Sycorax Revisited: Exile and Absence in Performance

Abstract

This essay uses my play Psycho Wracks as a point of departure from which to explore exilic dimensions of postcolonial experience and discourse. It also investigates the possibilities of feminist performance practices as countercanonical approaches that are both critical and recuperative. In creating the play Psycho Wracks, based on the figure of Sycorax, I was not so much interested in rethinking The Tempest or extending understanding of Shakespeare (though, as discussed later, certain postcolonial and feminist interrogations of his work were relevant to my aims) as I was concerned with abstracting and meditating upon her character as a trope and a springboard for allusive, parodic, and ironic creation.2 Rewriting Sycorax, I was primarily focused on resurrecting the exiled feminine or the exilic consciousness of the banished subaltern female, an endeavor built on a meditation upon absence, literal and symbolic. Mulling over the implications of her "difference" and her history (or lack thereof), I began imagining the possibility of speaking through and for her in performance. Numerous issues and questions concerning her genealogy, subjectivity, characterization, iconicity, and significance coalesced for me around one central question: what would she say, were she to stage a return?