Performing witnessing: dramatic engagement, trauma and museum installations

ABSTRACT

This article offers a discussion of two interactive museum installations, ‘Remembering the Children: Daniel’s Story’ at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and the main exhibit at the Humanity House Museum in the Hague, Netherlands. Both are examples of what I term self-guided dramas, taking the viewer/participant on an interactive journey through which they will experience a story or event that follows a dramatic narrative structure. These exhibits take as their subject the experiences and perspective of a protagonist forced into refugee status and turn the act of witnessing into a performative engagement for the museumgoer.

KEYWORDS:

• Museums
• story drama
• process drama
• holocaust
• refugees

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributor

Erika Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Performance at the University of Portsmouth and a former fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

ORCID

Erika Hughes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5120-7317