ABSTRACT
The atmosphere became stifling in the otherwise spacious hall as the performance reenacted the traumatic events of 1995. Reenactment has the capacity to translate the intimate, individual experiences of those who have experienced traumatic events and suffer from post-traumatic syndromes into the material and emotional lives of random spectators who have yet to understand and develop compassionate relationships with survivors. Opening the wounds of a community’s trauma and acting it out together with or on behalf of the community has the potential to mobilize the audience, educate, and engage them in healing and in constructing a hopeful future. Memories of traumatic events are stored in the body and mind in fragmented form, with only certain images recurring regularly. Trauma scholars have long engaged with the ways in which bodies can communicate and reveal traumatic stories that are otherwise suppressed and difficult to access through language only.
