| In this dissertation, I propose and apply a nonviolent critical approach for analyzing theatrical texts to several contemporary plays by North American and British women: Roosters by Milcha Sanchez-Scott, The Love of the Nightingale by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Lion in the Streets by Judith Thompson, and Rage is Not a 1-Day Thing: The Untold History of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts by Awele Makeba. I argue that taking up the position of the nonviolent spectator can challenge processes and representations of violence as natural, effective, glamorous, and inevitable. The nonviolent critical model I propose has the power to shape individual spectators' experiences, collective audience experiences, and to influence artistic choices by playwrights, directors, actors, and other theatre artists who seek to promote nonviolence in their work. Violence is contextualized and interrogated as a choice with significant, destructive consequences. Responsibility for reducing violence and effecting positive social change lies with spectators and critics, as modeled by characters within the fictional world of these plays. Nonviolence is constructed as active, effective, thrilling, and transformative.;Chapter two considers how dramatic form and structure might be used to challenge the myth of violence as natural, inevitable, and redemptive. I promote Brechtian strategies which interrupt linear plot structures and encourage critical thinking about violence as a choice with long-term consequences.;Chapter three explores possibilities for staging scenes of physical violence in ways that avoid eroticizing or glamorizing violence. Nonviolent choices are staged in dramatically engaging, often stylized, ways. The human body itself becomes a privileged site for nonviolent intervention.;In chapter four, the concept of the nonviolent witness is employed to examine the relationship between performers and spectators. Nonviolent witnesses accept responsibility for the astounding or traumatic events they observe. The nonviolent witnesses within the fictional world serve as models for the spectators, challenging injustice and effecting transformations through nonviolent choices. |
