Staging New Wars: Representations of Violence and Conflict in Drama

Abstract

The theatrical portrayal of the individual and war in a period of collapsing peace endeavors, as well as the dramatization of survival vs destruction which became the driving forces on the war stage, are the main topics of this paper. The 20th and 21st centuries have regressed into the nightmarish perpetual and indefinite predicament of warfare. War has ceased to be the exceptional state and has instead become "the primary organizing principle of society," as Giorgio Agamben's claims that the exception has become the rule. Ulrich Beck's World at Risk and Mary Kaldor's New & Old Wars (2005) are important works on modern conflict and civilization, in which they track the changing face of war in the last half century.

              The new wars plays range from adaptations of Greek tragedies to dramas that portray civil wars, inner-state conflicts, and the politics of fear, to verbatim-based and documentary plays that try to depict the trauma of war and theatrical recreation of the process of testimony giving and public endorsement of mourning.

At the heart of this paper are questions like How can conflict be shown on stage? How do the plays investigate the role of sociological factors in shaping civilizations while simulating the sociological factors that lead to conflict and violence? In relevance to the age of globalization and its "New Wars" the paper also tries to demonstrate how these “ New Wars” necessitate a new kind of drama about war.