The trial of the twelve

                THE TRIAL OF THE TWELVE


            The Trial of Shadows Against the Author



An essay on memory, the playwright’s responsibility, and the right of forgotten women to be heard



    “The stage cannot hold everyone whom silence has swallowed. But the seven women who have found their voices must demand an answer on behalf of those who were not even granted a tombstone.”



Why “The Trial of the Twelve” if there are fourteen?



The original concept was built around a simple equation: 7 + 5. Seven women whose voices the Author had already restored, confronted by five shadows demanding justice for those left outside his manuscript. Thus The Trial of the Twelve was born — a title in which twelve represented not merely a number, but also a sense of completeness, order, and an almost sacred circle.


Yet, as the work developed, something unexpected happened: the women themselves seemed unwilling to submit to the Author’s original calculation. The question of whom to include and whom to leave at the threshold of memory led to a new structure: seven heroines and seven shadows — 7 + 7 = 14.


I nevertheless decided to preserve the original title and its paradox. The Trial of the Twelve now recalls the Author’s first attempt to establish boundaries, while the fourteen voices onstage testify that memory refuses to be confined within predetermined limits.


Perhaps this is the first lesson the women teach their Author: even the number of those allowed to speak cannot be definitively determined by him alone.




I. When the Author Becomes the Accused


Every playwright who turns to History performs a first, almost imperceptible act of power: he chooses.

From thousands of lives, he selects one. From hundreds of names, a handful. From the infinite range of human suffering, hope, discovery, and defeat, he chooses those who will be given a voice onstage.

This choice is inevitable. Theatre is limited by time, the stage by space, and human life by the number of days one can devote to a work.

But what happens when a playwright, driven by the noble purpose of restoring the voices of forgotten women, suddenly discovers that he too has left some of them outside his work?

Does he have the right to decide whose memory should be restored? Where does the necessity of artistic selection end and a new, perhaps unintended, injustice begin? Can we fight oblivion without unconsciously reproducing the very mechanism we oppose?

Out of this contradiction emerges the idea of The Trial of Shadows Against the Author — a play that could become the centre of gravity of the cycle Women Forgotten by History.

Across seven independent works, the Author attempts to restore the human dimension to lives that History has preserved only in fragments, distorted, or nearly erased behind the biographies of others.

Enheduanna, Tar;m-K;bi, Damo, Aspasia, Xanthippe, Gorgo, and Sofia Kovalevskaya: seven women, seven immense distances between eras, seven attempts to hear a human voice through the thickness of centuries.

Each returns to the stage not merely as a historical figure, but as a person entitled to her own truth.

The Author believes he has completed his task. Seven stories have been told. Seven lives have found theatrical expression.

He is mistaken.

For the fall of the curtain does not mean the trial is over.



II. From Seven to Fourteen: The Architecture of Memory


If the running time of a performance does not allow all seven independent plays to be presented in a single evening, another dramatic structure becomes possible.

Thus the formula emerges:

7 + 7 = 14.

The seven women already brought to life meet seven shadow claimants — women who have not been granted a place in the Author’s pantheon, but refuse to accept their absence as a final sentence.

This is not simply an increase in the number of characters. It changes the very nature of the work.

The first seven represent the lives whose voices the Author has already restored. The other seven raise the question of those whose voices he has not yet restored.

Among the claimants are:

    Cynisca of Sparta, whose chariot teams won at the Olympic Games in a world where women’s public recognition was severely restricted;
    Theano, whose intellectual legacy remains difficult to separate from the uncertain traditions surrounding the Pythagorean school;
    Aglaonice, associated in ancient accounts with knowledge of celestial phenomena;
    Artemisia of Halicarnassus, whose strategic judgement was not followed by the ruler she advised;
    Hypatia of Alexandria, murdered amid religious and political conflict;
    Ada Lovelace, who foresaw possibilities in calculating machines long before the advent of modern computing;
    Rosalind Franklin, whose contribution to research into the structure of DNA demands an accurate and fair place in the history of science.

They belong to different eras. Their achievements are not alike. Some left documentary evidence; others are known chiefly through later accounts and uncertain traditions. Their lives cannot be reduced to a single biography or a universal formula for women’s liberation.

That is precisely why their meeting onstage can become more than a procession of forgotten names.

It can become a confrontation between different ideas of justice, legacy, recognition, and human dignity.

Cynisca asks why the system she managed to circumvent still determines who receives the crown of remembrance.

