witnessing not as the solution but a form of amelioration. This is doubly the case when we consider the relatively small scale of the theatre audience—as Upton argues, theatre “does not constitute the public sphere in the way that mass media and particularly television can.”119 Indeed, the theatre of painful memory represents a potentially even smaller-scale market segment. Even a popular show, which tours and enjoys high market impact, cannot change the market structures—or the political and social inequalities beyond the memory marketplace. In fact, if we return to the idea that each “untold story” derives much of its popularity from consumers who constantly crave novelty in content and form, we can then understand why the rise in, for example, theatre shows that perform stories of injustice based on gender or racial inequality do not change the dominance of white patriarchal culture. Instead of actually changing the marketplace, these narratives create new niche market segments for audiences that want to consume those narratives—thereby expanding, but not fundamentally changing, the market.120 Segmentation has been a feature of markets for many decades, as a response to overcapacity that, in turn, creates a need for “market differentiation and for the discovery of new niche” market segments.121 In this model, then, consumer demand leads to the creation of market segments, rather than the decentralization of power.
Hope, Witnessing, and the Marketplace
Do all these limits make theatrical witnessing redundant? I point to all the potentialities of witnessing with a sense of optimism, and I note all the contradictions with a heavy heart. But overall, I believe that even in a crowded and consumption-driven marketplace, witnessing memory can make a difference. I love theatre, and I believe in its transformative power; I believe that we do have the opportunity for community at the theatre; and I believe that theatre can make us better citizens, as well as witnesses. Like Dolan, I see in the choice of audiences to watch live performances as a group “potential for intersubjectivity not only between the performer and spectators, but among the audience as well.”122 Out of that intersubjectivity may grow the grounds of real change. I offer two examples of effective memory plays as a way of gesturing toward the utopian possibilities of theatrical witnessing in practice.123
In By Heart (2015), the Portuguese theatre maker Tiago Rodriguez enlists the audience in a memory collaboration. Rodriguez invites ten audience volunteers to sit onstage with him, and to learn “by heart” one of Shakespeare’s sonnets: “Sonnet 30,” which begins “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past.” Though only ten individuals move onto the stage (each entrusted to memorize a single line) the entire audience is involved in this project, as we recite each line with Rodriguez and the volunteers, until at the end of the show, the full poem is memorized and recited. Interspersed with the repetition of each line, Rodriguez tells other stories of the importance of memory and witness: the story of the Russian writer Boris Pasternak, who was threatened with arrest, and who risked disaster by standing up at a public congress in Russia. Yet instead of giving a speech, or reciting his own work, all Pasternak said was a number, the number of the Shakespearean sonnet he had translated from English to Russian. And when Pasternak said “30,” the audience at the Stalin congress stood and recited the poem in Russian. This action, as Rodriguez puts it, “said everything. It said—you can’t touch us.” Instead, touch is mobilized in positive ways—through the solidarity of the audiences, then and now.
In By Heart, Rodriguez does not tell his stories of memory as abstract or historical parables. Instead, he involves the audience as active witnesses and cocreators of meaning. The collaborative witnessing achieved, through listening to stories and reciting the poem, has the effect of expanding the meaning of collective memory to acknowledge the trauma of fascism and also hope: the ability of people to unify in a common purpose and achieve something larger than the sum of their parts through the joint act of memory and witnessing. The memorization and recitation of “Sonnet 30” by the end of the show felt like an achievement, and every time I have recited it since, it invokes my memory of that act of witnessing, as well as summoning to mind the potential for audiences who want to remember to make a difference.
By Heart embodies and enacts so many of the principles of witnessing that underpin my optimism about theatre, and memory plays in particular. Yet it is in many ways a very different play from those discussed in this book: though there are stories in By Heart about oppression and sadness, it is a comic show. Rodriguez enlists the audience’s support through humor and the shared experiences of laughter, rather than tears. This is deliberate—indeed, one of the funniest jokes of the show is when a volunteer’s memory falters and his line is forgotten; Rodriguez turns to the volunteer and says “if you forget something, don’t worry—it’s very good for the performance; the audience always loves to watch failure.” The laugh of recognition (and culpability) resounds in the theatre. So it is perhaps salutary to note that this witness play relies for its impact on the joyful practice of creativity and collective remembering. Does this mean we were not witnesses, though, in the sense I have discussed up until now? Does witnessing only count if it is to suffering? I think not—the principle of By Heart is the recognition of the joint importance of attention and memory, and so while it may not ask us to witness current injustice, it does answer Vladimir’s painful demand in Waiting for Godot that the powerless be witnessed with compassion and care. And it also provides the audience with evidence of their own ability and power as witnesses, rather than simply as consumers.
By Heart revolves around making the audience visible—as a core part of what is being performed, and how that performance is witnessed. Another theatrical moment that made the audience visible came on November 19, 2016, during a curtain call to the US Broadway hit musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Actor Brandon Victor Dixon stepped forward on the stage and quieted the audience’s applause. Speaking directly to the auditorium, and deliberately going “off script,” Dixon spoke on behalf of the cast of Hamilton to address one of the show’s spectators: US vice president-elect Mike Pence. Dixon called on Pence, saying: “We, sir—we—are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. . . . We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”124 Dixon’s statement was greeted with a further standing ovation and went viral via traditional and social media. Clearly this was another moment when the audience realized their role as witnesses and the concomitant necessity for them to cocreate and remediate the theatrical message.
The next day US president-elect Donald Trump responded on Twitter: “The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!” The cast did not apologize. It is significant that the cast of Hamilton, as makers of a hit Broadway show, have a platform in the loud and crowded cultural marketplace that allows their voices to be heard, and that they choose to use this platform, and their symbolic capital, to speak up for the diverse others who are not enfranchised in the same way. It is also significant that they understand the potential of a history play to “inspire” future action, implicitly identifying the power of cultural memory to act as an ethical catalyst. Most of all, they recognize the importance of making theatre an “unsafe” space where radical things can happen. My point here is not just that theatre matters but that witnessing matters as an act in itself. Certainly, neither Pence nor Trump have showed any signs that this theatrical intervention was meaningful to them—but for the audience Dixon’s act of witness from the stage, and their witnessing of this moment, was meaningful. So while this moment does not demonstrate that theatre can change the political sphere, it does show how theatre can positively shape the witnessing sphere. And since this moment has now taken on iconic status, it has not only shaped cultural memory (both of Hamilton and of the weeks following the US presidential election) but continues to act as an exemplar of how artistic intervention, voice, and witnessing are vital in the cultural and memory marketplaces.
Witness plays call on their audiences to act as moral witnesses, and to assume the responsibility for collective memory
