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Abstract
Witnessing, as it is currently conceived in theatre and performance studies, is a mode of “active” and/or “ethical” spectatorship. However, such definitions neglect the insights of trauma studies scholars, who suggest that witnessing is neither active nor especially ethical. Instead, trauma studies theorists argue that witnessing is temporally belated, which is to say an after effect of spectatorship as well as a mode. Drawing on the language of trauma studies, and through an analysis of testimonial theatres made by,
with, and about asylum seekers in Australia from 2000 to 2005, this thesis develops a theory of “performing witness.” Such a theory considers both the figure of the performing witness, defined as someone who testifies and retestifies in public whether on behalf of themselves or an absent other, and the function of performing witness, which is to say the process of producing, reproducing, representing, and responding to testimony.
In order to elucidate this theory, the thesis proceeds through a series of “scenes.” The first two chapters focus on theoretical “scenes,” one from theatre and performance studies (Bertolt Brecht’s “Street Scene”) and another from trauma studies (Shoshana Felman’s “Classroom Scene”), in order to ask: “How have these fields theorised witnessing and how might they illuminate one another?” The next four chapters pursue a single question across a series of sites: “What forms of witnessing do we find in
performance?” These performance “scenes” include the interviews conducted by immigration officials (Chapter 3), a verbatim play based on interviews with refugees in which a refugee was cast as himself (Chapter 4), an autobiographical play devised and performed by that same refugee (Chapter 5), and a tribunal play based on the transcripts
of a parliamentary inquiry into how a boat of asylum seekers came to grief off the coast of Australia (Chapter 6). Through these analyses, many theories of witnessing emerge: ambivalent; mimetic; antiphonic; and false witnessing. These new theories not only refine our understanding of theatrical witnessing, they also shift our understanding of witnessing more generally, inviting us to rethink the relationship between spectatorship, ethics, activity, and temporality.