NORTHERN Ireland remains a society in which the past is neither forgotten nor fully processed. Despite the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the psychological and emotional legacies of the Troubles continue to shape relationships, institutional cultures, and communal identities. Memory here is not passive recall but an active force. Memory reconstructs the past in ways that shape present meaning and future possibility, as Wagoner and Brescó¹ have pointed out. In Northern Ireland, this is evident in murals, commemorations, inherited silences, and the narratives passed – often implicitly – to younger generations. Pastorally and socially, individuals frequently arrive physically in one place while remaining emotionally anchored in another: the moment of a bomb, the trauma of a killing, or the pervasive fear of the 1970s and 1980s. Unintegrated memories occupy attentional and emotional systems, constraining presence, trust, and relational engagement. When memory is governed by unprocessed trauma, reconciliation becomes increasingly difficult. Both psychology and Christian theology recognise remembering as transformative rather than merely nostalgic. In Scripture, remembering is formative: Israel’s identity is shaped through remembrance of liberation, and Christians recall the Passion, death, and resurrection of Christ not as historical observation but as participatory meaning-making oriented toward new life. This article proposes that two distinct practices – Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy and the Walled City Passion – offer complementary approaches to healing memory in Northern Ireland. While neither is reducible to the other, examining their resonances illuminates how trauma-informed clinical and theological practices may together support peacebuilding, relational restoration, and renewed communal imagination. To this end, since 2022 Robert Miller and the writer Jonathan Burgess have presented an annual Passion Play in the walled city of Derry~Londonderry. Rather than use a single location, the Walled City Passion unfolds as a promenade performance, with actors and audience journeying together through the streets and historic monuments of the city, echoing the experience of Jerusalem itself. The Walled City Passion retells the story of Jesus’ Passion in today’s world. Key moments – including the arrest in the garden, Pilate’s interrogation, and Judas’ betrayal – are reimagined through a newly written script set in contemporary Derry. This script is written annually by the very talented local playwright, Jonathan Burgess. In this way, the timeless narrative of the Passion is brought into dialogue with present-day realities, challenging modern audiences through its enduring themes. As Derry and Jerusalem are overlapped, the production explores issues such as occupation and non-violent resistance, peace and reconciliation, and the role of women, betrayal and forgiveness. Each year the audience are guided by a central narrative figure; to date these have included journalists, a healed paralysed woman, Legion, and the guard who confesses the crucified Jesus as the Son of God. The Passion is an ensemble piece performed twice daily throughout Holy Week for audiences of about a hundred. Its themes are also explored through an accompanying schools’ programme, Unpacking the Passion, which uses forum theatre in advance of the performances, and through PASSION+, a series of seminars held on Easter Monday. These seminars place particular emphasis on peace and reconciliation and the growing importance of trauma-informed practice. Trauma, memory, and the body Contemporary trauma research shows that overwhelming experiences are often not stored as coherent narrative memories. Rather, they are encoded somatically—as sensations, emotions, impulses, and physiological responses—frequently outside conscious awareness.² Trauma disrupts not only memory but trust, agency, and relational capacity.³ When triggered, traumatic memory is re-experienced rather than recalled, activating survival responses even in the absence of present danger. This has particular relevance in Northern Ireland, where symbols, locations, colours, sounds, or rituals may evoke fear or grief without explicit cognitive association. Trauma is therefore not simply remembered; it is re-lived. These embodied responses shape both private experience and public interaction, influencing how individuals and communities interpret one another and imagine the future. Major evidence-based clinical guidelines recommend EMDR as a trauma-focused psychological therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder in adults, alongside Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.⁴ The Passion Play recognises that trauma is not simply remembered but re-lived. As a promenade performance, it requires the active participation of both audience and actors, intentionally overlapping the Passion narrative with the Maiden City, itself marked by the legacy of the Troubles. The Walled City Passion quite literally walks the Walls, overlooking both the Fountain and the Bogside. Its ‘stage’ has passed the remains of Walker’s Column, destroyed by the IRA, and in recent years has borne witness to the physical scars of rioting from the night before. Memory and the construction of the future Cognitive psychology suggests that the same neural systems involved in remembering the past are also used to imagine the future. Humans simulate future possibilities using fragments of past experience.⁵ When those fragments are dominated by trauma, the imagined future becomes constricted, threatening, or foreclosed. In Northern Ireland, this dynamic manifests socially in defensive narratives, inherited fears, and difficulty imagining shared futures beyond conflict. Trauma thus affects not only emotional wellbeing but the capacity to envision peace, trust, and reconciled relationships. Effective peacebuilding must therefore attend to the psychological terrain of memory as well as political and social structures. So the performance confronts those who attend with the question, “How would you have behaved?” Many have spoken of their sense of guilt at remaining silent when Pilate asks the crowd whom he should release, or at their lack of action when Jesus is struck by the guards. The play also exposes unconscious behaviours. One audience member described their shock when, at the opening of the performance, Jesus physically moved them aside. They had been standing in front of the actor portraying the paralysed woman, in a wheelchair. Having also attended the Easter Monday seminar, they reflected powerfully on how that simple action revealed their own blindness to the presence and dignity of the person in the wheelchair. We hope that in the coming years we will garner stories from participants of how attending the show influenced their thinking; already we have been encouraged by how both...
