Refugitive and the theatre of dys-appearance

Abstract

This paper focuses on issues of embodiment specific to the experiences of an asylum seeker represented in the play Refugitive (2003). The play was written and performed by Shahin Shafaei, an Iranian asylum seeker who spent a period of 22 months in an Australian detention centre. The narrative of the play emerges through a conversation between the hunger-striking protagonist and his hungry belly. The unfolding narrative suggests an asylum seeker experiencing a disconnection from his body, or a rupture between his experience of body and self. Drawing on the phenomenology of mental illness explored by Thomas Fuchs (2005) and the phenomenology of pain outlined by Drew Leder (1990), I argue that the hunger strike depicted in Refugitive can be read as an effort to resist both the ‘corporealisation’ and the ‘disembodiment’ that can emerge in detention. By re-presenting the suffering of the hunger strikes in the theatrical frame, Refugitive speaks when the hunger strikers have been silenced. Adapting Leder's term, I argue that this is a theatre of dys-appearance; it is theatre that makes the invisibility of asylum seekers apparent.

Keywords:

• asylum
• refugee
• performance
• hunger strike
• pain

Notes

1. D. Seale (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Melbourne), personal communication with the author on media guidelines, 2006.