TY - JOUR
T1 - Primo (2004):The Performance of Traumatic Testimony
AU - Forsyth, A.
A2 - Paget, Derek
N1 - This article, Primo (2004) The Performance of Traumatic Testimony (7,000 words) in the leading journal Studies in Theatre and Performance, analyses the performance of traumatic testimonies, with a particular focus on Antony Sher's 2004 adaptation of Primo Levi's Holocuast Memoir, If This is a Man (first published in 1947). This commissioned article is one of six or seven that discuss issues surrounding the aesthetic and ethical challenges of "acting with facts". The article includes an analysis of the rise of the witness and testimony post Holocaust, and how by the 1980s Holocaust testimony crossed disciplinary boundaries and became more readily accepted as a form of 'aesthetic memory' (Kaplan) through adaptation or creative manipulation.
specialissue: Special Issue titled Acting with Facts
PY - 2011/5/1
Y1 - 2011/5/1
N2 - This article focuses upon Antony Sher's one-hander, Primo (2004), adapted from Holocaust survivor Primo Levi's 1947 memoir If This Is a Man. Mindful of the specific socio-political contexts and distinctive variations between the historical atrocities that have inspired and continue to inspire performances of testimony, it is useful to note that this discussion is confined to the exploration of the very specific ethical demands and aesthetic challenges of a work that is dramaturgically responding to a written and widely circulated canonical testimony of an atrocity in the historical past the Holocaust. Levi's memoir is based on his experiences of a catastrophic event situated within a specific and discrete period of history, and in this respect this discussion of testimonial theatre is in no way a definitive or exhaustive analysis of what has evolved, amidst the murderous and bloody conflicts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, into a definable genre; rather it is offered as just one example of a very specific approach to and analysis of a testimony of trauma in performance.
AB - This article focuses upon Antony Sher's one-hander, Primo (2004), adapted from Holocaust survivor Primo Levi's 1947 memoir If This Is a Man. Mindful of the specific socio-political contexts and distinctive variations between the historical atrocities that have inspired and continue to inspire performances of testimony, it is useful to note that this discussion is confined to the exploration of the very specific ethical demands and aesthetic challenges of a work that is dramaturgically responding to a written and widely circulated canonical testimony of an atrocity in the historical past the Holocaust. Levi's memoir is based on his experiences of a catastrophic event situated within a specific and discrete period of history, and in this respect this discussion of testimonial theatre is in no way a definitive or exhaustive analysis of what has evolved, amidst the murderous and bloody conflicts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, into a definable genre; rather it is offered as just one example of a very specific approach to and analysis of a testimony of trauma in performance.
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/2160/8491
U2 - 10.1386/stap.31.2.153_1
DO - 10.1386/stap.31.2.153_1
M3 - Special Issue
SN - 1468-2761
VL - 31
SP - 153
EP - 165
JO - Studies in Theatre and Performance
JF - Studies in Theatre and Performance
IS - 2
ER -
