Staging Perpetrators

: The Dramaturgies and Ethics of Holocaust Theatre

Abstract

This thesis contributes to the discourse on Holocaust theatre by offering a close analysis on cases of staging perpetrators. Building on existing scholarship, which has predominantly focused on the representations of victims, it examines how dramaturgies construct the images of perpetrators from page to stage and the ethical implications embedded in those approaches. The study analyses three plays that portray Holocaust perpetrators in contemporary British theatre at the turn of the twenty-first century: Julia Pascal’s Woman in the Moon (2001), David Edgar’s Albert Speer (2000), and Ronald Harwood’s Taking Sides (1995). The analysis adopts a hybrid methodological framework that combines textual and performance analysis, with the aid of an interdisciplinary theoretical framework across the disciplines of theatre, sociology, historiography, and literature. The thesis identifies three key ethical grounds that shape the theatrical representations of perpetrators: the dichotomy between perpetrator and victim, the risk of empathy and identification with perpetrator, and the problem of critical distance in making judgement. The analysis further reveals a shared dramaturgical pattern in which the fictional constructions often encode the playwrights’ moral judgements on the perpetrators. In contrast to the imperative of historical authenticity that governs the representation of victims, this fiction-as-judgement strategy marks a political intervention that both seeks accountability from historical perpetrators and complicates the very notion of justice. The thesis concludes by envisaging future research on stage presence in Holocaust theatre, where the ontological quality of theatre continues to be negotiated in the light of new trends in the field.

Date of Award	6 Feb 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Elaine M McGirr (Supervisor) & Mark A P France (Supervisor)