Talks by Elisabeth Massana
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Failed Subjectivities and Conviviality in the Theatre of Sarah Kane and debbie tucker green [sic]
En un contexto de crisis económicas, globalización, neoliberalismo, terrorismo(s), conflictos arm... more En un contexto de crisis económicas, globalización, neoliberalismo, terrorismo(s), conflictos armados y migraciones, la precariedad, entendida como condición ontológica y social del ser humano (Butler), a la vez que como sinónimo de austeridad (Standing), se presenta como una idea clave para pensar e intentar entender las estructuras afectivas dominantes y combatirlas. Ciertamente, dos de sus principales significados conciernen la movilización de los afectos y las condiciones humanas y materiales resultantes de la crisis económica.
Como afirman Nicholas Ridout y Rebecca Schneider, la precariedad, en cualquier de sus acepciones, presenta una rotura y un reto frente a las narrativas del progreso y la continuidad temporal hasta el punto de acabar erigiéndose como espacio desde el que cuestionar las lógicas neoliberales de finales del siglo XX y principios del XXI (2012: 5).
A su vez, Jasbir K. Puar y Ann Pellegrini afirman que “conceptos como afecto, emoción o sentimiento nos ayudan a entender la formación de los sujetos y la oposicionalidad política en una época en la que el capital neoliberal ha reducido las posibilidades de las praxis políticas colectivas”. (2009: 37)
Las obras de teatro británico Blasted (1995), de Sarah Kane, y Stoning Mary (2005), de debbie tucker green [sic], combaten las experiencias emocionales hegemónicas mediante el desplazamiento del sujeto fracasado, desde los márgenes al centro de la normatividad. Al confrontar estas subjetividades, dicho sujeto irrumpe en las estructuras afectivas dominantes hasta el punto de poder generar nuevas re-orientaciones afectivas.
Mientras en Blasted, de Kane, este desafío a la hegemonía se representa mediante un desplazamiento espacial y geográfico cuando un contexto bélico irrumpe en la cotidianidad occidental, en Stoning Mary, de tucker green [sic], el desplazamiento es corporal, a través del uso de actores blancos para representar la vulnerabilidad de cuerpos africanos.
Dichos desplazamientos replantean las posiciones habitadas por el Yo y el Otro, o el sujeto normativo y el sujeto fracasado, dentro del régimen afectivo establecido. A partir de los conceptos de ‘Fracaso’ de Judith Halberstam, ‘Co-habitation’ de Judith Butler, y ‘Conviviality’ de Jasbir K. Puar, proponemos analizar si los encuentros expuestos por Kane y tucker green [sic], que tienen lugar en la centralidad afectiva, pueden generar transformación o resistencia, o por el contrario, corren el riesgo de culminar en un proceso de homogeneización que reduzca ambos sujetos a categorías que concluyan en nuevas estructuras jerárquicas.
Como afirman Nicholas Ridout y Rebecca Schneider, la precariedad, en cualquier de sus acepciones, presenta una rotura y un reto frente a las narrativas del progreso y la continuidad temporal hasta el punto de acabar erigiéndose como espacio desde el que cuestionar las lógicas neoliberales de finales del siglo XX y principios del XXI (2012: 5).
A su vez, Jasbir K. Puar y Ann Pellegrini afirman que “conceptos como afecto, emoción o sentimiento nos ayudan a entender la formación de los sujetos y la oposicionalidad política en una época en la que el capital neoliberal ha reducido las posibilidades de las praxis políticas colectivas”. (2009: 37)
Las obras de teatro británico Blasted (1995), de Sarah Kane, y Stoning Mary (2005), de debbie tucker green [sic], combaten las experiencias emocionales hegemónicas mediante el desplazamiento del sujeto fracasado, desde los márgenes al centro de la normatividad. Al confrontar estas subjetividades, dicho sujeto irrumpe en las estructuras afectivas dominantes hasta el punto de poder generar nuevas re-orientaciones afectivas.
Mientras en Blasted, de Kane, este desafío a la hegemonía se representa mediante un desplazamiento espacial y geográfico cuando un contexto bélico irrumpe en la cotidianidad occidental, en Stoning Mary, de tucker green [sic], el desplazamiento es corporal, a través del uso de actores blancos para representar la vulnerabilidad de cuerpos africanos.
