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

This study examines the dramatization of trauma and post traumatic effects in two selected plays: The Sins of the Mother (2008) and Out of Time (2009). The Sins of the Mother is an American play written by Tony Devaney Morinelli that revolves around the plight of an Irish American family struggling because of the repeated pattern of the violent alcoholic mother who suppresses her daughters. In this respect, the play shows the effect of domestic violence. More importantly, the play emphasizes the cyclic nature of traumatic experiences: the daughters eventually inherit the mothers’ sins and repeat their oppressive behavior, as clear in Marie, the mother, and her daughters Ellen and Rose. Out of Time is an Iraqi play that deals with the inability of an Iraqi woman to escape her traumatic memories. Based on The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas LIosa and adapted by The Actor Studio, the play is focused on Zahra, the protagonist, who recounts her painful memories that underscore the misery of Iraqis during Saddam Hussein’s regime and even after its fall. Both plays show the effect of the traumatic past on the characters who are unable to forget, escape, or even cope with painful memories. The aim of this paper is thus to explore these traumatic experiences in the two plays and their dramatization on stage in flashbacks and in scenes in which there is simultaneous existence of the past and present through the lens of Literary Trauma Studies.