The Theatre of Culpability: Reading the Tricycle’s Tribunal Plays through the Trial of Adolf Eichmann

Abstract

Over the last half-century, law, literature and human rights have turned repeatedly to testimony, seeking the truths of human experience amidst mounting epistemological uncertainty. The legal-historical event conventionally regarded as inaugurating this testimonial culture was the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961), which also generated (in Hannah Arendt’s critique) its obverse, an alternative paradigm, privileging the perpetrator’s interrogation over the victim’s recollection. The Tricycle’s Tribunal Plays (1994–2012) belong to this dissenting tradition, developing a forensic aesthetic designed to focus attention upon the speech of established, culpable parties. Scrutinizing the “spin” of official, Blairite culture, these plays provide a counterweight to the period’s much-feted articulation of diverse, marginal voices in British theatre and culture under New Labour.