Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 51 No. 1, 2025.
Original scientific paper
The Trauma of the Theatre "Apparatus" and some Recent Women Directors' Attempts to Master it
Lada Čale Feldman
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
The article is less interested in theatrical representations of trauma, and more in the constitutive features of the theatrical »apparatus« which inevitably activate the original traumas of the psychic »apparatus«, such as, first of all, the split between performers and viewers, and then the social framework of theatrical interaction itself. With reference to Freud’s and Goffman’s indispensable approaches and terms, particularly interesting because of their debt to theater as a methodological tool, the discussion focuses on three recent plays of the Zagreb theater repertoire (The Taming of the Shrew at the Kerempuh Satirical Theater in Zagreb, Adventurer at the doors at the HNK in Zagreb and The Trembling of the Artistic Organization Fourhanded at the ZKM) in which various attempts can be seen to bring the mentioned traumas to light, to politically re-frame them or even to alleviate their neuralgic aspects, if not to end them. All three projects are brought forward by female directorial authorships, who in an effort to reevaluate the fundamental theatrical relationship – sometimes by »deviant« following of related efforts that are already written into the templates they deal with – at the same time thematize some traumatic aspect of the female experience: psychological, moral and physical violence against women, stereotyping of female sexuality, mother-daughter relationship, aging, or the devastation of the domestic as traditionally female space. The contribution examines the analogies and links between two aspects – thematic and structural – of dealing with the trauma of the theater event and tries to interpret the selected plays/performances in terms of how much they manage to master it with their innovative interventions.
Keywords
performer-spectator split; trauma; The Adventurer at the Doors; The Taming of the Shrew; Fourhanded; women directors
Hrčak ID:
330814
URI
Publication date:
14.5.2025.
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