Visions and Revisions brings the fields of performance studies and trauma studies together in conversation where they inform crucial themes such as trauma, testimony, witness, and spectatorship. While performance studies is increasingly addressing trauma and how to represent it, attention is still often relegated to high-brow forms of art and political theater. The contributors here fill a critical gap, raising questions about how popular and mediatized performances that memorialize trauma might also be viewed through performance theory. They also look at how performance studies might shift its focus from the visual to the sensorial and material—as a method of rethinking the act of witness—and in doing so offer a fresh perspective on performance and trauma studies.
Bryoni Treziseis a lecturer in theater and performance studies at the University of New South Wales in Australia, whereCaroline Wakeis a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Modernism Studies.
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Introduction: From Sight to Site
Performance in Memory and Trauma Studies
Bryoni Trezise and Caroline Wake
VISIONS
1. The Accident and the Account
Towards a Taxonomy of Spectatorial Witness in Theatre and Performance Studies
Caroline Wake
2. Torture in the Field of Refracted Suffering
Mike Parr and the Pain of Becoming Un-Australian
Christine Stoddard
3. Identity Politics and Mobility
Kara Walker and Berni Searle
Petra Kuppers
4. Responsibility and the Dangers of Proximity
Responding to Caryl Churchill’sSeven Jewish Children
Helena Grehan
5. The Ethics and Politics of Witnessing Whoopi
Geraldine Harris
REVISIONS
6. ColÓV