Teatro de la Resistencia’s GRAD: Autobiographical theatre and its limits

Teatro de la Resistencia’s (‘Theatre of Resistance’) play GRAD (‘city’), first performed in Villarreal in 2020, initially appears to be a rather straightforward autobiographical production about two Bosnian refugees who emigrate to Spain following the Siege of Sarajevo (1992–96). As the play progresses, however, the veracity of the autobiographical sources is brought into question, and audience members are tasked with offering truth judgements about what occurs onstage. This article argues that GRAD offers a fruitful counterpoint to what Silvija Jestrovic has termed hyper-authenticity – a phenomenon that occurs when onstage marginalized subjects, such as refugees and exiles, are tasked with continuously proving their authenticity to the audience (2008). Through unreliable narration, the protagonists of GRAD establish the necessary conditions for the audience to reliably fail to discern between true and false testimony. Consequently, the phenomenon of hyper-authenticity fractures, and what takes its place instead is a collective viewing model that might be classed as that of the unreliable spectator.