Representation of Violence and Trauma in Contemporary Monologues

showing acute pain in the “in-yer-face” theatre of the 1990s, contemporary political
dramas very oen opt for a purely verbal, verbatim, evocation of violence. is
paper focuses on the representation of violence and the ensuing trauma specifically
in plays that use a monologue format. e range of contemporary monologues is
demonstrated firstly by analysing the media-popular, political awareness-raising,
straightforward personal narratives of the documentary monologue My Name is
Rachel Corrie (eds. Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, 2005) and Eve Ensler’s e
Vagina Monologues (1998), to the much more complex and audience challenging
Nine Parts of Desire (2003) by Heather Raffo, and Doug Wright’s Pulitzer Prize
winning monodrama I Am My Own Wife (2004) which questions the reliability of
its monologist and examines also the limits of the theatrical monologue as a means of
communicating trauma via verbal representation of violence.