Dichos desplazamientos replantean las posiciones habitadas por el Yo y el Otro, o el sujeto normativo y el sujeto fracasado, dentro del régimen afectivo establecido. A partir de los conceptos de ‘Fracaso’ de Judith Halberstam, ‘Co-habitation’ de Judith Butler, y ‘Conviviality’ de Jasbir K. Puar, proponemos analizar si los encuentros expuestos por Kane y tucker green [sic], que tienen lugar en la centralidad afectiva, pueden generar transformación o resistencia, o por el contrario, corren el riesgo de culminar en un proceso de homogeneización que reduzca ambos sujetos a categorías que concluyan en nuevas estructuras jerárquicas.
Cartographies of Silence in debbie tucker green’s truth and reconciliation
In her 2011 play truth and reconciliation, debbie tucker green draws our attention to a number of... more In her 2011 play truth and reconciliation, debbie tucker green draws our attention to a number of unresolved conflicts from our recent past. Throughout its fragmented structure, readers and spectators become witnesses to the unhealed wounds of South Africa, Rwanda, Zimbawe, Bosnia Herzegovina and Northern Ireland, from the point of view of the survivors and their confrontation with some of the perpetrators. Inspired by the rational behind the truth and reconciliation commissions in post-Apartheid South Africa, tucker green questions to what extent are these two possible. How – if possible – can we approach this truth? Is reconciliation granted? What is being said and, more importantly, what is being left unsaid in these conversations? How is the spectator of the play asked to engage with it? What is the role of ethics in this engagement?
Following Martin Middeke's affirmation that “the ethical in literature can be approached by analysing the equivocal conditions of in-between-ness” (2014: 101) and drawing from a reading of Adrienne Rich's poem “Cartographies of Silence”, I want to suggest that tucker green's play is embedded by two different kinds of silences – active silences and what I will call (distr)active silences – which become these spaces of in-between-ness. It is my contention that it is in these spaces where the possibility for ethical gestures emerges.
Following Martin Middeke's affirmation that “the ethical in literature can be approached by analysing the equivocal conditions of in-between-ness” (2014: 101) and drawing from a reading of Adrienne Rich's poem “Cartographies of Silence”, I want to suggest that tucker green's play is embedded by two different kinds of silences – active silences and what I will call (distr)active silences – which become these spaces of in-between-ness. It is my contention that it is in these spaces where the possibility for ethical gestures emerges.
Theories of the In-between: On the Intersections between Terror and Precarity
The thesis The Performance of Terror in Post-9/11 British Theatre aims to look at how different u... more The thesis The Performance of Terror in Post-9/11 British Theatre aims to look at how different understandings of terror have been performed on British stage, and wishes to offer a critical reading of a series of plays through the lens of ethico-political agency, performance and the body in the context of the first decade of the 21st century. The purpose is to argue how, politics wise, between 9/11 2001 and the Arab Spring and Occupy Movements in 2011, the first years of the 2000s have moved towards a more rhizomatic understanding of political agency. It is my theory that the two major events that limit the chronology of this study constitute two examples in recent history where the notions of performance, the body and agency are right at the centre. Together with this, I argue that the concept of terror can be used as a valid theoretical frame to explore these first years of the 2000s where the precariousness, vulnerability and dispossession of human beings was not produced only by and through acts of terrorism, but also by and through an economic terror resulting from austerity policies.
Following this contention, I am currently exploring the possible intersections between ‘terror’ and ‘precarity’ in order to offer a reading and understanding of terror which includes but at the same time moves beyond the narrative of terrorism that has been promoted and privileged in the last few years.
Following this contention, I am currently exploring the possible intersections between ‘terror’ and ‘precarity’ in order to offer a reading and understanding of terror which includes but at the same time moves beyond the narrative of terrorism that has been promoted and privileged in the last few years.
Bodies on/off Stage: Towards an Analysis of the Performance of Terror in Post-9/11 British Theatre”
In 2002 Jean Baudrillard defined 9/11 as an event that disrupted the whole play not only of histo... more In 2002 Jean Baudrillard defined 9/11 as an event that disrupted the whole play not only of history and power but also of the conditions for its analysis. (2002: 4)
In the aftermaths of this terrorist attacks, a series of discourses around concepts of terror, globalisation and personal security were put into circulation, and discussions around notions of freedom, democracy and the relationship
between politics and religion were brought back to the surface. How did theatre respond to it? The aim of this paper is to establish the preliminaries for what will constitute an analysis of the performance of terror and its relationship to spectatorship in British theatre produced after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which will culminate in an exploration of contemporary strategies of politicisation in British stages and dramaturgical responses to the ideological battles of the early 21st century. For this purpose, special attention will be paid to the body and
how it received, epitomized and incarnated this major event and its socio-political aftermaths. Emphasis will be placed on how discourses of terror permeate and stratify bodies, leading towards a state of precariousness and vulnerability, how political debates run through them and how is this translated into the theatrical event – thus allowing us to look into the relationship between bodies both on and off stage.
