Representation of Trauma and Recovery in Bryony Lavery's Play Frozen

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: Envisioning Mad Selves, language: English, abstract: Bryony Lavery's play Frozen consists of two acts and 30 scenes and was first performed by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1998. The three main characters of the play are Agnetha, an American psychologist, Nancy, a mother whose ten-year-old daughter Rhona gets abused and killed, and Ralph, a sexual serial killer who also murdered Rhona. All three of them can be regarded as traumatised characters and in the beginning of the play they are, literally, frozen. However, Lavery allows each of them to take a journey towards a melting of their frozen states. The term paper investigates how the concept of trauma is represented in the play, which in this case implies a focus on the illustration of the characters' frozen states and their 'melting'. Therefore I will first provide an overview of the concept of trauma and will place Frozen into the context of 'Trauma Drama', before I move on to a close reading of the play.