Rewriting Women and Trauma: Zinnie Harris’s This Restless House

Abstract

This article aims to argue that Zinnie Harris’s This Restless House, which is arewriting of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, is an attempt to give voice to Clytemnestra’sand Electra’s disregarded wounds, claiming that overlooked and/or suppressedtraumas demand to be communicated on stage, seeking justice and solace.The act of rewriting by women is also interpreted as an act of reckoning for thetrauma of the negation/misrepresentation of the female voice in the canon.Thus, rewriting a classical play functions on two levels, it helps moving femalecharacters and their traumas centre stage, and with the attendance of thelive audience the play experiments with the experience of bearing witness toand transmission of women’s traumatic stories. In the light of trauma theory,acting-out & working-through, hauntology, bearing witness and testimony,this article explores staging uncommunicable traumas and the transmissionof traumatic experience through retelling and re-enacting.Keywords: Zinnie Harris, This Restless House, trauma, acting-out and working-through,rewriting