This study offers a historicization of the 2010s in British theatre with a focus on the representation of systemic violence, exploring productions that engage with concerns of protest, climate crisis, neoliberalism, racism and gender-based violence.
It offers a range of case studies from established and emergent playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Martin McDonagh, Anders Lustgarten, Lucy Kirkwood, Ella Hickson, Jasmine Lee-Jones, debbie tucker green, Zinnie Harris, and Travis Alabanza. Productions of their work in the 2010s are analysed through a framework of cultural theory, philosophy, and theatre and performance studies that offer insightful conceptions of violence and performativity.
Central to this book is the belief that theatre has the ability to depict issues of systemic violence in thoughtful and valuable ways, drawing on the medium's specific relations between creatives, texts, spectatorship and audiences to mindfully engage participants in the most pressing societal and cultural concerns of their time.
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This book offers a rich and transformative account of how violence in all its forms intersects with race and gender, politics and protest, and threads itself through most of the key British plays and performances of the last decade. Watson has written a remarkable book that helps us see our recent theatre in blazingly new light. * Dan Rebellato, Professor of Contemporary Theatre, Royal Holloway University of London, UK *
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This study offers a historisization of the 2010s in British theatre, with a focus on the representation within that context of systemic violence, exploring productions that engage with concerns of protest, climate crisis, neoliberalism, racism and gender-based violence.
Introduction (Camilla Whitehill's Mr Incredible)
'Staging the Systemic': Context and Methodology
Unspectacular: The Representation of Violence in 2010s British Theatre and Mr
Incredible
Overview
Chapter One: Violence (Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone)
Tea and Catastrophe: Churchill in the 2010s
The Necessary Difficulty of Defining Violence: Arendt, Sontag, and Escaped
Alone
Making Invisible Violence Visible: Evans, Giroux, izek, and Escaped Alone
Violence and 'Truth': Butler, Nancy, and Escaped Alone
Conclusion
Chapter Two: Performativity (Lulu Raczka and Barrel Organ's Some People Talk
About Violence and Martin McDonagh's A Very Very Very Dark Matter)
Theatrical Strategies and Reality-Making: Perspectives on Performativity and
Theatre
Injurious Speech: The Violence of Performativity and Some People Talk About
Violence
Oppressive Recitation: The Performativity of Violence and A Very Very Very
Dark Matter
Conclusion
Chapter Three: Protest (Chris Thorpe's There Has Possibly Been An Incident
and debbie tucker green's ear for eye)
(Ir)relevancy and (Il)legitimacy in the Public Sphere: Protest, Theatre, and
(Non)Violence
Nonviolent Progress/Revolutionary Change: Witnessing Black Witnessing in ear
for eye
Conclusion
Chapter Four: Climate Crisis (Ella Hickson's Oil, Duncan Macmillan's Lungs,
and Lucy Kirkwood's The Children)
The Violent Performativity of Resource Exploitation: Magic Realism and
Perspective in Oil
Dramaturgies of 2010s British CCT: Domesticity, Cli-Fi, Posthumanism, and
Materiality
Performative Taxonomical Violence: The Slow Theatre of The Children
Conclusion
Chapter Five: Brexit and Neoliberalism (Rose Lewenstein's Cougar, Alistair
McDowall's Pomona and Simon Stephens's Three Kingdoms)
Apocalypse and Dystopia: Theatrical Visions of 2010s British Neoliberalism
Empty Europe: Cross-Cultural British-European Theatre and Dramaturgies of
Violence
Conclusion
Chapter Six: Brexit and Racism (Anders Lustgarten's Lampedusa, Zinnie
Harris's How to Hold Your Breath, and Somalia Nonyé Seaton's Fall of the
Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier)
Europeanness and the Other: Lampedusa and How to Hold Your Breath
Racism and British Identity: Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier
Conclusion
Chapter Seven: Gender-Based Violence (Katherine Chandler's Bird and Jasmine
Lee-Jones's seven methods of killing kylie jenner)
The Performative 'Reality' of Gender-Based Violence: Fluid Realism and Bird
Breaking (Violent) Forms: Realism-without-truth and seven methods of killing
kylie jenner
Conclusion
Conclusion (Travis Alabanza's Burgerz)
Violence and Performativity in 2010s British Theatre: Three Contentions
The Power of Performativity: Showing Structural Violence and Burgerz
Concluding Remarks
Works Cited
Appendix: List of Performances
Bibliography
Index
Alex Watson is a principal lecturer at the Institute of Contemporary Theatre, Brighton, BIMM University, UK. His publications include articles for Theatre Notebook (2022) and Contemporary Theatre Review (2022), as well as chapters for Methuen Engage (2022), Contemporary Drama in English (2023), and The Routledge Companion to 20th-Century Theatre (forthcoming).
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