Theano insists that behind the name of a great teacher, another person’s thought may be concealed.

Aglaonice confronts knowledge with superstition and asks why the same discovery may bring a man glory and a woman suspicion.

Artemisia reminds us that sound advice does not become unsound merely because it was rejected.

Hypatia demands not only her place in History, but also the right to be a living, thinking human being rather than a convenient symbol of the conflict between faith and reason.

Ada Lovelace defends imagination’s right to venture into territories her contemporaries are not yet able to follow.

Rosalind Franklin demands not only recognition, but accuracy: justice must not become an excuse for creating another legend.

We are no longer facing seven identical accusations.

We are facing seven different ways of questioning the Author’s power.




III. The Trial Begins After the Curtain Falls



Imagine an empty stage.

The curtain has fallen. The audience believes the performance is over. The Author remains alone among his manuscripts, drafts, and corrections.

He is tired. He believes he has done everything he could.

At that moment, the first shadow appears.

She does not ask him to write a play about her. She asks why she is absent from his work.

At first, the Author tries to explain the necessity of choice. He speaks of time, the scope of the work, and the limits of human capacity. He reminds the shadows that no theatrical structure can contain the whole of human history.

But they are unwilling to accept his explanations without question.

They are not asking him to do the impossible. They are asking him to acknowledge the existence of those he did not choose.

Gradually, the central contradiction emerges: the Author has committed no offence by declining to tell every story. But he would be making a mistake if he treated his own selection as the definitive list of those worthy of remembrance.

This is where everything changes.

In the first plays, the Author restored women’s right to speak.

Now the women demand an account of how he has exercised that power.

The man who once determined the beginning and end of every scene suddenly becomes a character in his own play. His motives, decisions, and limitations are put on trial. His good intentions no longer exempt him from answering questions.

Thus begins a metatheatrical revolt.

But this is not a revolt against the playwright as such. It is a revolt against the invisible power that is always present whenever one person tells another person’s story.

Who speaks on behalf of the past? Who selects the evidence? Who decides that one life deserves an entire work while another is relegated to a footnote?

And above all: who holds the storyteller to account?




IV. The Seven Heroines Confront the Seven Shadows



It would be a mistake, however, to turn the stage into a simple tribunal in which the seven original heroines support the seven new accusers while the Author stands alone in the dock.

Such an arrangement would be far too comfortable.

The seven heroines must also confront a difficult question: do they have the right to demand recognition when they themselves have become the chosen few among countless forgotten women?

Damo may defend her mother Theano while recognising how difficult it is to separate historical truth from legend.

Gorgo may support Cynisca, only to discover that Cynisca refuses to be represented through someone else’s voice and insists on speaking for herself.

Aspasia may defend Hypatia without accepting that her fate should be used to condemn an entire era or religion.

Sofia Kovalevskaya may support Ada Lovelace and Rosalind Franklin while insisting that recognition of their achievements must not rest on exaggeration or simplification.

The trial becomes polyphonic.

The women do not form a unanimous chorus repeating a single moral lesson. They debate, contradict one another, defend one another, and sometimes discover that their ideas of justice do not coincide.

Some may demand that their stories be added to the cycle immediately. Others may question the very principle of selection. Still others may ask whether the Author is turning them into symbols at the expense of their individuality.

Another question then arises: is restoring a name enough if the person behind it remains invisible?

A forgotten woman can be forgotten twice. First by a History that failed to preserve her voice. Then by a playwright who brings her back to the stage but turns her into an illustration of his own idea.

This is one of the project’s most subtle dangers.

To restore the human being behind a historical figure is not merely to give her words. It is also to preserve her right not to conform to the meaning the Author wishes to assign to her.




V. The Tragicomedy of Human Limitations



The Trial of Shadows need not be a tragedy in the traditional sense. On the contrary, its dramatic nature allows tragedy and comedy to coexist naturally.

The Author’s predicament has an almost farcical quality.

He set out to do something good, only to find himself defending his right not to know every woman in History before an assembly of historical women.

He pleads the limitations of stage time, only to be asked why there has so often been time for kings, conquerors, and military commanders, but so little for women who helped shape the course of History.

He invokes the length of his manuscript. He is reminded that the length of a biography is no measure of the value of a life.

He attempts to restore order to the proceedings. Cynisca demands the right to speak first; Theano wants to know who compiled the speakers’ list; Hypatia asks why the Author still occupies the centre of the stage.

