Title: Processing the Peace: An Interview with Teya Sepinuck
Abstract: In this interview, Teya Sepinuck, the Artistic Director of Theatre of Witness reflects not only on her first two projects in Northern Ireland, but also vividly illustrates her way of working by evoking seminal moments in her previous practice. Although, she has resisted attempts to systematise the Theatre of Witness process, preferring to see it as a set of principles rather than a fixed methodology, these principles have given rise to clear guidelines that have come to govern the process through which she works. As the interview illustrates, Sepinuck, a Jewish Buddhist, has no hesitation in explaining her approach within the framework of a humanist ‘spirituality’ that explicitly deploys Judeo-Christian terminology. She invites discussion of each participant's ‘prayer-life’ and positions herself primarily as a listener rather than an interlocutor. The introduction to the interview contextualises Sepunick's practice in relation to her previous work and other drama-based interventions in Northern Ireland. Concerns that the lack of critical distance between the tellers and their stories inhibits those who see it from freely engaging with it as they might with a fictionalised account, are also critiqued. In the interview, Sepinuck directly addresses the risk of the commodification of her work, explaining the safeguards in place to protect the participants, who have repeatedly asserted how beneficial they have found their involvement in the work to be. The sense of autonomy and empowerment that emerges from these responses represent a persuasive challenge to concerns that they are passive instruments of the Theatre of Witness process. Notes 1. Teya Sepinuck, ‘Living with Life: The Theatre of Witness as a Model of Healing and Redemption’, in Performing New Lives: Prison Theatre, ed. by Jonathan Shailor (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2011), pp. 162–79 (p. 163). 2. The irony underlying this ubiquitous euphemism was tellingly captured by the poet Damian Gorman when he described it as falling somewhere between ‘a wee bit of bother’ and Civil War. Damian Gorman, ‘Devices of Detachment’, in Words on Film, ed. by Peter Symes (London: BBC, 1992), pp. 5–12 (p. 10). 3. The participant, Jon, was a member of the Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army). 4. The RUC, Northern Ireland's largely Protestant police force which was replaced by the more integrated PSNI in 2001, on the recommendation of the Patton Report. 5. The participant, James, had been in the UDA, the largest Protestant paramilitary grouping. 6. See, for example, Tom Hennessey and Robin Wilson, With All Due Respect: Pluralism and Parity of Esteem Report No. 7 (Democratic Dialogue, 1997) <http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/dd/report7/report7.htm> [accessed 5 June 2012]. 7. Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles, ed. by David McKittrick, Chris Thorton, Seamus Kelters and Brian Feeney (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1999), p. 1214. 12. Transcribed from We Carried Your Secrets: A Documentary Film by Declan Keeney (Dumbworld, 2010). 8. Marie Jones and the Company, ‘Now You're Talkin’’, in Four Plays by the Charabanc Theatre Company: Inventing Women's Work, ed. by Claudia Harris (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 2006), pp. 1–54 (p. 6). 9. Ibid., p. 20. 10. Claudia Harris, ‘Introduction’, in Four Plays by the Charabanc Theatre Company, pp. i–liii (p. xxxv). 11. Theatre of Witness <www.theatreofwitness.org/#reflections> [accessed 5 June 2012]. 13. Carole-Anne Upton, ‘Real People as Actors – Actors as Real People’, Studies in Theatre & Performance, 31 (May 2011), 209–22 (p. 215). 14. Ibid., p. 216. 15. Ibid., p. 215. 16. Ibid., p. 216. 17. Email to authors, 20 May 2011. 18. Stephen Baker and Greg McLaughlin, The Propaganda of Peace: The Role of Media and Culture in the Northern Ireland Peace Process (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2010), pp. 96–97. 19. Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. by Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2009), p. 17. 20. At the post-show discussion after We Carried Your Secrets at the Waterside Theatre, in the Protestant part of Derry/Londonderry, one audience member said that he thought the performance lacked balance, specifically referring to his perception that five of the seven cast members were Catholic. Other audience members, including Unionist community workers from Nelson Drive and Irish Street distanced themselves from the man's comments during the rest of the Q & A, saying that Teya had tried her hardest to get Protestant participants and some had been involved in early parts of the process, but that it had been the reluctance of Unionists to participate that had held them back – a tendency noted in David Grant, Playing the Wild Card (Belfast: Community Relations Council, 1993), pp. 40–45. At The Playhouse, after a performance of I Once Knew a Girl (24 October 2010) one of the audience, after thanking the cast for their brave and accomplished performances, declared her unchanging belief that ‘Ireland divided will never be at peace’. 21. Interview with Victoria (participant in We Carried Your Secrets), Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 20 May 2011. 22. Email to authors, 31 May 2011 (original punctuation preserved). 23. Sepinuck, ‘Living With Life’, p. 165. 24. This interview took place on 28 November 2010 in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland. 25. James Thompson, for instance, notes that to ‘tell your story can become an imperative rather than a self-directed action’ in Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 45. Julie Salverson has identified a parallel tendency in Applied Theatre practice to favour and perpetuate an ‘aesthetic of injury’ in ‘Change on Whose Terms? Testimony and an Erotics of Inquiry’, Theater, 31 (October 2001), 119–25. 26. Robin was the member of the RUC who was presented on film in the We Carried Your Secrets. 27. A short film in which James, the former UDA member, recalled the death by drowning of a childhood friend was incorporated into the performance of We Carried Your Secrets. 28. Kieran was the only cast member of We Carried Your Secrets not to tell his story, symbolising the right of those who have experienced the Troubles to remain silent. 29. Fionnbharr's father, Bernard O'Hagan, a Sinn Féin councillor, was shot dead by Loyalist paramilitaries as he arrived to work in 1991 when Fionnbharr was only five years old. See Lost Lives, ed. by McKittrick et al., p. 1249. 30. Playback theatre is an interactive drama process, where teams of improvisers re-enact the stories of audience members. 31. ‘During playback performances … we find again and again that the stories respond to each other … and offer patterns for solution and transformation.’ Folma Hoesch, ‘The Red Thread: Storytelling as a Healing Process’, in Gathering Voices: Essays on Playback Theatre, ed. by Jonathan Fox and Heinrich Dauber (New Paltz, NY: Tusitala Publishing, 1999), p. 47. 32. ‘The conductor in more than anything else a conduit – for words, feelings, energies.’ Jonathan Fox, Acts of Service: Spontaneity, Commitment, Tradition in the Non-scripted Theatre (New Paltz, NY: Tusitala Publishing, 2003), p. 121. 33. David Grant, Playing the Wild Card, p. 39.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-08-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 5
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