Dramatherapy

This chapter consists of reflections shared between Dan Baron Cohen, community theatre activist, and James King, community theatre lecturer. James worked with Dan on the 1992 Derry Frontline Threshold community theatre project, and Dan coordinated a project for James’s community theatre Continuing Education Diploma at Magee College, Ulster University, in 1993. These reflections are based on dialogues recorded in the summer, and edited in the winter, of 1994. As such, they span the transition of the ceasefire of 31 August 1994, which lends them both a sudden sense of history and poignancy.

In January 1992, a few of us prepared a performance art-piece to mark the 20th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. It included a row of thirteen bottles of milk across the top of the city wall, facing the Guildhall Square, with a length of string hanging down to the ground from each one. The bottles of milk represented the people whose innocent blood was to be shed when one of the artists (in the soldier’s role) pulled on the strings. While all this was happening, another performer would crawl along the base of the wall, representing the terrified marchers. Yet others, dressed as civil servants and Westminster politicians, would sweep the broken glass under a huge carpet.

The police arrived. Perhaps I had made a mistake in cordoning-off an area beneath the walls with a length of string to keep the public away from the crashing bottles. The demarcated area invited attention. But once we had explained to the police what we were going to do, they said they would have to stop us because of the danger to the public. They said that if one splinter of glass touched someone in the street, we could be sued for damage; they seemed as determined to prevent us from completing our journey as they’d been twenty years before. A 271strong confrontation followed but we held our ground. The performance took place, exonerating the past. It’s not just where the law lies, but where power exists.

James King

As you know, I was wrongfully arrested and detained last year. As we drove in tense armed silence to Castlereagh, I made three key decisions. I’d deal with everyone I met courteously and clearly. I’d speak about no one other than myself. And I’d question those who questioned me, gently and supportively. In this way, I hoped to reclaim some power and humanity for myself, take advantage of my workshop skills and my ‘difference’, and reaffirm that mutilated, imprisoned and uniformed humanity that was pressed against me in the back of the car. By referring to no one other than myself, I’d place no one else at risk. I knew that engaging in dialogue could be dangerous within a sophisticated centre of practised and highly resourced interrogation. But I also knew that dialogue did not remove my option to remain silent at any point.

In one interrogation, plain-clothes officers asked me to comment on a particular IRA killing. The photos they showed me reminded me of a documentary I’d seen where a RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] officer had angrily denounced the NIO [Northern Ireland Office] for having offered him £300 for his daughter (a member of the RUC too), who’d been killed by an IRA mortar. First I asked my interrogators whether they had known either the father or the daughter. Each of them had known one or both. Then I asked them to describe their feelings when they’d heard of the death. Both responded, though I could see one was still more affected than the other. Finally, I asked what prevented them from venting their anger at home on the people they loved, or did they release it on those they questioned, like me?

I quietly reflected on how hard it must be to lose a daughter, and described how the RUC father had trembled when explaining why he’d turned down the £300. Suddenly the room was filled by an awful cry, more like a groan, and then commotion, as the senior officer tried to reassert his authority and the steely nerve of their profession. But the culture had cracked. I quickly declared that such emotional responses were important and human. When the notes of that session were read back to me, the whole dialogue had been edited to a single line: ‘Baron Cohen was forthcoming in his views on terrorism.’

Dan Baron Cohen