This essay analyses "Through the Wire", an Australian verbatim play by and about asylum seekers, in order to investigate both the figure of the performing witness and the function of performing witness in and through theatre. It suggests that while the characters, actors and spectators involved in the play are all "performing…

Testimony typically privileges singular subjectivity; as a means of representing psychological trauma, it is thought to bear witness to an individual's unique experience. This essay interrogates the question of singular subjectivity, arguing that a community can be the nexus around which witnesses "gather" the human and historiographical…

This paper focuses on issues of embodiment specific to the experiences of an asylum seeker represented in the play "Refugitive" (2003). The play was written and performed by Shahin Shafaei, an Iranian asylum seeker who spent a period of 22 months in an Australian detention centre. The narrative of the play emerges through a conversation…