly controversial: Fahrenheit 9/11, World Trade Center, and Why We Fight are only a few. Television has played a major role, as well: 24, The West Wing and South Park represent the wide scope of this response. A political dialogue has also begun within music, literature, the visual arts and various commercial media. Theatre followed this trend, as well. In a 2004 article for The Guardian, Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, wrote, "Once 9/11 shocked us into a new reality, everyone felt a need to contribute some ounce of understanding. The theatre has to. The air that vibrates between actors and audience is full of the dust of the moment." The shock and grief felt by America as a result of the 9/11 attacks initially gave way to a number of immediate theatrical reactions: Anne Nelson's The Guys (2002) and Neil LaBute's The Mercy Seat (2002) are two examples of dramatic works which attempted to explain and heal the emotional wounds caused by the attacks. A sense of national unity and patriotism was prevalent in these days, as America rallied around President George W. Bush and the United States military in a desire to see the perpetrators of the attacks—especially Osama bin Laden—brought to justice. However, when bin Laden escaped and Bush instead turned his sights towards another war in Iraq and implemented arguably draconian measures such as the PATRIOT Act, the faith of many Americans in their government's motives and abilities in the "War on 3 Terror" widely disintegrated. Again, theatre provided an outlet for this response. In this thesis, I am concerned with what Dromgoole calls the "dust of the moment" in relation to the apparent expansion of political docudrama in the West since 9/11 and the related events which followed. Docudrama has been a part of the dramatic canon since the era of classical Greek theatre; the modern impulse to docudrama is rooted in Erwin Piscator's 1925 play In Spite of Everything, which addressed political revolutions from the Spartacus rebellion to the Russian Revolution (Piscator 91). The genre finds its dramatic material and conflict in current events, using editing techniques in order to sculpt those real life moments into plays which reflect certain perspectives. These perspectives—which often take a leftist political view—are generally resistant to mass media reportage, aiming to tell a story in a more accurate or complex manner than traditional media outlets are capable of doing, As Peter Preston writes, in docudrama, "the curtain rises on a new hunt for reality - or semblance of reality." Within the subset of political docudrama are two stylistic modes of theatrical playwriting. The first, called "theatre based on recent history" by David Hare in describing his play Stuff Happens, combines verbatim elements with "imagined" elements to dramatize a view of current events which have been covered extensively by the mainstream media.
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