Physical theatre to Promote Transitional Justice in Colombia: Workshopping and Performing REWIND

How might physical theatre, with its focus on embodiment and movement, broach the complexities of remembering and recovering the disappeared in the context of transitional justice initiatives following armed conflict? Can such theatre practice convey effectively experiences of both repression and resistance, negotiating the dilemmas of truth claims by deploying mime, music, and dance rather than expository discourse? Are there ways in which such an approach might be transformative for community audiences and those engaged in community initiatives? This paper seeks to address these questions by drawing on the results of an arts-based theatre project, REWIND, and related workshops run in Colombia in 2022 and 2023. REWIND was created by Ephemeral Ensemble, a London-based immigrant theatre group, in collaboration with myself. The ensemble’s methodology is to draw on real-life stories in the development of performances which are visually striking, highly dynamic, and thought-provoking. REWIND takes as its point of departure my research on Latin American memories of repression as well as elements from more recent protest movements. We premièred the show in Bogotá in October 2022, and toured to Cali and Trujillo (Colombia) and La Serena and Santiago (Chile). In April 2023, we will return to Cali to perform and hold physical theatre workshops with two groups: a team from the Cali prosecutor’s office charged with locating the remains of the disappeared from the Colombian conflict, and actors engaged in community outreach work based on theatrical interventions to enable post-conflict social cohesion. The objectives of the paper are twofold. First, I contextualise our approach in REWIND through the lens of feminist notions of care, which emphasize a respectful relationality and view care as a process rather than a single or defined act, and with regard to James Thompson’s embrace of theatrical affect as a means to awaken individuals to possibilities beyond themselves. Both of these theoretical frameworks allow me to connect the aesthetic dimensions of REWIND to transitional justice goals. Second, I evaluate this approach in the light of responses from public audiences who viewed REWIND, and workshops on the role of physical theatre in communicating suffering and resistance with professionals engaged in transitional justice initiatives at community level. The paper also draws on interviews with the members of Ephemeral Ensemble themselves, and their perceptions of the space which REWIND may have opened up for memory work in the wake of conflict.