The Sacred Guest and the Ungrievable Sacrifice : communitas at the Theatre

Abstract

Based on Vazha-Pshavela’s narrative poem of the same name, Roland Reed’s and Synetic Theatre’s play Host and Guest premiered in Arlington/VA in 2002 and was remounted to high critical acclaim in 2008. In the wake of the terror attacks of 2001, it explores themes of hospitality, ritualistic scapegoating, and of grieving that which Judith Butler has called an “ungrievable life.” Reed’s play invites a discussion of how contemporary theatre in what is generally called ‘the global North’ investigates the culture of hospitality in the light of simultaneous border consolidation and a decline in national sovereignty in a globalised world. Drawing on Roberto Esposito’s discussion of the foundation of community as a relationship of mutual obligation and on Butler’s suggestion to redefine kinship as a relation of choice, the focus of this paper is on theatre’s sounding of the extent and the limits of hospitality in the face of migration that is often regarded as a threat, and on the theatre’s potential for creating hope.