Twenty-First Century Anxieties: Dys/Utopian Spaces and Contexts in Contemporary British Theatre

260 Pages·2022·5.064 MB·English

by  Merle Tönnies, Eckart Voigts

Twenty-First Century Anxieties
CDE Studies
Edited by
Anette Pankratz
Volume 32
Twenty-First
Century Anxieties
Dys/Utopian Spaces and Contexts in
Contemporary British Theatre
Edited by
Merle Tönnies and Eckart Voigts
ISBN 978-3-11-075819-1
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-075825-2
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-075836-8
ISSN 2194-9069
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022940355
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
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Table of Contents
Merle Tönnies and Eckart Voigts
Anger, Anxiety and Hope: The Complicit Realities and Engaged/ing
Communities of Contemporary British Dys/Utopian Theatre 1
Elaine Aston
“Something’s Missing”: Feeling the Structures of Project Neoliberal
Dystopia 11
Nicole Pohl
“To Watch is not Enough”: Utopia, Performance, and Hope(lessness) 27
Vicky Angelaki
Environment, Virus, Dystopia: Disruptive Spatial Representations 43
Paola Botham
Towards a Genealogy of the British Feminist Dystopian Play 57
Julia Schneider
Performing Utopia? The Contestation of Dystopian Space in Cecelia Ahern’s
Flawed Series 73
Trish Reid
Dystopian Dramaturgies: Living in the Ruins 87
Luciana Tamas
A Description of This World as if It Were a Beautiful Place: From Avant-Garde
Destruction to Dys(u)topias 103
Sebastian Berg
The End of Capitalism and the End of Democracy: Dystopian and Critical
Utopian Political Economies in an Age of Austerity 117
Dennis Henneböhl
Utopian Past and Dystopian Present? Nostalgia in Brexit Britain 133
VI TableofContents
Anette Pankratz
Civil Wars and Republics in Contemporary (Dystopian) Drama 149
Matthias Göhrmann
The Spectre of Utopia/Dystopia: The Representation of Anthropogenic Global
Climate Change as Culture-War Issue in Richard Bean’s The Heretic
(2011) 165
Leila Michelle Vaziri
“I Am the Abyss into Which People Dread to Fall”: Encountering Anxiety in
Dystopian Drama 185
Peter Paul Schnierer
Visions of Hell in Contemporary British Drama 201
Ilka Zänger
“Hiding from the World”: Dystopian Subjectivity in Martin Crimp’s In the
Republic of Happiness 209
Maria Marcsek-Fuchs
“Let the Doors Be Shut upon”… COVID-19: Relocating the Globe Theatre
Stage to the Net 225
Notes on Contributors 243
Index of Names 245
Subject Index 249
Merle Tönnies and Eckart Voigts
Anger, Anxiety and Hope: The Complicit
Realities and Engaged/ing Communities of
Contemporary British Dys/Utopian Theatre
In2018and2019,duringtheCOVID-19pandemic,theso-called“post-apocalyptic
sign-inwindowmeme”circulatedonsocialmediaplatforms(Luti).Onawindow
poster, abookshop advertised that the post-apocalypse had moved from fiction
to current affairs.
Fig.1:Source:Luti
Indeed, as a most unwelcome case in point,the workshop fromwhich this col-
lectionhasemergedwasderailedbyaglobalpandemicandhadtobepostponed
forayeartoMarch2021andthentookplaceinadigitalformat.Theeventitself,
therefore,becameembroiledinthedebateonwhetherstagespeculationsonfu-
turedystopia andutopia had not in the past few years acquired a new urgency
andimmediacy–somuchsothattheyhavebecometheworld’scurrentrealities.
In response to that,theatre and drama are placed in wider cultural contexts in
thiscollectionandreadagainstthebackgroundofcontemporarysocialandpo-
litical developments.The differentcontributions intersect thematically, andthis
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110758252-001
2 MerleTönniesandEckartVoigts
frequently results in interdisciplinary connections between literary,theatre and
cultural studies.
