Building peace through theatre is not easy, and its effects are neither immediately nor readily evident. Nevertheless, theatre can offer something special for conflict transformation: an embodied connection that moves beyond sympathy and understanding to elicit a visceral empathy that moves and motivates the spectator. The embodied nature of performance takes us beyond the rational and can help to push aside arguments that hold back conciliation. Together with London-based physical theatre group, Ephemeral Ensemble, I have been working to develop a dramaturgy of care that connects strongly with audiences through live music, movement, dance, and light – but little or no dialogue.
Ephemeral Ensemble devises plays from real stories and historical experiences, distilling them into a single story that contains the many within it. Its members describe their work as “political, visually striking, highly dynamic, thought-provoking, moving and satirical at heart.” For Ephemeral, humour and play is central to creativity and to stepping outside the social strictures that limit inventiveness, revealing new avenues to approach old problems. This is playfulness put to serious ends. According to Ramon Ayres, Ephemeral’s director, play is what makes theatre exciting and engaging, opening a dialogue with the audience in a safe space.
Since 2022, we have toured our production REWIND in the United Kingdom and Latin America. It tells the story of the recovery and return of the bones of Alicia Domínguez, an imaginary victim of forced disappearance, to her mother. We drew on interviews with Chileans who had suffered repression at the hands of the Pinochet dictatorship in creating the work and connected this with the process of forensic exhumation. Ephemeral was interested in combining science and performativity, and in paying homage to the many forensic anthropologists who help bring justice for the disappeared. This gives our play universal relevance, and we have found that it connects with audiences across different cultures who nevertheless have shared experiences of repression and resistance.
In our work, we flaunt the creative process itself and focus on the physicality of the performers and their interaction. Ayres notes that when Ephemeral members are devising, they collectively “need to listen to the process,” although it is difficult to resist the temptation to find a speedy “answer to the scene.” This is slow theatre, if you like, developed by listening to each other and to those whose stories can contribute to the final piece.
Audience response is essential to our creative process. After each performance, we usually hold a Q&A with the audience to listen to their thoughts, comments, criticisms and suggestions. Early in the process, we used these ideas to enrich our work, adapting the show to incorporate especially the perspectives of victims and affected communities. Now when we perform, we use this space to allow communities to articulate views that might not easily find a voice in local civic spaces. Performing in Cali, in Colombia, in 2022, we discovered that our show not only enabled a discussion of the search for the disappeared from the long years of violence in the country but resonated with the victims of violence following the 2021 social uprising. A similar response occurred when we then travelled to Chile – youth audiences particularly made connection with the 2019 uprising there.
For theatre scholars Murray and Keefe, humans are hard-wired for empathy: “We recognize and identify with others because of common ground in reciprocity and mutuality of behavior, feelings and ideas.” Physical theatre is perfectly placed to engage the spectator visually, affectively and viscerally. Louise Wilcox, who plays Alicia in our show, calls this as a “vibration” or shared embodiment.
In our approach to theatre-making we have been formulating what I think of as an embodied dramaturgy of care, a theatre inspired by our concern for each other, for a caring relationship to society, and a vision of a better future. A dramaturgy of care promotes connectedness, exchange, and mutual respect. It can surprise us, and it opens us up to new ideas and points of view. But care also leads us to reflect on our own positionality in relation to others and the world. This is, I believe, one of its greatest strengths. Adopting a caring perspective in our work allows us to see future potential together, and to build each from our unique positions to a shared vision of hope.
Download a PDF of this issue »
Alison Ribeiro de Menezes is a Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Warwick, UK.
