Abstract
The performance of Sanctuary exists on a spatio-temporal liminal tightrope, dangling precariously somewhere between the past, present and future. The laws, wars, histories and tensions of Somalia, Zimbabwe, Northern Ireland, Britain and Ireland play domineering roles in this performance. The processes, privileges and discriminations of each territory are inscribed on the performers’ embodied territories and the potential for their futures. The performers tell their personal testimonies of past events in stylised and rehearsed sequences communicating directly to the audience. One of the dominant motivations and outcomes for this production, from process to performance, is the potential for affect and transformation on the audience, as well as for affective and transformative experience for the performers while they share their personal histories.
Sanctuary is the fourth and concluding part of the Playhouse Theatre of Witness Programme directed by Teya Sepinuck in partnership with Holywell Trust from 2009 to 2014. The four main productions include Sanctuary (2013), Release (2012), I Once Knew a Girl (2010), and We Carried Your Secrets (2009). The ToW website also details further supports and projects. ‘In January 2012, the Northwest Play Resource Centre was awarded a PEACE III grant for the Theatre of Witness Project. Objectives include (1) Develop and deliver a 6-month Theatre of Witness mentoring programme with two local theatre practitioners, (2) Select and train individuals to tell and perform their own stories, (3) Script, produce and direct Theatre of Witness productions based on the life stories of the individuals, (4) Perform and tour the productions/performances in schools and community venues throughout Northern Ireland/Border Counties, and (5) Create and distribute film and web material to be used on a local, national and international basis to demonstrate the Theatre of Witness Model in promoting peace and reconciliation.’ http://www.theatreofwitness.org. Accessed 18 April 2015.
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Notes
- 1.
By performance text, I refer to my notes from the two performances I attended at the Derry Playhouse and the Brian Friel Theatre at Queen’s University Belfast.
- 2.
The argument by O’Donnell and O’Sullivan in Coercive Confinement in Ireland: Patients, Prisoners and Penitents (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012) is related to world prison populations primarily. They state that, ‘The eighth edition of the World Prison Population List, published in 2009, estimated a global prison population of more than 9.8 million compared with around eight million when the first edition of the list was published in 1999. Never in living memory, it would seem, had societies resorted to locking away so many of their citizens, and at the same time been so indifferent to the consequences.’ (1). Maryama Yuusuf is being held in detention centres, not a prison, but the same culture of coercive confinement is being applied, as I argue further in Chapter 4, ‘Containment’.
- 3.
Lisa Fitzpatrick, ‘Gender and Affect in Testimonial Performance’, Irish University Review, 45:1 (2015), 28–29.
- 4.
Collins online. http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sanctuary?showCookiePolicy=true Accessed 1 April 2014.
- 5.
‘The Troubles’ refers to the outbreak of civil war in Northern Ireland in 1968, largely characterised by guerrilla warfare. The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 is often used to signal the official ‘end’ of ‘the Troubles’, though sporadic violence and attacks still occur to this day, often around tense temporal traditions, such as 12 July, and community rituals that include marches and flags. It is difficult to refer to any specific historical account, or media outlet, that summarizes ‘the Troubles’, as bias and sympathies remain rife to both dominant sides involved.
- 6.
David Grant and Jennings, Matt, ‘Processing the Peace: An Interview with Teya Sepinuck’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 23:3 (2013), 314.
- 7.
See The Good Friday Agreement information on the Irish State’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website: https://www.dfa.ie/our-role-policies/northern-ireland/the-good-friday-agreement-and-today/ Accessed 20 June 2017.
- 8.
For further recent context on performance, migration and interculturalism in Ireland, see Charlotte McIvor, Migration and Performance in Contemporary Ireland: Towards a New Interculturalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016).
- 9.
Collins online. http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/exile Accessed 8 April 2014.
- 10.
Yana Meerzon, Performing Exile, Performing Self: Drama, Theatre, Film (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), 5.
- 11.
In Sepinuck’s monograph, Theatre of Witness: Finding the Medicine in Stories of Suffering, Transformation, and Peace (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2013), she lists and summarizes the twelve guiding principles, 227–235. These are: (1) Not Knowing, (2) Bear Witness, (3) Find the Medicine, (4) The Blessing is at the Center of the Wound, (5) Deeply Listen with the Ears of your Heart, (6) Become the Vessel, (7) Hold the Paradox, (8) Find the Gold, (9) Take the Problem and Make it the Solution, (10) Fall in Love, (11) Trust the Process, and (12) Everyone is Me.
- 12.
Carol Martin, ed. Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010).
- 13.
Dominick LaCapra, ‘Trauma, Absence, Loss’, Critical Inquiry, 25:4 (1999), 697–698.
- 14.
Fintan Walsh, Theatre and Therapy (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), 6.
- 15.
Bill McDonnell, Theatres of the Troubles: Theatre, Resistance and Liberation in Ireland (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2008), 4.
- 16.
Will Hammond and Dan Steward, Eds. Verbatim Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre (London: Oberon, 2008), 9.
- 17.
Roger Luckhurst, The Trauma Question (London: Routledge, 2008), 119.
- 18.
In the 2005 report ‘A Strategy for Addressing Domestic Violence and Abuse in Northern Ireland’, the ‘Introduction’ details that domestic violence and abuse ‘accounts for 1 in 5 cases of violent crime here. On average every year 5 people are killed as a result of domestic violence and about 700 families have to be re-housed. Every day about 12 women and 4 men report an assault by a partner to the police, yet it is known that violent incidents in the home are seriously under-reported’ (2005, 4) http://www.womensaidni.org/assets/uploads/Tackling-Violence-at-Hom.pdf Accessed 18 March 2015.
- 19.
Una Chaudhuri, Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1997), xii.
- 20.
Margaret McGuckin has posted her story on the website ‘Survivors NI: Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse’, in the ‘Survivors’ Stories’ section. She states she thinks it was the year 1958 when she was sent to the Nazareth House Girls’ Home. The testimony here is an extract from an article by Deborah McAleese first published in the Belfast Telegraph on 20 October 2009.
- 21.
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (London: HarperCollins, 1992), 1.
- 22.
OED online, word search ‘communion’ (n). http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/37318?redirectedFrom=Communion#eid Accessed 5 June 2015.
- 23.
Richard Schechner, Performance Theory (New York: Routledge, 2003), 134.
- 24.
James Thompson, Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), 8.
- 25.
Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, eds. The Affect Theory Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 2–3.
- 26.
Sara Ahmed, ‘Happy Objects’ in The Affect Theory Reader, eds. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 39.
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Fitzpatrick, Lisa. 2015. Gender and Affect in Testimonial Performance. Irish University Review 45 (1): 126–140.
Grant, David, and Matt Jennings. 2013. Processing the Peace: An Interview with Teya Sepinuck. Contemporary Theatre Review 23 (3): 314–322.
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Meerzon, Yana. 2012. Performing Exile, Performing Self: Drama, Theatre, Film. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
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Sepinuck, Teya. 2013. Theatre of Witness: Finding the Medicine in Stories of Suffering, Transformation, and Peace. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Thompson, James. 2009. Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Walsh, Fintan. 2012. Theatre and Therapy. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
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Haughton, M. (2018). Exile: Sanctuary (2013), Directed by Teya Sepinuck. In: Staging Trauma. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53663-1_5
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