In the aftermaths of this terrorist attacks, a series of discourses around concepts of terror, globalisation and personal security were put into circulation, and discussions around notions of freedom, democracy and the relationship
between politics and religion were brought back to the surface. How did theatre respond to it? The aim of this paper is to establish the preliminaries for what will constitute an analysis of the performance of terror and its relationship to spectatorship in British theatre produced after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which will culminate in an exploration of contemporary strategies of politicisation in British stages and dramaturgical responses to the ideological battles of the early 21st century. For this purpose, special attention will be paid to the body and
how it received, epitomized and incarnated this major event and its socio-political aftermaths. Emphasis will be placed on how discourses of terror permeate and stratify bodies, leading towards a state of precariousness and vulnerability, how political debates run through them and how is this translated into the theatrical event – thus allowing us to look into the relationship between bodies both on and off stage.
Mark Ravenhill in Performance: Breakfast, Video-games and War on Terror
In August 2007, British playwright Mark Ravenhill presented Ravenhill for Breakfast, a cycle of t... more In August 2007, British playwright Mark Ravenhill presented Ravenhill for Breakfast, a cycle of twenty-minute plays at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Thematically related, each piece offered a different approach to the War on Terror and an exploration of the “contemporary urge to bring [Western] values of freedom and democracy to the whole world” (Ravenhill, 2008: 5).
In April 2008, the cycle was renamed Shoot / Get Treasure / Repeat and staged throughout different venues in London. German director Claus Peymann directed his own version of the piece under the title Freedom and Democracy I Hate You at the Berliner Ensemble in Berlin in 2010, and Josep Maria Mestres production opened in Barcelona on the 31st of January 2013.
In each production, directors offered a different sequence of pieces, presenting alternative narratives in changing orders and thus engaging in a completely different relationship with the audiences. From the importance of “breakfast” in the early production, to the focus on the distorted notions of “freedom” and “democracy” in Berlin, to the usage of a strong stage picture that wished to complement the words in the text in Barcelona, every audience sat through their own, particular experience of the same text.
In the framework of what I will call the “Narrative of Terrorism” and drawing from spectatorship theory – especially Hans-Thies Lehmann, Rancière and Erika Fischer-Lichte – I would like to look at the different readings each production offered – with a focus on Berlin and Barcelona – and at how the audiences were addressed and attempted to be transformed through each of them. What were the strategies used by the directors? Was the audience encouraged to participate? Did the different narratives offer alternative political discourses? How was Ravenhill's response to the War on Terror altered by each production?
In April 2008, the cycle was renamed Shoot / Get Treasure / Repeat and staged throughout different venues in London. German director Claus Peymann directed his own version of the piece under the title Freedom and Democracy I Hate You at the Berliner Ensemble in Berlin in 2010, and Josep Maria Mestres production opened in Barcelona on the 31st of January 2013.
In each production, directors offered a different sequence of pieces, presenting alternative narratives in changing orders and thus engaging in a completely different relationship with the audiences. From the importance of “breakfast” in the early production, to the focus on the distorted notions of “freedom” and “democracy” in Berlin, to the usage of a strong stage picture that wished to complement the words in the text in Barcelona, every audience sat through their own, particular experience of the same text.
In the framework of what I will call the “Narrative of Terrorism” and drawing from spectatorship theory – especially Hans-Thies Lehmann, Rancière and Erika Fischer-Lichte – I would like to look at the different readings each production offered – with a focus on Berlin and Barcelona – and at how the audiences were addressed and attempted to be transformed through each of them. What were the strategies used by the directors? Was the audience encouraged to participate? Did the different narratives offer alternative political discourses? How was Ravenhill's response to the War on Terror altered by each production?
