Ghostly guidance: transgression as restoration and reorientation in Pacific theatre

Abstract

In this paper I will consider the trope of ancestral and ghostly guidance in Pacific theatre, specifically the way in which it shapes and directs acts and movements of transgression. Ostensibly, the very regularity with which spectral figures appear on the scene and disrupt characters’ schemes, through restorative humor, benign admonition or possessive intrusion, suggests conformity with values of tradition and community centered on the family, values that seem at odds with modernity. The central question then is whether this structural and thematic convention, if not merely gratifying a nostalgic longing, can amount to more than the realization of a general expectation of transgression in literature (defamiliarization authenticating aesthetic experience) and particularly in theatre (alienation challenging realism), and if so, in what ways it might be said to open literature (in the theatre), transgressively, onto the world of the everyday. Noting how the presence of ghostly guides and guardians in a range of plays from across the Pacific brings into view a liminal space (with past and present overlapping), I will seek to identify movements in word and action (spanning text, production and performance) shaped by moments of return and release that turn audiences, in the present, toward a time to come.