Questioning History, Nationality and Identity in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Credible Witness

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the Anglo-American playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker’s approach to the issues of history, nationality and identity in her play Credible Witness (2001), and to discuss the significance of these concepts in our modern world through a close analysis of the play. In Credible Witness, the playwright brings together people from diverse countries, such as Sri Lanka, Algeria, Eritrea, Somalia and Macedonia in a detention centre in London, and via the stories of these asylum seekers, and particularly through the dramatic encounter between Petra, a Macedonian woman with strong nationalistic pride, and her son Alexander, a history teacher forced to seek refuge in Britain for political reasons, Wertenbaker tries to demonstrate “what happens to people when they step outside, or are forced outside, their history, their identity” (Aston 2003, 13).