Ethical Drift in Re-performances of Testimony
- Submitting institution
-
The University of Essex
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 3114
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- UK
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- December
- Year of first performance
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This practice-as-research project consists of three inter-related, full-length playscripts and subsequent performances, films and workshops all authored and directed by Lax between 2016-2019. These plays interrogate the collection, editing and recontextualization of testimony, and examine how testimony is valorised and repackaged by Amnesty International and other members of the rights-based corpus. Partnering with Amnesty International and widely distributed across activist and charity forums, the output builds on a decade of practical research into the ethical scripting and performance of other people’s testimonies and aims to motivate a paradigm shift across the human rights sector regarding the ethical deployment of testimony.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Annecy Lax’s research is informed by more than a decade collecting, rescripting and performing other people’s testimonies. Lax’s interdisciplinary research examines the role of testimony within the human rights corpus, overlaying this with analysis of the form and features of human rights testimony performed in theatre spaces. Experimenting with playwriting modes and dramaturgical approaches, Lax has developed a series of playscripts examining the ways testimony is valorised, (re-)scripted and repackaged by INGOs and charities. Lax partnered with Amnesty International to catalyse these scripts into films, workshops and interactive performances used for ethical training. Developed over 5 years, these pieces reflect a research journey of over a hundred interviews, observations and professional discussions to find the images, events and phrases that connect with audiences.
This output is composed of three iterative and interrelated works. Firstly, Protect the World™ is a collection of ten short plays operating as stand-alone pieces, or as an 80-minute play. The second part, It’s Not Enough to be Good, was written for young activists through AIUK’s ‘Rise Up’ initiative to explore identity and ethical motivation in advocacy settings, and is embedded within a 120min participatory workshop. The third play, The Game is On Again (running time: 120 mins), is interactive in form, asking the audience to make decisions for the characters and advocate for their choices.
Working outside conventional theatre spaces to connect with those who have given testimony, or who use it, Lax’s multi-component research output articulates how personal narratives circulate and take on new meanings in new contexts. Her plays ask if the ‘I’ of testimony can be reframed and replayed to prevent the testifying ‘Other’ being automatically collapsed into the assumed, proprietorial ‘we’ of activist communities.
The plays use the live and dialogic presence of the performer to re-sensitise audiences to their ethical intent.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
