https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872118772232 Law, Culture and the Humanities 1–22 © The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1743872118772232 journals.sagepub.com/home/lch LAW, CULTURE AND THE HUMANITIES The Theatre of Culpability: Reading the Tricycle’s Tribunal Plays through the Trial of Adolf Eichmann Benedict Alexander Feldman Department of English, University of Haifa, Israel Abstract Over the last half-century, law, literature and human rights have turned repeatedly to testimony, seeking the truths of human experience amidst mounting epistemological uncertainty. The legal- historical event conventionally regarded as inaugurating this testimonial culture was the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961), which also generated (in Hannah Arendt’s critique) its obverse, an alternative paradigm, privileging the perpetrator’s interrogation over the victim’s recollection. The Tricycle’s Tribunal Plays (1994–2012) belong to this dissenting tradition, developing a forensic aesthetic designed to focus attention upon the speech of established, culpable parties. Scrutinizing the “spin” of official, Blairite culture, these plays provide a counterweight to the period’s much-feted articulation of diverse, marginal voices in British theatre and culture under New Labour. Keywords verbatim theatre, Tribunal Plays, Tricycle Theatre, Hannah Arendt, anti-theatricality, banality of evil, Shoshana Felman, Eichmann trial, Blairite theatre, voice We live in a time in which tragedy is not an art form but a form of history. Dramatists no longer write tragedies. But we do possess works of art (not always recognized as such) which reflect or attempt to resolve the great historical tragedies of our time […] And as the supreme tragic event of modern times is the murder of the six million European Jews, one Corresponding author: Benedict Alexander Feldman, Department of English, University of Haifa, Rm. 1604, Eshkol Tower, 199 Abba Khoushy Avenue, Mount Carmel, Haifa, 3498388, Israel. Email: bfeldman@univ.haifa.ac.il 772232LCH 0 0 10.1177/1743872118772232Law, Culture and the HumanitiesFeldman research-article 2018 Article