The comedy does not arise from mocking the forgotten women. It emerges from the collision between human self-confidence and the unforeseen consequences of one’s own decisions.

The Author is not a villain. He never intended to exclude anyone from memory. That is precisely what makes his predicament dramatically compelling: he cannot simply be condemned and sent offstage.

He must understand that a noble purpose does not make anyone infallible.

But neither should the shadows become flawless judges. They too may be mistaken, disagree with one another, or demand recognition at any cost.

Tragicomedy allows this complexity to emerge without turning the play into a sermon.

Gradually, the laughter becomes uncomfortable, because the audience recognises its own habits. We too choose what to read, what to remember, which names to speak, and which stories deserve our attention.

At some point, a question becomes unavoidable: do we all, without realising it, become small-scale authors of other people’s oblivion?



VI. Historical Truth as a Moral Responsibility



Yet this play has another accuser, one without a face: History itself, with all its imperfections, contradictions, and gaps.

A playwright who seeks to restore dignity to forgotten women cannot replace missing evidence with invented certainty.

If Theano’s biography is surrounded by contradictory traditions, those contradictions must be acknowledged.

If accounts of Aglaonice have come down to us through later narratives, her character may be shaped by those accounts, but they must not be presented unreservedly as an established biography.

If Artemisia demonstrated strategic insight, imaginary victories should not be attributed to her merely to heighten the dramatic effect.

If Rosalind Franklin’s story involves the unfair recognition of her scientific contribution, we should not add unsubstantiated claims about the circumstances of her death or reduce the complex history of the discovery of DNA’s structure to a simplistic tale of two culprits and one victim.

Artistic freedom does not require historical carelessness.

On the contrary, where evidence is scarce, the playwright can make the very absence of certainty part of the work.


Let one of the shadows say:

    “You do not know who I was. But why are you so certain you know who I was not?”


This line does not establish any particular historical fact. It opens a space for reflection on the limits of knowledge.

The Trial of Shadows therefore judges not only the Author, but also the ways in which humanity constructs its understanding of the past.

History does not preserve itself. It is transmitted, retold, selected, interpreted — and sometimes distorted.

Bringing a forgotten woman back into contemporary memory requires two efforts: an imagination capable of restoring a human presence, and an honesty that refuses to pass imagination off as documentary evidence.

These efforts do not contradict one another. They complement one another.




VII. The Last Page



How should the trial end?

It would be too easy for the Author to deliver a beautiful speech, explain his limitations, ask forgiveness, and be acquitted.

Such an ending would leave everything as it was.

A true ending must change the characters’ positions.

The Author must not only acknowledge his limitations; he must relinquish the claim that his choices are final.

Imagine a manuscript lying before him, titled Seven Women Forgotten by History.

He looks at the cover, then crosses out the word “Seven”.

But he stops. He realises that the new title does not solve the problem either. No single gesture can contain in one book all those to whom History denied a voice.

He opens the final page.

It is blank.

And, for the first time, the Author does not try to fill it immediately.

He leaves room for those whose names he does not yet know.

THE AUTHOR

I cannot tell every story.

I cannot bring an ocean back to life with a single pen.

But I will no longer pretend that no one exists beyond the pages of my manuscript.

CYNISCA

And you think that is enough?

THE AUTHOR

No.

THEANO

Then why do you continue?

THE AUTHOR

Because imperfection is no excuse for inaction.

Silence.

Hypatia looks at the blank page.

HYPATIA

Now you can continue.

ROSALIND

No. Now he must learn to listen.

The Author steps away from the table. For the first time in the play, he no longer occupies the centre of the stage.

The women remain.

Empty places open around them. They are not filled with new characters, because the play does not claim to bring the history of oblivion to an end.

The Author is no longer the judge. But he has not yet been acquitted.

The trial is not over.

And that is its only honest ending.




VIII. The Trial of the Author Becomes the Trial of the Audience




At a certain moment, one of the shadows may turn towards the audience.

Until now, all the questions have been addressed to the Author. Now the addressee changes.

CYNISCA

And you?

How many names do you know?

How often have you spoken the word “History” without asking who is missing from it?

No one answers.

Nor must anyone answer immediately.

The purpose of theatre is not to deliver a ready-made moral verdict upon the audience. It is to create a space in which familiar assumptions cease to appear inevitable.

