STAGING VIOLENCE: empathy and desensitization

During spring of my senior year at NYU, I wrote my honors thesis, Staging Violence: Empathy and Desensitization, in the theater studies department under the direction of Dr.Carol Martin. I examine the relationship between the growing psychological phenomenon of emotional desensitization (propagated by videos and images of war and brutality that are constantly being disseminated to our smartphones via social media) and how theatre makers approach staging violence of the past ten years. I ask the question: how can theatre makers stage violence in a way that can produce empathy rather than desensitization or traumatization?

I analyze four productions in my thesis:

Medea’s Children by Euripides and Milo Rau

directed by Milo Rau at NTGent (2024)

Request Concert by Franz Xaver Kroetz

directed by Yana Ross at BAM Fisher (2016)

Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

directed by Max Webster at the Swan Theater (2025)

Gloria by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

directed by Evan Cabnet at the Vineyard Theater (2016)

These productions function as case studies within the larger body of theater studies scholarship I am working within and thinking through. My work on this thesis earned me the Theater Studies Honors Award upon my graduation from NYU. If you are interested in reading it, you can find my honors thesis here.

WHY LESBIAN SEX SELLS: AN EXPLORATION OF SAPPHIC SEXUAL CAPITAL

While studying under Professor Alisa Zhulina in her Love and Capitalism Theater Studies class at NYU, I wrote my final research paper, "Why Lesbian Sex Sells: An Exploration of Sapphic Sexual Capital". In this paper, I explore why lesbianism is potentially the most hyper-sexualized and objectified form of sexuality in the media, and how (if at all) filmmakers can portray sapphic relationships without participating in the fetishization of them.

Drawing from Eva Illouz's seminal text: Why Love Hurts, and Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema," I expand these frameworks beyond a traditional heteronormative worldview, centering sapphic women in a conversation they have often been left out of. I utilize Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Colour and Celina Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire to assess how film portrayals of lesbian relationships can co-opt sapphic sexuality for male pleasure, or give space between the audience and the erotic image, allowing us to witness sapphic sexuality rather than engage in the exploitation of it. Find my paper here.