Dramatizing War: George Packer and the Democratic Potential of Verbatim Theater

We would like to thank Anne McNevin, the participants of the Geopolitics and Visuality workshop at the University of Queensland, the journal editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their assistance in the production of this article. Mark would also like to acknowledge the University of Queensland's Graduate School Research Travel Grant and the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley.

Abstract

Times of war are often times when democratic debates are under siege. The apparent necessity to ward off an enemy and secure the nation's survival can trigger a state of exception: a partial suspension of crucial democratic rights and practices for the sake of national security. The purpose of this essay is to examine the potential and limits of theater to offer an alternative forum for public debate in contexts where freedom of speech is limited. To do so, the authors systematically analyze the content and context of one play: George Packer's 2008 award-winning play, Betrayed. Through their analysis, they make two key arguments about the democratic potential of theater. First, that theater has the potential to sidestep political censorship during a time of war. And second, that theater can give voice to a multitude of real characters and under-represented perspectives.

Notes

We would like to thank Anne McNevin, the participants of the Geopolitics and Visuality workshop at the University of Queensland, the journal editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their assistance in the production of this article. Mark would also like to acknowledge the University of Queensland's Graduate School Research Travel Grant and the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley.

¹ See < http://cultureproject.org/index.php?option = com_content&task = view&id = 64>.

² George Packer, “Betrayed: The Iraqis Who Trusted America the Most,” The New Yorker, March 26, 2007, < http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/26/070326fa_fact_packer> (accessed January 31, 2010).

³ George Packer, “Betrayed: The Iraqis Who Trusted America the Most,” The New Yorker, 26 March 2007, < http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/26/070326fa_fact_packer> (accessed January 31, 2010) See also George Packer (ed.), The Fight Is for Democracy: Winning the War of Ideas in America and the World (New York: Harper Perennial: 2003); George Packer, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).

⁴ George Packer Interview, Gothamist, February 1, 2008, < http://gothamist.com/2008/02/01/george_packer_p.php> (accessed January 31, 2010); Charles Isherwood, “Seduced and Abandoned by Promises of Freedom,” The New York Times, February 7, 2008, < http://theater.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/theater/reviews/07betr.html?ref = theater> (accessed January 31, 2010); Ken Bullock, “Aurora Presents Packer's ‘Betrayed’,” The Berkeley Daily Planet, February 4, 2009, < http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-02-05/article/32167?headline = Aurora-Presents-George-Packer-s-Betrayed-> (accessed January 31, 2010).

⁵ See David Dadge, The War in Iraq and Why the Media Failed Us (Westport: Praeger, 2006), pp. 31, 59.

⁶ George Packer, “KQED's Forum Program Hosted by David Iverson,” January 30, 2009, < http://www.auroratheater.org/index.php> (accessed March 4, 2009). See also Stephen Bottoms, “Putting the Document into Documentary: An Unwelcome Corrective,” The Drama Review 50:3 (2006).

⁷ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

⁸ Editorial, “The Road Home,” The New York Times, August 22, 2007, < http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/opinion/08sun1.html?_r = 1> (accessed January 31, 2010).

⁹ Packer, “Betrayed.”

¹⁰ Packer, “Betrayed.”

¹¹ Packer, “Betrayed.”

¹² Packer, “Betrayed.” Also see David Ignatius, “Will We Leave Iraqi Allies Behind?,” Washington Post, January 3, 2007, < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/02/AR2007010200942.html> (accessed January 31, 2010); Samantha Power, “Access Denied,” Time Magazine, September 26, 2007, < http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1665921,00.html> (accessed January 31, 2010).

¹³ James B. Foley and Lori Scialabba, “Briefing on Developments in the Iraqi Refugee Admissions and Assistance Programs,” US State Department, September 12, 2008, < https://digitalndulibrary.ndu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT = /merln& CISOPTR = 13187&REC = 14> (accessed January 31, 2010); Alissa J. Rubin, “US Expands Visa Program for Iraqis,” The New York Times, July 25, 2008, < http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/world/middleeast/25visa.html?_r = 2&hp&oref = login> (accessed January 31, 2010).

¹⁴ Anwa Damon, “Iraqi Interpreter: ‘Now I Have No Future’,” CNN.com, August 10, 2007, < http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/09/iraqi.interpreters/index.html> (accessed January 31, 2010).

¹⁵ Packer, Interview, Gothamist.

¹⁶ Packer, Assassins' Gate, pp. 6–7.

¹⁷ George Packer, “Introduction,” in George Packer, Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), p. xii.

¹⁸ George Packer, “The Lessons of Tal Afar,” in Packer, Interesting Times, p. 90.

¹⁹ Isherwood, “Seduced and Abandoned by Promises of Freedom.”

²⁰ Julianne Hiffenberg of Culture Project cited in Dexter Filkins, “A Reporter Finds Drama in Iraqis' Heartbreak,” The New York Times, February 3, 2008, < http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/theater/03filk.html> (accessed January 31, 2010); George Packer, “Introduction,” in George Packer, Betrayed: A Play (New York: Faber and Faber, 2008), p. viii.

²⁴ Intisar in ibid., 42.

