ABSTRACT
This chapter comes out of practice-based research multimedia performance event The Trial of Harold Pinter. The dramaturgy of The Trial of Harold Pinter emerged from the location; it presented a narrative that connected to the audience’s interpretation at political, historical, and social levels. This chapter attempts to analyze Harold Pinter’s political activism reflected in his anti-war and anti-oppression literary works, questioning principles of liberty and equality, political commitments, and state propaganda, through performance practice-led research project that has grown out of this event. As Barlow’s description of the adaptive alarm model may suggest, in some threatening situations a response takes place, known as freezing or tonic immobility, which may take over other competing reactions. Accompanying this negative affective state is a strong physiological or somatic component. Indeed, freezing is a response caused by a feeling that there is no hope of survival or escape, as happens in car accidents, rape, or when being robbed at gunpoint.
