The Role of Theatre in Invoking Radical Empathy
Episode Description
In this episode of Talking about Methods, Professor Linda Mulcahy talks to Dr Mark Phelan (Queen’s University Belfast) about the role of theatre in invoking radical empathy. He explains how playwrights and practitioners are effectively dealing with the legacies of political violence and traumatic history, and demonstrates their importance for public memory.
Sources Reccomended by Dr Mark Phelan
- Phelan, Mark (2016), Lost Lives: Performance, Remembrance, Belfast. In Post-Conflict Performance, Film and Visual Arts: Cities of Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 171-207.
- Video: Theatre of Witness: I Once Knew a Girl
- Smith, Anna Deavere (2019), Notes from the Field. Article/Podcast and Book
About the Speaker
Dr. Mark Phelan
Dr Mark Phelan is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at Queen's University and a Trustee of the Lyric Theatre, Belfast. His research is primarily concerned with the role theatre and performance 'plays' in ongoing processes of conflict transformation in the North of Ireland and how theatre has provided a public stage for dealing with the past and addressing issues of truth, remembrance, reconciliation, trauma, transitional justice, forgiveness and forgetting. Mark has published extensively on Irish theatre, photography and visual art with an emphasis on how the arts engage with social justice, contested history, and cultural memory.