Trapped in the past: trauma in The Sins of the Mother and Outside Time

The paper explores how traumatic pasts intrude upon and shape the present in two contemporary plays—Tony Devaney Morinelli’s The Sins of the Mother and the Iraqi play Outside Time—through the framework of literary trauma studies. Grounded in definitions of trauma as an overwhelming event that returns in flashbacks, nightmares, and intrusive phenomena (Caruth; Terr), the study positions the past as a dominant, often unbearable force that haunts individuals and blocks futures (LaCapra). It outlines common causes of trauma (violence, abuse, war) and associated symptoms (panic, fear, sleep disorders). The research question asks how trauma and its post-traumatic effects are dramatized on stage—particularly via flashbacks and scenes that blur past and present—and how these techniques reveal personal, familial, social, and political dimensions of suffering. The study’s significance lies in addressing under-examined contemporary plays from distinct cultures that nevertheless converge on the cyclicality of trauma and its intergenerational and collective transmission.

The paper situates itself within trauma studies emerging prominently after WWII, extending to studies on rape, abuse, domestic violence, and war, and their intersections with culture and literature (Ringel & Brandell; Davis & Meretoja; Farrell). Literary trauma studies investigate how texts represent trauma’s personal and collective impacts and the limits of ordinary expression (Marder). The work draws on Caruth’s formulations of trauma and PTSD, Herman’s stages of post-traumatic response (hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction), LaCapra’s distinctions between acting out and working through, and scholarship on cyclical violence and intergenerational transmission. It also incorporates theorists on flashback functions and staging—Turim’s taxonomy of flashback functions (frame/history, haunting, character’s past explained), Munsterberg and Pickering on temporal transitions in drama, and Lukács on emblematic moments. Additional lenses include cultural/collective trauma (Alexander; Erikson) and the political dimensions of trauma (Marder; Edkins), underscoring betrayal and silence within communities and families.

Qualitative, comparative close reading of two dramatic texts and their staging conventions through the lens of literary trauma studies. The analysis focuses on dramaturgical techniques—particularly flashbacks and scenes of simultaneous past/present (“mobile concurrency”)—to trace how characters’ traumatic pasts intrude upon the present. The paper examines dialogue, monologue, stage directions, lighting, sound, spatial arrangements, and kinesthetic cues to identify representations of PTSD symptoms (intrusion, repetition compulsion), cycles of victimization, and transitions between victim and victimizer. It synthesizes textual evidence with theoretical frameworks (Caruth, Herman, LaCapra, Turim, Alexander, Erikson) to interpret personal, familial, and sociopolitical dimensions of trauma in The Sins of the Mother and Outside Time.

• In both plays, flashbacks function as intrusive returns of the past, dramatizing PTSD symptoms and the inability to heal; they also serve as framing devices and explanations of characters’ histories and present behaviors.
• The Sins of the Mother depicts intergenerational domestic violence: Marie’s childhood abuse by her alcoholic mother (the Grandmother) recurs as Marie becomes an abusive alcoholic mother to Ellen and Rose. Flashbacks triggered by specific cues (birthdays, school, curses) reveal cyclical oppression and learned submission.
• Rose’s private monologue and flashbacks exemplify childhood coping via “flight,” continuing victimization into adulthood, and culminate in matricide as a paradoxical attempt to end the cycle—creating a new trauma.
• Marie’s flashbacks show the victim-to-victimizer transformation rooted in poverty, abandonment, and alcoholism, highlighting how unaddressed trauma reproduces oppression.
• Outside Time stages personal, cultural, and political trauma under Saddam Hussein’s regime. Zahra’s flashbacks interweave narration and enactment to expose women’s suffering, the betrayal by protective institutions (including her father’s silence), and collective wounds.
• Iconic scenes (the fiancé ordered to kill the fiancée’s brother; Basma’s honor killing) visualize collective trauma, shame, and communal silence, reinforced by red lighting, gunshots, choral lamentation, and spatial choreography that implicate community complicity.
• Both plays culminate in scenes where past and present coexist on stage, signaling unresolved trauma: Marie’s hallucinated confrontation with the Grandmother; the reappearance of the President amid ongoing lamentation in Iraq.
• The analysis identifies suggested paths toward healing: working through (distinguishing past from present, moving beyond acting out) and creating safe therapeutic environments away from traumatizing spaces; however, characters remain largely unable to enact these solutions within the plays’ diegeses.

The study demonstrates that dramaturgical strategies—flashbacks and temporal overlap—effectively embody trauma’s hallmark of intrusion, thereby addressing the research question of how trauma is staged and how its effects persist. The Sins of the Mother reveals the mechanics of intergenerational domestic trauma, mapping the shift from victim to perpetrator and underscoring the role of poverty, abandonment, and alcoholism in perpetuating cycles of abuse. Outside Time amplifies political and cultural trauma, where state violence and communal silence fracture social bonds and engender lasting shame and guilt. In both, the blurring of temporal boundaries renders the past “forcefully present,” showing why characters cannot cope, forget, or move on. These findings stress the significance of theatrical form for conveying complex trauma experiences beyond documentary methods, foregrounding the ethical and political stakes of memory, complicity, and the victim/victimizer dynamic. The suggested avenues for healing—working through, confession, forgiveness, and sanctuary—highlight the preconditions for transforming victims into survivors and social agents, even as the plays dramatize the difficulty of attaining such change under persistent violence and oppressive structures.

Through literary trauma studies, the paper shows that both plays dramatize persistent post-traumatic effects via flashbacks and the simultaneous staging of past and present, revealing how domestic, social, and political violence entrap characters in cycles of suffering. Despite the deaths of primary oppressors (the Grandmother; the President), their legacies persist in memory and social structures. The plays imply two routes toward healing: working through (moving beyond acting out by re-situating trauma in the past and opening to the future) and creating safe therapeutic environments (“sanctuary”) away from triggering homes and agents. Recovery hinges on survivor empowerment, renewed connections, and an active decision to heal. For Iraq, acknowledgment, confession, and collective learning from the past are prerequisites to national recovery. Future research could extend this comparative lens to other cultural contexts, performances, and audience reception to further map how theatre mediates individual and collective trauma.