Theatrical Plausibility in the Drama of Migration

Christina Wald

doi:10.1515/jcde-2024-2019

Article

Theatrical Plausibility in the Drama of Migration

Christina Wald
is Professor of English literature and literary theory and director of the Centre for Cultural Inquiry at the University of Konstanz. She previously taught at the Universities of Cologne and Augsburg, the Humboldt-Universität Berlin, and Harvard University. Her research focusses on contemporary drama, performance, film, and television series as well as on early modern drama and prose fiction with a particular interest in questions of adaptation, intertextuality, and cultural transmission. As member of the NOMIS research project “Traveling Forms,” she currently pursues a project on the cultural travels of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy in the globalized present. She is the author of Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia: Performative Maladies in Contemporary Anglophone Drama (2007), The Reformation of Romance: The Eucharist, Disguise and Foreign Fashion in Early Modern Prose Fiction (2014), and Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV (2020). She has co-edited several books, among them The Literature of Melancholia: Early Modern to Postmodern (2011). Her work has appeared in journals including Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Bulletin, Modern Drama, Adaptation, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, and Classical Receptions Journal. From 2013 to 2021, she was co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary Dramain English.

Published/Copyright: October 1, 2024

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Journal of Contemporary Drama in English Volume 12 Issue 2

Abstract

This article examines forms of plausibilisation in British performances that engage with asylum seeking. It argues in two case studies, on Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play Credible Witness (2001) and the theatre project The Trojans (2019), developed in 2018 and 2019 with Syrian refugees in Glasgow, there are multiple aspects of plausibility that are crucial in the drama of migration: the examination of the plausibility features required for a believable asylum story, the use of documentary material and techniques to heighten the performances’ authenticity, the reactivation of ancient rituals and dramaturgies to give weight and a historical perspective to current migration issues, and the appeal to the politicised faith of the audience, their identification with the refugees that is fed by political conviction. As a communal art form, the theatre offers a space for reflection on the legal logic of plausibility in asylum procedures. Rather than demanding a well-founded case, the theatre can explore conflicting plausibilities, develop counter-plausibilities, and thus question the routines of legal procedures as well as of cultural plausibilisation processes that rarely acknowledge the co-production of plausibility.

Keywords: asylum seeking; ancient Greek tragedy; hiketeia ; theatrical plausibilisation; theatrical witnessing; documentary theatre; Syrian war; Euripides; The Trojan Women ; Timberlake Wertenbaker; Credible Witness ; The Trojan Women Project; The Trojans

About the author

Christina Wald

is Professor of English literature and literary theory and director of the Centre for Cultural Inquiry at the University of Konstanz. She previously taught at the Universities of Cologne and Augsburg, the Humboldt-Universität Berlin, and Harvard University. Her research focusses on contemporary drama, performance, film, and television series as well as on early modern drama and prose fiction with a particular interest in questions of adaptation, intertextuality, and cultural transmission. As member of the NOMIS research project “Traveling Forms,” she currently pursues a project on the cultural travels of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy in the globalized present. She is the author of Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia: Performative Maladies in Contemporary Anglophone Drama (2007), The Reformation of Romance: The Eucharist, Disguise and Foreign Fashion in Early Modern Prose Fiction (2014), and Shakespeare’s Serial Returns in Complex TV (2020). She has co-edited several books, among them The Literature of Melancholia: Early Modern to Postmodern (2011). Her work has appeared in journals including Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Bulletin, Modern Drama, Adaptation, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, and Classical Receptions Journal. From 2013 to 2021, she was co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary Dramain English.

Works Cited

Aeschylus. The Suppliant Women: In a Version by David Greig. London: Faber and Faber, 2017. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Bakewell, Geoffrey W. Aeschylus’s Suppliant Women: The Tragedy of Immigration. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2013. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Bush, Sophie. The Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013. Print.10.5040/9781408185902Search in Google Scholar

Cox, Emma. Theatre & Migration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print.Search in Google Scholar

–-. “The Politics of Innocence.” Twenty-First Century Drama: What Happens Now. Eds. Louise LePage and Siân Adiseshiah. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 213–235. Print.Search in Google Scholar

–-, and Caroline Wake. “Envisioning Asylum/Engendering Crisis: Or, Performance and Forced Migration 10 Years On.” Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 23.2 (2018): 137–147. Print.10.1080/13569783.2018.1442714Search in Google Scholar

Eagar, Charlotte, et al. “The Trojans Project: Therapeutic Drama from Syria to Scotland.” Contemporary Representations of Forced Migration in Europe. Eds. Fiona Barclay and Beatrice Ivey. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. 31–52. Print.10.1007/978-3-031-47831-4_2Search in Google Scholar

Eberwine, Paul. “‘Music for the Wretched’: Euripides’ Trojan Women as Refugee Theatre.” Classical Receptions Journal 11.2 (2019): 194–210. Print.10.1093/crj/clz002Search in Google Scholar

Eidinow, Esther, and Rafael Ramirez. “The Aesthetics of Story-Telling as a Technology of the Plausible.” Futures: The Journal of Policy, Planning and Futures Studies 84 (2016): 43–49. Print. 10.1016/j.futures.2016.09.005Search in Google Scholar

Euripides. The Trojan Women. The Trojan Women and Other Plays. Ed. and trans. James Morwood. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 38–75. Print.10.1093/oseo/instance.00185910Search in Google Scholar

