Interview with Stephan Wolfert on Shakespeare, trauma, and mapping affective theatre communities

Abstract

This conversation with the founder of the theatre-therapy network DE-CRUIT sheds light on the purposeful work that goes into shaping creative Shakespearean networks of affective affiliation among US veterans who participate in the program. Program participants create rituals, integrate Shakespeare's poetry with personal narratives to voice trauma, and, eventually, to communalise it with their audiences in a healing process. The transformation of audiences into witnesses is also discussed, as is the development of three new Shakespearean adaptations by DE-CRUIT: She Wolf, Make Thick My Blood, The Head of Richard, performing, respectively, gender and immigrant alienation, post-traumatic stress disorder, and attachment disorder.