Fragmented Psyches and Devastating Testimonies: Staging the Post- Traumatic Experience in Iraq through Heather Raffo's 'Nine Parts of Desire' and Judith Thompson's 'Palace of the End'

Abstract

How to represent the trauma of others so that it can still affect the spectators, shock them into recognition, and, above all, prompt them to act against war – is a crucial question posed by both women dramatists, Heather Raffo and Judith Thompson, in their two prominent theatrical reflections on war in Iraq, namely, Nine parts of Desire and Palace of the End, respectively. The present paper aims to prove that the plays under consideration are attached to fact and research, yet they skirt the boundaries of what we conventionally consider 'documentary' theatre by shifting the emphasis from the mimetic to the poetic, from detached documentation to self-conscious performance and by changing the theatre into a ritualistic site of witnessing, mourning, and collective healing. By so doing, these plays mourn the stupidity of history, the irrationality of war, the tragedy of post modern condition, the disruption of normal life and the devastation of psyches. As such, the paper reaches the conclusion that Raffo and Thompson provoke our ethical responsibility for the vulnerability of the self and others ,and renew our shattered faith in humanity by achieving a radical re-functioning of the genre of documentary theater ..