The Ethics of Incomprehension

Maria Kizito

Source note

• Breed, Ananda. “Performing the Nation: Theatre in Post-Genocide Rwanda.” TDR 52.1 (2008): 32-50.

Two types of theatre for reconciliation

• “legendary theatre” – which “reflects government-driven information campaigns based on carefully-scripted history” (47). This kind of theatre is like propaganda, but for social “good”: it attempts to imagine a society in which ethnic factions and separate ethnic identities (Tutsi, Hutu, Twa – the three ethic groups that make up Rwanda) disappear under the myth of “one Rwanda”

• “grassroots theatre” – which “illustrates the potential of theatre for reconciliation. Survivors and perpetrators use theatre to unite their community; dancing, singing, and acting together have enabled them to forge new relationships, and to reconcile and heal themselves” (47).

Maria Kizito

Why do you think Ehn has written the play in such a cryptic form? What do you think he is trying to?

• “Maria Kizito doesn’t seek to explain the source of the genocide or to fix blame. It attempts to enter into the inner life of a perpetrator” (Ehn 178, e/m)

• “The play is meant not as an explanation – not even as a condemnation. … It’s meant to provide a space of time in which we can be with Maria. I try not to judge her guilt. I try to let us be with her in her guilt” (Ehn, qtd in Edmondson 70, e/m)

Source note

• Edmondson, Laura. “Genocide Unbound: Erik Ehn, Rwanda, and an Aesthetics of Discomfort.” Theatre Journal 61 (2009): 65-83. Online.

“Hallucinatory realism”

• “What interests me about Maria Kizito is how the play employs ‘hallucinatory realism’ […] which embraces the tension between poetry and fact, nightmare and reality” (Edmondson 69). 

• “We are never tossed a single shred of information concerning [Maria’s] background, information that might contextualize her actions in the tradition of realism and naturalism. […] [S]he hovers between detail and murk” (70).

• “Through fusing the materiality of fact and the excess of poetry, Ehn creates a glimpse of this incomprehensible yet specific world [of the genocide]” (71).

Gains + Losses

• ON ONE HAND, the strategy of “hallucinatory realism” allows Ehn to move readers and viewers toward the “unspeakable” and “unseeable” aspects of genocide. In other words, his poetics are a strategy to make what is invisible in genocide visible (very similar to Gambaro!).

• BUT, ON THE OTHER HAND, this strategy also risks provoking confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety for readers and viewers who struggle to follow along. In this, he runs into the same challenges as Suzan-Lori Parks in Venus: alienating the audiences who may need him most!

The ethics of incomprehensibility

Edmondson writes:

• “But what are the ethics of incomprehensibility, given that survivors must confront the forces of genocide denial?

• What does it mean to blur the lines between ‘fact’ and ‘poetry’ when the facts are so precious in an unmodified form?”

(quotations from web version of the article)