Beyond the Fourth Wall of War: Theater and Therapy for Embodied Trauma

Beyond the Fourth Wall of War sheds light on forms of embodied performance that emerge in the aftermath of structural violence—war, displacement, and militarism—as individual bodies and bodies politic are shaped by communal disorders. As Elise R. Morrison argues that theater that addresses audiences directly by breaking the so-called “fourth wall”—which allows spectators to see but not interact with the events onstage—can offer embodied frameworks for reckoning with war trauma that move beyond traditions of illusionism and spectatorial distance.

Grounded in performance studies, this interdisciplinary study also draws deeply from digital media studies, peace studies, neuroscientific research in embodied cognition and trauma, and drama therapy. Through a comparative analysis of somatic, interactive methodologies in contemporary trauma-informed therapies, Morrison reveals the capacity of theatrical performance to model “somatic witnessing” and kinesthetic empathy and to cultivate communal practices of repair in response to state-sanctioned violence. Underlying this work is a broader inquiry into war’s performative nature, as participatory theater uniquely reorients spectatorship toward rehearsing “performative ethics” in representational and militarized “theaters of war.” Beyond the Fourth Wall of War makes novel interventions into discourses of contemporary warfare by extending the lens of trauma beyond the battlefield to civilian publics who observe conflict from a distance, yet remain entangled in its machinery.

Elise R. Morrison is Assistant Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at Yale University. She is the author of Discipline and Desire: Surveillance Technologies in Performance.