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ABSTRACT
This article thinks through a practice-as-research exploration of facilitating active listening to the testimonies of female victims/survivors in Colombia, bridging a theoretical gap between applied theatre and performance studies by extending understanding of theatre’s impact in contexts of transitional justice beyond visibility to an affective register. Rebuilding relationalities torn by war requires collective healing to overcome widespread trauma, disconnection and apathy. By moving-with recorded testimonial performances, sharing visceral responses via Zoom, witnesses feel more implicated in histories of violence. Fomenting shared response-ability in this way – through listening from the body – offers a form of resistance to the normalisation of violence.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 I use the term testimonial performance rather than oral history here because the female victims/survivors engaged in this theatre project told their stories from the body, connecting movement with speech to make meaning from somatic sensations.
2 The process of transition from armed conflict to peace officially began with the signing of a historic peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC guerilla group in 2016. However, in the years since, armed violence has continued among dissidents of FARC, other guerilla groups, and paramilitary groups fighting for the control of territory and the drug trade (Blanco Borelli Citation2021). Moreover, there is a portion of the population that does not want peace if it means prioritising human rights over neoliberal development. The government of Ivan Duque, in office during this research, did not fully implement the peace agreement and relied on partnerships with big business and armed actors to recover territorial sovereignty, allowing the displacement and disappearance of civilians to continue, largely with impunity for victimisers (Humphrey Citation2018). The transition to peace and full recognition of victims’ rights to reparations remains an ongoing struggle.
3 The term victim is a category used by state and activist discourses around reparations to name those whose experience of violence is deserving of official recognition. For Anastasis, the ‘female victim’ identity brought them together in a process of acknowledging that they are much more than this identity. Still, it is a place to speak and move from that is not necessarily reductive when employed as a politically affective strategy.
4 Video documentation of this project can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/74reWFuQ-n4
5 I borrow the notion of response-ability from feminist science studies.
6 As Ruben Yepes explains, society has become callous to the suffering of others, suffering that would not be humanly possible to comprehend let alone empathise with if it were fully recognised (Citation2018).
7 In her discussion of ethics and aesthetics, Lynette Hunter, ruminates that certain kinds of performance operate ‘alongside’ hegemonic systems (Citation2014, 9).
8 The students gave informed consent and audiences were informed of the content and aims before participating.
9 I was not in the role of professor and the students were not evaluated, although they were invited to evaluate our process.
10 The fact that Anastasis were only present in a prerecorded format created a desire on the part of the students for future collaborations with victims in which the exchange might be more interactive – a proposal I later explored in 2022, as adjunct professor of an in-person ensemble creation class in the same program.
11 Lilia Yaya did not participate in Anastasis’ first play, Fenix, which also included other members of FASOL.
12 It is common in Colombia for applied theatre to be done completely pro-bono. Initially, none of Anastasis Corporal’s participants nor facilitators received renumeration. I later received summer research funding from the UC Davis Humanities Institute that helped cover project related expenses, but Anastasis declined the offer to cover any of their expenses. Despite Anastasis’ sense that they should not ‘profit’ in any way from the deaths of their loved ones, in 2021 the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas awarded a modest stipend to Anastasis and me for an online presentation of our work, which they accepted.
13 This proposal recalls the work of Patty Abozaglo on ‘how creative and innovative methodologies using dance and body movement contribute to sustaining social processes of peacebuilding with attention given to healing trauma, and restoring social fabric in the long-term’ (Citation2016, 350).
14 The Centre for Memory, Peace and Reconciliation is a memorial park and building in the centre of Bogotá that acts as a monument to life and human rights. Run by the Bogotá Mayor’s office, its mission is largely cultural, offering space and resources for artistic, pedagogical, and community-based activities, in collaboration with victims’ groups, artists, academics and NGOs.
15 During this research, in 2021, Colombia was shaken by historic protests. Young adults across the country, fed up with the continued assassination of community leaders, unequal access to healthcare and education, and the lack of support from the government during the pandemic, took to the streets in unprecedented numbers. They were met with police brutality, which led to civilian deaths. The students in our group felt conflicted. On one hand, they wanted to do something about state-sanctioned violence that was now clearly targeting students who engaged in peaceful protest. On the other hand, they felt a responsibility to their families to stay out of ‘trouble’ and go to work and school. They did not want to become ‘another statistic’ in Colombia’s human rights violations. Together, we explored how they could respond as researcher/creators, reflecting ‘on and in action’ (Contreras Citation2017, 7 – my translation), and engage the university community in action-reflection.
16 Bonnie Meekums describes this kind of ‘empathetic mirroring’ as ‘mutual witnessing linked to participatory sense-making,’ although ‘the understanding of another’s spontaneous dance is always only partial and is filtered through the experience of the person who is attuning to this’ (Citation2012, 62–63, 55).
17 Kinaesthetic empathy is often associated with mirror neurons and the ability for seated spectators to vicariously feel what performers feel, as their brains simulate the experience of movement observed on stage. Susan Leigh Foster’s work helpfully critiques universalism in discussions of kinaesthetic empathy and shows how kinaesthetic empathy is grounded in situated bodies, requiring negotiation across difference rather than presumed sameness (Citation2011).
18 Nichole Brazelton describes witnessing testimonies of violence as a ‘relational movement that closes the gap between existence as separate ‘I’s’ of teller and listener, to an existence of a ‘we’ capable of collective action and support’ (Citation2019, 155).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sarah Ashford Hart
Sarah Ashford Hart is an applied theatre facilitator/scholar from a Canadian-Venezuelan-American background. Her PhD dissertation analyses affective approaches to facilitating expression/witnessing within Latin American contexts of dehumanisation, enclosure and violence. Sarah received a BA in Theatre from Barnard College and an MA in Devised Theatre from Dartington College of Arts.