Abstract:
This paper considers three plays that put writer-protagonists at the centre of their narratives of violence: Angie Farrow’s Despatch, Catherine Filloux’s Killing the Boss, and The Author by Tim Crouch. In each play, the author characters are imbricated in networks of violence through their writing, and writing itself is examined as a form of violence. As such, the texts provide useful examples through which to consider an ethics of theatrical authorship when it comes to depicting violence. My reason for choosing the plays is not simply for their depictions of writers, however, but also because of how they foreground sexual desire within the landscapes of imagined violence; in varying ways, each of the plays couples together the power and responsibilities of its author characters with sexual activity. The use of sexual violence as an act of power in war and conflict has been widely studied. I will draw upon some of that literature to make comparisons between sexual violence as a means of expressing power, and the power of authorship as explored in these plays in relation to sex. Whilst I in no way imply an equivalence between sexual violence and acts of writing, I do suggest that an exploration of sexual desire and sexual violence in relationship to conceptualizations of the power of authorship opens the way for an ethical-feminist reading of depictions of violence on stage. In particular, I consider the relationship between metatheatrical dramatic strategies and feminist theorizations of relational identity.
