War in Words: The Tricycle Theatre’s Re-voicing of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry
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Sara Soncini
Sara Soncini is a researcher in English Literature at the University of Pisa. Her main area of interest is 20th- and 21st-century British and Irish drama, but she has also written extensively on modern-day appropriations of Shakespeare (translations, adaptations, rewritings), and on Restoration and early 18th-century theatre. She is the author of
Playing with(in) the Restoration: Metatheatre as a Strategy of Appropriation in Present-Day Rewritings of Restoration Drama (1999) andForms of Conflict: Contemporary Wars on the British Stage (forthcoming 2015), and the co-author ofPercorsi nel teatro inglese dell’Ottocento e del primo Novecento (2013). Her edited volumes includeShakespeare Graffiti: Il Cigno di Avon nella cultura di massa (2002),Conflict Zones: Actions Languages Mediations (2004),Myths of Europe (2007),Crossing Time and Space: Shakespeare Translations in Present-Day Europe (2008) andShakespeare and Conflict: A European Perspective (2013).
Abstract
The tribunal plays produced at the Tricycle theatre in Kilburn, North London have come to represent under many respects the hallmark of the new spate of documentary work on the British stage, often designated as “verbatim drama” in contemporary critical parlance. Expressly envisaged as theatrical interventions into the public sphere, these dramatizations of official public inquiries turn theatrical space into legal space, grounding their claims to veracity in the exact reproduction of the actually spoken. While crucial to their ontological authority, the self-imposed orthodoxy whereby the playwright is the mere editor of words recorded in inquiry transcripts has been put under considerable strain by the very topic that has played a central role in triggering and shaping the format, that of contemporary conflict. A considerable share of recent verbatim work deals with the war on terror, a war increasingly fought outside legal jurisdiction and hence a subject that has thrown into sharp relief the epistemological limits of a form of drama that is entirely dependent on the existence and availability of legal records. This essay looks at the strategies of “re-voicing” whereby Richard Norton-Taylor negotiates the strictures of the code in his tribunal play Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry (2005). By turning the spotlight on testimony as a conflicted practice, Norton-Taylor’s editorial perspective provides a scorching critique of the long-overdue official review of the tragic events in Derry on 30 January 1972, and at the same time manages to indirectly address some highly topical issues of legitimacy and legality raised by the intervention in Iraq.
About the author
Sara Soncini is a researcher in English Literature at the University of Pisa. Her main area of interest is 20th- and 21st-century British and Irish drama, but she has also written extensively on modern-day appropriations of Shakespeare (translations, adaptations, rewritings), and on Restoration and early 18th-century theatre. She is the author of Playing with(in) the Restoration: Metatheatre as a Strategy of Appropriation in Present-Day Rewritings of Restoration Drama (1999) and Forms of Conflict: Contemporary Wars on the British Stage (forthcoming 2015), and the co-author of Percorsi nel teatro inglese dell’Ottocento e del primo Novecento (2013). Her edited volumes include Shakespeare Graffiti: Il Cigno di Avon nella cultura di massa (2002), Conflict Zones: Actions Languages Mediations (2004), Myths of Europe (2007), Crossing Time and Space: Shakespeare Translations in Present-Day Europe (2008) and Shakespeare and Conflict: A European Perspective (2013).
©2015 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Voices of Power/Power of Voices
- Voices of Spectators and Audience Power
- “There Were No Longer Any Laws”: Voices of Authority, Complicity, and Resistance in Totalitarian Dystopias and Holocaust Imaginings
- Caesar’s Body in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Sacralization and De-sacralization of Power
- Legal Oracularism and Theological Prophetism. Fleshly Silences Across Memories and Traditions
- “What Is Royalty Without a Voice?” The Performance of Power in The King’s Speech
- Is There Voice Without Law? On The Road
- Voice, Incarnation and the United States Supreme Court
- Disputes and the Differend: Literary Strategies to Say the Unspeakable
- The Working Class Goes to the Movies: Labour Law and Thatcherism in British Films
- War in Words: The Tricycle Theatre’s Re-voicing of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry
- Research
- Legal Systemology and the Geopolitics of Roman Law: A Response to Stuart Elden’s Critique of Carl Schmitt’s Spatial Ontology
- Speech and Graphomena: The Power of Apuleius’ Words in Court and in Translation
- Book Review
- Mireille Hildebrandt and Jeanne Gaakeer: Human Law and Computer Law: Comparative Perspectives
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Voices of Power/Power of Voices
- Voices of Spectators and Audience Power
- “There Were No Longer Any Laws”: Voices of Authority, Complicity, and Resistance in Totalitarian Dystopias and Holocaust Imaginings
- Caesar’s Body in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Sacralization and De-sacralization of Power
- Legal Oracularism and Theological Prophetism. Fleshly Silences Across Memories and Traditions
- “What Is Royalty Without a Voice?” The Performance of Power in The King’s Speech
- Is There Voice Without Law? On The Road
- Voice, Incarnation and the United States Supreme Court
- Disputes and the Differend: Literary Strategies to Say the Unspeakable
- The Working Class Goes to the Movies: Labour Law and Thatcherism in British Films
- War in Words: The Tricycle Theatre’s Re-voicing of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry
- Research
- Legal Systemology and the Geopolitics of Roman Law: A Response to Stuart Elden’s Critique of Carl Schmitt’s Spatial Ontology
- Speech and Graphomena: The Power of Apuleius’ Words in Court and in Translation
- Book Review
- Mireille Hildebrandt and Jeanne Gaakeer: Human Law and Computer Law: Comparative Perspectives