Echoingtheoverwhelmingdystopianrealitiesatourworkshop,VickyAnge-
lakinotesinherpaperhowcontemporarytheatrehasbecomerefractedthrough
the lens of the pandemic. Indeed, just like Angelaki,we will be forced to“read
back”earlierdystopianandutopianfuturesfromthevantagepointsmarkedby
our recent pasts of war and infection.Wemayask whetherthe theatreis not in
itself autopianspaceofcomingtogether in transient affectivecommunity,tem-
poraryemotionalassemblyandfleetingdialoguesoffeeling.Thecongregationof
theatre thus promises an inherent respite from the threat of complicity with a
toxicpoliticallandscapeinaclimatewhereintensifieddiscoursesoffear,insta-
bility and insecurity dominate the public spheres.
This question informs, for instance,the contribution by Elaine Aston,who
begins by making real-life dystopia the present condition for many people –
a condition not restricted to neoliberal Britain, but certainly prevalent there.
She argues that theatre is a space for building the “unhappy archives” intro-
duced by Sara Ahmed,therefore becoming a site of counter-hegemonic opposi-
tion. Aston then proceeds to show how – in detail – recent political theatre in
BritainadaptsRichardDyer’sformulaforthemandatorydepictionofabetterfu-
ture in popular entertainment. She demonstrates how Laura Wade’s microplay
BritainIsn’tEating(2014),debbietuckergreen’shangorCarylChurchill’sEscap-
edAlone(2016)encapsulatehopeinrecordsofwhatismissingincontemporary
neoliberal Britain. Estrangement plays a central role in the theatrical strategies
oftheseworks–disruptinglanguageuseaswellasspatialandtemporalpercep-
tiontomakeaudienceawareofuntenablecircumstancestowhichoneneverthe-
lessgrows accustomed quite easily in everyday reality.
While historically marginalized in analyses of utopianism and dystopian-
ism–whichtendedtofocusonnarrativefictionandfilminparticular–,thethe-
atreitselfmayturnintoaplaceofco-creatingalternativeutopianspaces,asJill
Dolanhasargued:“Utopianperformatives,intheirdoings,makepalpableanaf-
fective vision of how the world might be better.” (6) We conceptualize theatre,
therefore, as the theatron,the Greek “viewing place,” where audiences – point-
edlyunderstoodasgroups,as“temporarycommunities”(Dolan10)–maycatch
glimpses of future societies, co-creating a discursive location for enacting and
debating imminent hopes and challenges, often couched in the “negative”
forms of (“critical,” Baccolini/Moylan 2–3) dystopia or post-apocalypse. The
spectators’ immediate emotional responses are of central importance in this
process:“Theutopianperformative,byitsverynature,can’ttranslateintoapro-
gram for social action,because it’s most effective as a feeling.” (Dolan 19)
Anger,AnxietyandHope 3
Thus, our starting point is that the theatre is an inherently political space
and a political art form – it literally takes place within the polis (from politēs
“citizen,” from polis “city”).The roots of Western theatre in Ancient Greece are
inherently linked to creating an alternative spatiality of the City Dionysia of
the sixth century BC. From the 2000s onwards, dystopian theatre seems to be
a central form that has managed to give political concerns an adequate space
again – often in a literal sense, as the use of (fictional and stage) space can
play an important role in reaching this aim. The spatial aspects inherent in
both dystopia/utopia and the theatre as performative setting therefore merit
our special attention. As Julia Schneider demonstrates with regard to the very
different genre of dystopian Young Adult Fiction, performance can both realise
utopianpossibilitiesbycontestingdystopianspacesandmakeutopiagraspable
bygivingita“real”existencerightinfrontoftheaudience’seyes.Althoughshe
ofcoursedealswithfictionalperformancewithinanarrativeworld,theprocess-
esshediscussescanclearlybetransferredtocreatingspacesofresistanceonac-
tualstagesinfrontofrealspectators–asquiteafewothercontributorsdemon-
stratebyputtingtheutopianpotentialofdystopianspacescentre-stage.Indeed,
theintersectionsbetweenthegenres,formsormodesofdystopiaandutopiacan
be taken to run through our volume as a central motif. Paradigmatically, Ray-
mond Williams sees the utopian and the dystopian as constituting two sides
of the same coin (as Trish Reid – referring back to Raymond Williams – puts
it in her paper in the present volume,96), or – in the metaphor used in Elaine
Aston’s contribution – “two interconnecting threads of a double-sided fabric”
(11).Takentogether,thepaperscollectedherethenshowwhichspacesthesein-
terconnectionsopenupforactualplaysandplaywrightsgrapplingwiththecrit-
ical representation ofcontemporaryneoliberalrealityandthehopeofinterven-
ing in it in meaningful ways.