Preliminaries for an Analysis of The Performance of Terror in Post-9/11 British Theatre - PhD Workshop
Preliminaries for a Chapter on Mark Ravenhill's Shoot / Get Treasure / Repeat
Transient Bodies, Altered Meanings. Bodily Co-Presence and Spectatorship Response-Ability in Mark Ravenhill’s Birth of a Nation
The Fiction of Parity in Spain
Glamur y resistencias: construir el género a taconazos
Re-reading gender performativity. Subversion and parody in British queer theatre representations
Mark Ravenhill vs. Section 28: Family values revisited or a queer theatre challenge to heteronormativity
Being Political at the Threshold of the new Millenium: Mark Ravenhill’s Some Explicit Polaroids and fin-de-siècle Political Theatre
Papers by Elisabeth Massana
debbie tucker green, 2020
In the first lines of her poem 'Cartographies of Silence', Adrienne Rich interrogates the existen... more In the first lines of her poem 'Cartographies of Silence', Adrienne Rich interrogates the existence of a common language and points to the spaces that open up when speakers in a conversation face lies, silences, and misunderstandings. She writes: A conversation begins with a lie. And each speaker of the so-called common language feels the ice-floe split, the drift apart as if powerless, as if up against a force of nature. (2013, p. 16)
Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2016
‘I’m not afraid of being labelled a dirty boring feminist’: Reproductive work, feminism and/in crisis at the Royal Court
Crisis, Representation and Resilience, 2022
Lectora: revista de dones i textualitat, 2020
Sometimes the best projects emerge out of serendipitous encounters. It was, indeed, serendipity w... more Sometimes the best projects emerge out of serendipitous encounters. It was, indeed, serendipity which allows us to bring you the following conversation. Recorded involuntarily and transcribed thoroughly, the following text is a testimony of an encounter between poets Afshan D'souza-Lodhi and Jay Bernard and a community of scholars and students, during a time when gatherings in rooms were not marked by the laws of social distancing. During our conversation, Jay and Afshan speak to us about languages and mother tongues, queer identities, love and desire, activisms and the archive, affect, politics and the role of literature. Through their answers, as well as the poems that accompany them, we become witnesses to the power of words to create alternative realities, ones that are more livable, gentle and embracing of nonnormativity. Afshan D'souza-Lodhi is a queer Muslim writer born in Dubai to Indian and Pakistani parents and currently living in Manchester. She writes theatre and poetry, as well as non-fiction, and works with young and emerging artists. Together with her work as an artist -she's been a resident at the Royal Exchange Theatre and the Manchester Literature Festival, and has worked with Eclipse Theatre, Tamasha Theatre Company and Paul Burston's Polari-Afshan is a member of Northern Police Monitoring Project, an independent campaigning and advocacy organization that challenges police harassment and violence. Afshan's work centres on the experience of women of South Asian heritage, be it in the context of the Indo-Pakistani Partition in the theatre piece Santi & Naz (2020, The Vault), or the everyday life in an all-female-run halal butcher shop in the radio play Chop Chop (2019, BBC Radio). In her short play Lesborist Tapes (2015) -later made into a short film for Channel 4 called An Act of Terror (2018)-Afshan dismantles the trope of the Muslim terrorist against the idea of sexually terrorizing the West and explores the relationship between capitalism, patriarchy, religion and sexuality in the context of the War on Terror. Her short essay "Hijabi (R)evolution" was included in the collection It's Not About the Burqa (2019), and in it Afshan reflects upon her own relationship with Islam and the Hijab as a young queer Muslim growing up in the West, in a context of growing Islamophobia. Her latest poetry collection, Poems as Livable Worlds...
I am sitting in the audience of the Royal Court Theatre in London, a venue that prides itself for... more I am sitting in the audience of the Royal Court Theatre in London, a venue that prides itself for stirring up British playwriting since 1956, earlier than that if you don’t believe in the whole Look Back in Anger mythology.2 The theatre is not full, I can spot many empty seats around me. People walk in, take off their coats, browse through their phones, talk to each other. I don’t realise when the house lights are dimmed, maybe they never are. There are four empty chairs on the stage. Four more people walk in, take off their coats, silence their phones. Instead of sitting down next to the rest of us, they walk up to the stage and take on the four empty seats. We will soon learn that they are a team of ‘Artist-Facilitators’ who are here to save us. Save us from what? From whom? Do we need saving?
Ariane de Waal. Theatre on Terror: Subject Positions in British Drama. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017, viii + 297 pp., €99.95 (hardback), €99.95 (PDF ebook). Clare Finburgh. Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict. London: Bloomsbury, 2017, xv + 355 pp., £75 (hardback), £...
Journal of Contemporary Drama in English
Entrevista amb Erika Fischer-Lichte: «La sacralitat del text és una ideologia»