Freeman, Sara. “Group Tragedy and Diaspora: New and Old Histories of Exile and Family in Wertenbaker’s Hecuba and Credible Witness.” International Dramaturgy: Translation and Transformations in the Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker. Eds. Maya E. Roth and Sara Freeman. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2008. 61–75. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Frow, John. Genre. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Gibson, Sarah. “Testimony in a Culture of Disbelief: Asylum Hearings and the Impossibility of Bearing Witness.” Journal for Cultural Research 17.1 (2013): 1–20. Print.10.1080/14797585.2011.613221Search in Google Scholar

Gödde, Susanne. Das Drama der Hikesie: Ritual und Rhetorik in Aischylos’ Hiketiden. Münster: Aschendorff, 2000. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Grethlein, Jonas. Asyl und Athen: Die Konstruktion kollektiver Identität in der griechischen Tragödie. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003. Print.10.1007/978-3-476-98762-4Search in Google Scholar

Hall, Edith. “Introduction.” Euripides. The Trojan Women and Other Plays. Ed. and trans. James Morwood. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. ix–xlii. Print.Search in Google Scholar

–-. Greek Tragedy: Suffering Under the Sun. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Jeffers, Alison. Refugees, Theatre and Crisis: Performing Global Identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print.10.1057/9780230354821Search in Google Scholar

Laera, Margherita. Reaching Athens: Community, Democracy and Other Mythologies in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013. Print.10.3726/978-3-0353-0434-3Search in Google Scholar

Matthews, Julie, and Kwangsook Chung. “Credible Witness: Identity, Refuge and Hospitality.” Borderlands e-journal 7.3 (2008): 1–15. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Menke, Bettine, and Juliane Vogel. “Das Theater als transitorischer Raum: Einleitende Bemerkungen zum Verhältnis von Flucht und Szene.” Flucht und Szene: Perspektiven und Formen eines Theaters der Fliehenden. Eds. Bettine Menke and Juliane Vogel. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2018. 7–23. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Millbank, Jenni. “‘The Ring of Truth’: A Case Study of Credibility Assessment in Particular Social Group Refugee Determinations.” International Journal of Refugee Law 21.1 (2009): 1–33. Print. 10.1093/ijrl/een040Search in Google Scholar

Reinelt, Janelle. “The Promise of Documentary.” Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present. Eds. Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 6–23. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Steudel-Günther, Andrea. “Plausibilität.” Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik. Eds. Gert Ueding and Gregor Kalivoda. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1992. 1282–1285. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Stuart Fisher, Amanda. Performing the Testimonial: Rethinking Verbatim Dramaturgies. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2020. Print.10.7765/9781526145758Search in Google Scholar

“The 1951 Refugee Convention.” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html>.Search in Google Scholar

The Trojan Women Project. “The Trojans at the Edinburgh International Culture Summit.” The Trojan Women Project Homepage. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.trojanwomenproject.org/copy-of-glasgow-black-comedy-drama->.Search in Google Scholar

The Trojans. Dir. Victoria Beesley. Edinburgh Festival, 2021. Digital Recording. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thetrojans>.Search in Google Scholar

“The Trojans: On Location.” Dir. Charlotte Ginsborg. The Trojan Women Project, 2019. Digital Recording. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.trojanwomenproject.org>.Search in Google Scholar

Thomas, Robert. “Assessing the Credibility of Asylum Claims: EU and UK Approaches Examined.” European Journal of Migration and Law 8 (2006): 79–96. Print.10.1163/157181606776911969Search in Google Scholar

Tomlin, Liz. Political Dramaturgies and Theatre Spectatorship: Provocations for Change. London: Methuen, 2019. Print.10.5040/9781474295635Search in Google Scholar

Wake, Caroline. “To Witness Mimesis: The Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics of Testimonial Theatre in Through the Wire.” Modern Drama 56.1 (2013): 102–125. Print.10.1353/mdr.2013.0009Search in Google Scholar

Wald, Christina. “‘And Here Remain with Your Uncertainty’: Paradoxien des Raumes in Shakespeares Hikesie-Tragödie Coriolanus.” Flucht und Szene: Perspektiven und Formen eines Theaters der Fliehenden. Eds. Bettine Menke and Juliane Vogel. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2018. 140–166. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Wertenbaker, Timberlake. Credible Witness. London: Faber and Faber, 2001. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Whittington, Leah. Renaissance Suppliants: Poetry, Antiquity, Reconciliation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. Print.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198754442.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Wilmer, S.E. Performing Statelessness in Europe. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Print.10.1007/978-3-319-69173-2Search in Google Scholar

Woolley, Agnes. Contemporary Asylum Narratives: Representing Refugees in the Twenty-First Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print.10.1057/9781137299062Search in Google Scholar

–-. “Narrating the ‘Asylum Story’: Between Literary and Legal Storytelling.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 19.3 (2017): 376–394. Print.10.1080/1369801X.2016.1231585Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2024-10-01

Published in Print: 2024-09-30

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2024-2019

Keywords for this article

asylum seeking; ancient Greek tragedy; hiketeia; theatrical plausibilisation; theatrical witnessing; documentary theatre; Syrian war; Euripides; The Trojan Women; Timberlake Wertenbaker; Credible Witness; The Trojan Women Project; The Trojans