Utopiaasagenreismostoftenassociatedwithprosefiction.Wheneverstage
utopiasarediscussed,theargumentwillemergethatvisionsofaperfectandide-
alizedworldmaylackessential ingredientsofdrama –conflict–andmaythus
be – in the words of playwright Vinay Patel – “inherently undramatic” (qtd. in
Tripney). On the other hand, there have always been utopian plays in Britain
– although smaller in number – over the last centuries, from Margaret Cavend-
ish’sTheConventofPleasure(1668)toCarylChurchill’sLightShininginBucking-
hamshire(1976),HowardBrenton’sGreenland(1988)and(maybe,butthisisopen
todebate)EllaHickson’sTheWriter(2018).Recentdecadeshavewitnessedare-
markable increase in speculativeplaysthat have expanded fromthe traditional
satiresandarenowmostlikelytooffer“near-future”(Reid)dystopianscenarios.
Unsurprisingly,inpastyearsanotablefocusonclimate-changetheatreanddys-
topian plays has also appeared in the critical response to these emerging stage
4 MerleTönniesandEckartVoigts
engagements. At the same time, Mark Fisher’s influential concept of “capitalist
realism,”amongothers,hasexposedthepredicamentoftheutopianimaginary
under neoliberalism, as echoed in Margaret Thatcher’s and Angela Merkel’s
statementspresentingthecrystallizedrealitiesofeconomicsandpoliticsasalter-
nativlos.
In view of the dystopian dominance on the stage and the overwhelming
sense of crisis and defeat permeating recent political theatre, one overarching
topic is the widely disseminated claim made by Fredric Jameson that since the
end of the twentieth century Western capitalist societies have been unable to
constructively imagine positive social and political developments – “our inca-
pacity to imagine [a better] future” (288–289).Can we diagnose an absence or
a revival of utopian spaces in contemporary British theatre, a profound “dysto-
philia”? One standard response would be that utopianism’s lack of conflict
makes for poor theatre. Or are there traces of a renaissance of utopia, maybe
at least in theform ofthe “critical”(i.e. ambivalent)dystopiasnotedbyBacco-
lini and Moylan (3–4)?
Explicitly or implicitly, these issues are taken up in many of the contribu-
tions to this volume. Nicole Pohl’s paper tackles “ineffective” idealist utopia
headon.Indubitably,thepossibilityofautopianfutureembeddedinanostalgic
conceptualisation of the past (one that never was) has waned. Pohl, however,
surveys voices that articulate hope, from Ernst Bloch to Rebecca Solnit, and
drawing on Giorgio Agamben, diagnoses the re-emergence of utopia as a form
of ethical witnessing.While a utopian future rooted in hope and concordance
has been deracinated,we can only witness,wander, search, and practice “infi-
nitelistening”asaformofethicalwitnessing.InPohl’sview,asinDolan’s,uto-
pianperformativityandtheperformingartsingeneralcangenerateutopiande-
sireandhope.Shethushighlightstheradicalpotentialofutopiaonstage,seeing
performance as activism andtheatreas a laboratory where weexperiment with
livinginhell.Inthisway,evenperformancefailurecanbecomeawayofpointing
beyond the performance space towards the spectators and their potential for
agency.
Theterm“drama”derivesfromtheGreek“todo/act”afterall,sothatrecent
theatrehas attemptedto embracethe rallyingcries ofSolnitand others against
despair, even on the edge of doom heralded by the most recent IPCC reports:
“Arevolutioniswhatweneed,andwecanbeginbyimagininganddemanding
itanddoingwhatwecantotrytorealizeit.Ratherthanwaitingtoseewhathap-
pens,wecanbewhathappens”(Solnit).Thetheatronmayprovideaspacewhere
wecantestwhatitisliketo“bewhathappens.”Involvingthesharedexperience
of performers and audiences, it seems to posit itself as a performative power-
house of action in spite of “even the most dystopian theatrical universe”