Staging an Exilic Autobiography

Abstract

Expanding on the ideas of double wound (Caruth) and nostalgia (Aciman), this article discusses Natasha Davis' poetic autobiographic performances as examples of the terror and relief of repeating exilic pain. In the proposed reflection we explore the meeting points between the known and unknown in exile. We question how, by repeating and reconstructing her self-history, Davis has unconsciously re-invented the process of re-asserting her identity away from the exilic anxiety that culturally characterises the beginning of this century.

The questions we ask are:

1. How does the creative work of a theatre performer, through the repetition of trauma, reveal the logic of exilic subjectivity and the political potential of performance as a medium?

2. How can a traumatic exilic past be juxtaposed with an exilic artist's present experiences of nostalgia and longing for returns?

3. How does the mechanism of repetition work physically and psychologically for the performer (in rehearsal and on stage) and for the audience?

The form of the paper, an interweaving of two voices generated from a series of conversations between the theoretician of performance and exile Yana Meerzon and the practitioner Natasha Davis, resonates with our personal experience of living and making art in exile. This state of being, a constant act of repetition and return, is simultaneously the subject and witness of the trauma and the history.