'Her - she, this woman, me': the representation of subjectivity in Tom Murphy's Alice Trilogy

摘要

In this essay, I will discuss Murphy's exploration of the (un)bearable nature of an existence characterised by loss, and by longing, in his recent play sequence Alice Trilogy (2005). Positing the explicitly dualised characterisation in the first and third of these plays as a reflection of, and natural progression from, earlier dramaturgic representations of duality, I will examine Murphy's overt rendering of subjectivity, in Alice Trilogy, focusing upon the ways in which such theatrical duality explicates the silences which pervade the Purgatorial affective no-man's-land - or 'in-betweenness' - of mind, body, and soul.