Digital and Posthuman Trauma in Jennifer Haley’s The Nether and Jordan Tannahill’s Draw Me Close

Abstract

Twenty-first century theatre is becoming a place of fusion where technology and images merge to produce human emotional and psychological experiments and experiences (Bay-Cheng et al., 2010). In the digital age, representations of trauma have moved beyond traditional contexts of war and provocation to non-fashionable, algorithmic, and mediated posthuman experiences. This article examines the impact of digital and posthuman representations of trauma in Jennifer Haley’s The Nether (2013) and Jordan Tannenhill’s Draw Me Close (2017) and how memory, identity, and emotion are represented in cyberspace. The version that Bulmer (2017) puts forward in his critique and examination of virtual reality as an empathy machine is that digital trauma can be understood as the impact of emotions on those in whom empathy and intimacy are mediated by artificial information and communication. In Under land, Haley presents the psychological trauma of pervasive escapism and the way moral judgment and empathy are eroded by separation. In contrast, only in “Bring Me Closer” does he virtualize loss and grief, transforming the scene into a laboratory of human emotion and memory. Drawing on Carruth’s (1996) and Barad’s (2007) theories of trauma, this study argues that both plays articulate a recognition of the beauty of technological pain and suffering, in which suffering is no longer limited to humans but is transformed into the human-machine in all humans. This study contributes to the ongoing dialogue in trauma research, posthumanism, and digital ethics by examining and reframing the performance of trauma in theater through digital mediation.