²¹ Adnan in Packer, Betrayed: A Play, p. 11.

²² Adnan in ibid., 107.

²³ Adnan in ibid., 30.

²⁵ Laith in ibid., 90.

²⁶ Laith in ibid., 22.

²⁷ Adnan and Laith in ibid., 93–94.

²⁸ Dadge, The War in Iraq and Why the Media Failed Us, pp. 52–53.

²⁹ James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies (New York: Anchor Books, 2005); Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006); David Corn, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (New York: Crown, 2003); Danny Schechter, “Foreword,” in Dadge, The War in Iraq and Why the Media Failed Us; John W. Dean, Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George Bush (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2004); Raimond Gaita (ed.), Why the War Was Wrong (Melbourne: Text, 2003); Amy Goodman (with David Goodman), The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them (New York: Hyperion: 2004); Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abhu Ghraib (Camberwell: Allen Lane, 2004); Dilip Hiro, Secrets and Lies: Operation “Iraqi Freedom” and After (New York: Nation Books, 2004); Molly Ivins, Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America (New York: Random House, 2003); Danny Schechter, Embedded—Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the War on Iraq (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2003); Christopher Scheer, Robert Scheer, and Lakshmi Chaudhry, The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2004); Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004); Bob Woodward, State of Denial (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).

³⁰ See Dadge, The War in Iraq and Why the Media Failed Us, pp. 36–37; Michael Freeman, Freedom or Security: The Consequences for Democracies Using Emergency Powers to Fight Terror (Westport: Praeger, 2003), p. 1; Richard Ashby Wilson, “Human Rights in the ‘War on Terror’,” in Richard Ashby Wilson (ed.), Human Rights in the “War on Terror” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 26; Didier Bigo and Anastassia Tsoukala (eds), Terror, Insecurity and Liberty: Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes after 9/11 (Milton Park: Routledge, 2008).

³¹ Geoffrey Stone, “Liberty,” Democracy: Journal of Ideas 11 (2009), < http://www.democracyjournal.org/article.php?ID = 6664> (accessed January 31, 2010).

³² See, for instance, Carl Schmitt (trans. GL. Ulmen), The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York: Telos Press, 2003); Giorgio Agamben, The State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) for general discussion of states of exception and emergency powers.

³³ Dadge, The War in Iraq and Why the Media Failed Us, pp. 52–53.

³⁴ Dadge, The War in Iraq and Why the Media Failed Us, 33, 44, 52–53; Paul Rutherford, Weapons of Mass Deception: Marketing the War against Iraq (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 39.

³⁵ Packer, “Introduction,” in Packer, Interesting Times, p. xi.

³⁶ Derek Paget, “‘Verbatim Theater’: Oral History and Documentary Techniques,” New Theater Quarterly 3:12 (1987), p. 317.

³⁷ Jenny Hughes, “Theater, Performance and the ‘War on Terror’: Ethical and Political Questions Arising from British Theatrical Responses to War and Terrorism,” Contemporary Theater Review 17:2 (2007), p. 152.

³⁸ International Theater of the Oppressed Organisation Declaration of Principles, paragraph 9, < http://www.theateroftheoppressed.org/en/index.php?nodeID = 23> (accessed January 31, 2010).

³⁹ Packer, “Over Here,” in Packer, Interesting Times, p. 156.

⁴⁰ See, for instance, Hughes, “Theater, Performance and the ‘War on Terror’,” pp. 151–152.

⁴¹ See Justin Bertin, “George Packer Translates Interpreters' Tale,” The San Francisco Chronicle, February 11, 2009, < http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-02-11/entertainment/17187388_1_new-yorker-betrayed-iraqis> (accessed January 31, 2010).

⁴² Bottoms, “Putting the Document into Documentary,” p. 58.

⁴³ Hughes, “Theater, Performance and the ‘War on Terror’,” pp. 151–152; Donna Soto-Morettini, “Trouble in the House: David Hare's Stuff Happens,” Contemporary Theater Review 15:2 (2005), pp. 313–314.

⁴⁴ Packer, “KQED's Forum Program.”

⁴⁵ Packer, “KQED's Forum Program.”

⁴⁶ Marianne A. Paget, “Performing the Text,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 19:1 (1990), p. 151.

⁴⁷ Rachel Fensham, To Watch Theater: Essays on Genre and Corporeality (Brussels: PIE Peter Lang, 2009), p. 11.

⁴⁸ E.J. Westlake, “Mapping Political Performances: A Note on the Structure of the Anthology,” in Susan C. Haedicke, Deirdre Heddon, Avraham Oz, and E.J. Westlake (eds), Political Performances: Theory and Practice (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), p. 8.

⁴⁹ Paul Woodruff, The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 17.

⁵⁰ Paul Woodruff, The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 20.

⁵¹ John McGrath, A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre Audience, Class and Form (London: Nick Hern Books, 1996), p. 83.

⁵² Sellars cited in Edith Hall, “Aeschylus, Race, Class, and War in the 1990s,” in Edith Hall, Fiona Macintosh, and Amanda Wrigley (eds), Dionysus since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 196.

⁵³ George Packer, “A Democratic World,” in Packer, Interesting Times, p. 54.