야엘 파버의 증언 연극에 재현된 역사적 트라우마와 문화적 치유: 『기다리는 여자』를 중심으로

Historical Trauma and Cultural Healing in Yael Farber’s Testimonial Theater: A Woman in Waiting

This paper explores Yael Farber’s A Woman in Waiting as a work of testimonial theater that addresses the historical trauma of Black South African women under apartheid. Based on Thembi Mtshali-Jones’s lived experiences, the play transforms personal pain into a collective memory through embodied storytelling. Using the metaphor of an inner museum, the protagonist reclaims her trauma by turning her body into a space of remembrance, where silenced histories are recontextualized and shared. Farber constructs a performative and ethical space where testimony becomes a form of cultural healing. The audience is not positioned as passive spectators but as active witnesses, drawn into a community of responsibility, memory, and solidarity. In this way, A Woman in Waiting reclaims marginalized voices and reimagines testimony as a political and cultural act. Through collective witnessing, the performance invites the rewriting of history as a living, ethical, and communal process.