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Vulnerability, suffering and children: Seven Jewish children
Conference paper

Vulnerability, suffering and children: Seven Jewish children

H. Grehan
2010 Conference of the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies (ADSA): Stripping Bare! (ANU Arts Centre, Australian National University, 29/06/2010–02/07/2010)
2010
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Abstract

For some respondents, Seven Jewish Children can be read as a meditation on suffering, loss and pain. It reflects on the dilemmas faced by adults as they attempt to manage their lives and the lives of their children. It offers readers and spectators an opportunity to witness the anxieties and uncertainties experienced by parents and families in times of persecution, war and conflict. The play opens up questions about the limits of childhood, about compassion, suffering and how that suffering might be both atoned for and accommodated. This paper explores the play and the various responses to it in an attempt to think about what theatre that intervenes directly into a situation of conflict might do for both participants and respondents. In the process key questions about responsibility, proximity and suffering are raised as well as questions about whether or not ‘stripping bare’ might work, and to what effect, in this particular context.

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