Therapeutic theatre: trauma and bodily articulation in post-war European drama

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 iiGiven 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 selfhealing 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 bodycentered 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. Resume

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