추모의 공연: 보걸의 「볼티모어 왈츠」에 나타난 치유의 미학

Staging Remembrance: Vogel’s Therapeutic Aesthetics in The Baltimore Waltz.

This paper examines Paula Vogel’s dramaturgy in The Baltimore Waltz that combines fiction and autobiographical material, arguing that her representations of the death of her brother Carl offers an opportunity for a communal ritual of remembrance and that the production of the play becomes a ritualized event in which the playwright fantasizes about the days before his death to deal with her survivor guilt. Drawing on the discourse of drama therapy, the paper further suggests that the play employs drama therapy concepts like aesthetic distancing, an alternative story, a transitional object, and role reversal to create a peculiar dramatic world of death, sexual desire, mourning, and growth. Anna’s imaginary travel narrative leads to acceptance and reconciliation, which are therapeutic effects typically pursued in drama therapy and Vogel might have imagined to obtain when composing the play.