Dramatising family violence: the domestic politics of shame and blame

This paper examines an education programme devised by the New Zealand educational theatre company, Everyday Theatre, which offers a fictional representation of family abuse. The paper raises political questions about the dramatic representation of the family as a social system, and examines how the boundaries between private feelings and social values are mediated by professional practitioners who work at the interface between State and family in an educational theatre programme. Drawing on the work of cultural theorist Elspeth Probyn, this paper examines the relationship between guilt and shame in considering the emotional impact of the disclosure of abuse. It also investigates the relationship between shame and the social idealisation of the family, and considers how the theatrical representation of shame can act as a catalyst for personal and social change.