Stage Hands

Abstract

The article examines the depiction of the disabled body in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus in light of modern productions. Although scholars and critics have discussed the symbolic potential of the severed hands in the play, none has considered the repeated material reconstruction of Titus's and Lavinia's hands by stage properties in performance. Both well-known productions by Peter Brook and Julie Taymor involve a near obsessive replacement of Lavinia's severed hands with ribbons, branches, or wooden hands. In so doing, these stage properties become "stage hands"—or theatrical prostheses—that seek to fulfill the audience's imagination of the body in its previously whole state. While Shakespeare's text presents the handless bodies of Lavinia and Titus as disabled avengers, such disabled capability—and culpability—is obscured in modern performances that "prop" Lavinia and Titus with theatrical prosthetics. The article considers the mutilations of Lavinia and Titus and their subsequent regeneration as disabled avengers, as well as the prosthetic impulses of Brook's and Taymor's productions, in order to more fully understand Shakespeare's complex treatment of disability in his early works.