ABSTRACT
Recent years have seen a spate of plays focused on the workings of the criminal justice system dealing with sexual assault. One of the most dramaturgically innovative plays is Breach Theatre’s devised play It’s True, It’s True, It’s True (2018), which stages the trial of Agostino Tassi for the rape of Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi. The main characters are performed by three women actors who swap the secondary roles between them; Ellice Stevens plays the role of Artemisia as well as that of (male) judge, lawyer, and witness for Tassi. Stevens’ performance queers and destabilizes the limited role assigned to the ‘female victim’ in the criminal trial. The court system demands that the sexually assaulted female body act as a stable point of absolute truth; It’s True refuses this script. Stevens’ multi-roling, frequently nearly naked performance destabilizes the limited role assigned to the ‘female victim’ in the criminal trial, re-emphasizing the naked female body as capable of signifying in multiple creative and autonomous ways beyond the invitation to the sexual, or as a passive, instrumentalized object which must bare an objective ‘truth’ of sexual activity to the enquirer’s intrusive gaze.
