The Centre: a search for belonging

Abstract

The Centre explores the research question: How can the Ancient Greek tragic tradition expose contemporary experiences of asylum seekers in detention? Tragic theatre is a space to challenge societal and political motivations by either reimagining or condemning the current expression of humanity. The pre-polis construct of the hearth, or hestia in the Ancient Greek, can be viewed as an external manifestation of the innate human impulse towards connectivity and belonging; in other words Ancient Greek tragedy promotes a hestian notion that ‘to be is to belong’ [Brock, G. 2014. ‘Greek Tragedy and the Poetics of the Hearth.’ PhD Thesis, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland: 5]. This ontological positioning suggests that to be without home—without a sense of belonging—is to be without the fullness of being. In this way, a pre-polis reading of Ancient Greek tragedy positions homelessness as the most tragic condition. Detention centres, then, can be seen as a denial of home, a denial of belonging and therefore a denial of selfhood. The play merges the characters and storylines from ancient Greek texts with contemporary events to expose the current situation in Australian offshore processing centres.;