Performing Rape and Sexual Violence on the Contemporary Irish Stage

This paper focuses on the staging of the female body in performances of rape or sexual violence – such as On Raftery’s Hill, Pumpgirl and Giselle. The paper seeks to interrogate the silencing of the violated body, and the resulting obstruction of a subjective witnessing to the violence. The enactment of sexual violence is particularly problematic because of its potentially titillating display; because the representation inevitably engages in a range of social and cultural discourses about sex and the body, and because of the possibility that the violence will be erased and replicated as a ‘something else’. This ‘something else’ allows the spectator to evade the ethical demands of witnessing by replacing the violence done to the body, with a rationale that it is only pretend, or is part of the text. The paper seeks to open consideration of staging solutions that render the rape visible to the spectator in the act of reception.