Meg McLellan

My project’s chief aim has been to collate research for Powerhouse Youth Theatre (PYT) that will aid in their development of their theatre piece Tribunal. Originally they asked me to examine case studies of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in order for them to have an understanding of how tribunals and commissions have functioned historically. However, after sitting in on their first development meeting my research took a turn to look more closely at Peoples’ Tribunals in particular.

I have attempted in my blog to collate large amounts of research into small posts. Because I’m aware that this blog will be an ongoing project and is made for creatives and not academics I did not want the Tribunal team to get bogged down in academic research. In this way I was careful to keep it as clear and simple as possible with snappy posts. However, on some posts I included extra links so that in case they were interested in following up on my research they were able to. Unfortunately because I can’t share many academic articles that I can access myself from the university resources this was not always possible. It was a challenge to condense academic readings of these complex tribunals into such short posts, but I felt it was necessary and I hope I’ve struck the balance between historical accuracy and clarity.

In terms of my argument, I was aware that this was not meant to be my personal reflection but rather research that could be utilised by the whole group. My role in the Tribunal project is principally ‘researcher’. I am not an artist or creative who will be involved in the creation of the actual theatre piece beyond this research. I was also well aware that on the team there was already an academic and human rights lawyer, who were much better versed in the topics I was researching than myself. However, I felt it was important to draw attention to larger themes when they presented themselves and also to include relevant theories and arguments which I thought would be useful. I was particularly concerned with how these commissions and tribunals drew upon international law and different types of law and conceptions of justice. I put a large emphasis on the form these tribunals took and the role they saw themselves playing as I felt that these were the issues the team needed to scrutinise most closely in order to formulate their own performative tribunal. In addition, I wanted to be critical of these tribunals so that the team would be aware of potential potholes and criticisms of their own project and attempt to avoid these, in this way I have included criticisms of historical tribunals.

I went beyond suggestions of certain tribunals to include the Hawaii tribunal as I felt it was significant to PYT’s project in that it looked at Indigenous law. Similarly I briefly included discussions such as Agamben’s theory of the State of Exception and the Australian History Wars as sideline posts that I thought could usefully inform discussions and development. My blog ideally is attempting to prompt these discussions and draw connections between this project and the history of peoples’ tribunals. It aims to contextualise and in this way I was careful to research if there were precedents for the project, and thus included the most significant, being the Tricycle Theatre’s tribunal plays.

Wherever possible, I have included videos and links to short non-academic articles, so as to make the blog engaging and accessible to those in the team not academically inclined. I have also included a film that gained a great response from the team when they first saw the blog and was able to prompt discussion.

At the moment the blog is private at the wish of the company, so that it can be a forum for them all to contribute to throughout the closed door rehearsal process. We formally start work in December so I am hoping that in that period each member will begin to contribute to the blog alongside me as they have all been invited to be contributors. It’s my hope that as we come closer to the production date perhaps the blog can be shared publicly as part of the publicity campaign for Tribunal, but that will be at the prerogative of PYT.

— MEG McLELLAN

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