Doing Justice to the Past: Time, Drama and Peacebuilding

Abstract

Clemson’s chapter explores time in drama and peacebuilding through an examination of The Just Vengeance, a largely forgotten but rich play by Dorothy L. Sayers, produced soon after the end of the Second World War. In the play an airman from Lichfield, who was killed in the war, is brought into conversation with generations of citizens from across the city’s past, themselves perpetrators and victims of violence. In this performance, ‘live’ theatre brings the past back to life in unexpected ways, bearing witness to past suffering and heartbreak, while also seeking hope in past, present and future. Clemson concludes that theatre, like the other arts, can also raise profound and poignant questions about the roles that history, belief and time can play in building peace.