A spectator may never have heard of Aglaonice. May know nothing about Cynisca. May know Rosalind Franklin only as a secondary figure in the history of the discovery of DNA’s structure.

But after the performance, it will be harder to mistake ignorance for proof that these lives were insignificant.

This is where theatre moves beyond storytelling and becomes an event of consciousness.

The Author does not tell the audience that it must remember every woman.

He invites it to reflect on how memory is formed and on those who remain outside its boundaries.

The forgotten women cease to be merely characters in a play. They become a question the audience carries away with it.




IX. A Standalone Play and a Shared Second Act




The 7 + 7 structure offers another advantage: it preserves the independence of the seven plays while bringing them together into a larger theatrical cycle.

The Trial of Shadows could follow each of the seven plays, becoming its second act. The accusation would then be directly connected to the story the audience has just witnessed: the heroine whose voice the Author has restored must now hear the voices of those for whom he has not yet found a place.

Alternatively, The Trial of Shadows could become the shared finale of the cycle — a standalone performance in which all seven heroines meet the seven shadow claimants.

A chamber version could reduce the number of characters and focus on a few sharply contrasting voices. The full version would allow for a large ensemble confrontation, bringing women from Antiquity into dialogue with women from the modern and contemporary eras.

Fourteen characters, however, must never become an end in themselves.

The symmetry of 7 + 7 is expressive, but it matters only if every character is essential to the dramatic conflict.

If one shadow repeats an accusation already made, her role must be reconsidered. If another introduces a new conflict, she must be given enough space to develop it fully.

The structure must serve the drama, not replace it.

What matters is not how many women appear onstage, but that, after their encounter, the Author can no longer return to his former understanding of his work.



X. Memory Does Not End on the Last Page



The Trial of Shadows Against the Author could become more than the concluding work of the cycle. It offers a way to question humanity’s habit of treating historical memory as something complete.

Every generation inherits the past, but never in a final form. New documents, research, interpretations, and works of art can reveal what previously remained in shadow.

Yet this is not merely a matter of new information.

Sometimes a name is known, but the person has disappeared behind it. Sometimes a woman appears in textbooks, yet her own voice has been replaced by someone else’s account. Sometimes her achievement is acknowledged, while the circumstances in which she accomplished it remain misunderstood.

To restore the human being behind a historical figure is to recover the complexity of her existence, acknowledge the limits of our knowledge, and refuse to turn her life into a convenient argument for an idea already decided upon.

An Author who undertakes this task cannot become an infallible guardian of memory. He too is limited by time, sources, imagination, and his own assumptions.

But acknowledging these limitations is precisely what makes it possible to move forward.

He is not required to bring everyone back to life.

He is required to remember that those he has not revived do not cease to exist.

He is not required to write about every woman forgotten by History.

But he must not mistake the limits of his manuscript for the limits of human dignity.

And if, one day, his characters demand an answer on behalf of those for whom he found no place, that will not be the playwright’s defeat.

It will be evidence that his work has grown beyond its original design and begun to live a life of its own.
Conclusion — The Torch Does Not Belong to the Author

At the heart of The Trial of Shadows lies a paradox.

The Author begins by believing he can restore the voices of forgotten women. By the end, he understands that those voices never belonged to him.

He can create a stage on which they may be heard. He can restore the human dimension of a historical figure. He can offer the audience a different way of looking at the past.

But he does not own memory.

His task is not to bring the history of forgotten women to a close, but to open a space in which that history can continue.

That is why the ending must offer neither the Author’s unconditional acquittal nor the shadows’ final victory.

They remain together before the blank page.

The Author knows he will never be able to fill it completely.

The women know that a single play cannot repair centuries of oblivion.

But neither side can any longer pretend that the problem has been solved.

The trial remains open.

This openness is not a weakness in the work. It is its moral strength.

Memory is not a monument erected once and then left to future generations.

Memory is a task every generation must continue.

And the Author, if he truly serves his idea, must be prepared one day to step aside, allowing the idea to speak in voices beyond his own.

The torch does not belong to the one who carries it. It belongs to the road that still needs to be lit.

When the curtain finally falls, the audience should not leave with an answer to the question of who deserves to be remembered, but with a more difficult question:

Do we have the right to consider our work complete if, beyond the light we have cast, there are still those whom we have not learned to hear?

Perhaps this is where the true trial of memory begins.

And perhaps it is also where the next play begins.




Thomas DJERAK