How To Survive a Crisis: Forming a New Self in Zinnie Harris’s How to Hold Your Breath (2015)
Abstract
The economic crisis of 2007-2009, a financially devastating event that encircled the globe, prompted British playwrights to turn their theatrical gaze toward the world of finance, a topic not usually at the forefront of theatrical productions. Within a five-year span, a myriad of plays inspired by the Great Recession premiered, including David Hare’s The Power of Yes (2009), Lucy Prebble’s Enron (2009), Laura Wade’s Posh (2010), Clare Duffy’s Money: The Game Show (2013), and Tim Price’s Protest Song (2014). Hovering just outside this group of plays is Zinnie Harris’s How to Hold Your Breath (2015), but unlike the plays of her peers which are invested in the contemporary crisis of the day, or in the case of Enron, recent history, her play explores a not far away future, where an immediate, cataclysmic crisis ravages Europe over the space of a weekend. How to Hold Your Breath impresses the audience by its extreme, experimental, personal, and devastating aesthetics. Zinnie Harris’s dramatic peers’ plays are distanced from those sheer moments of financial terror and uncertainty in the spring, summer and fall of 2008 where everything seemed to be tottering on the brink of an economic cataclysm. They examine the moments before, trying to explain how it all happened, like Hare and Duffy’s work, or examine the moments after, looking at the debilitating impacts of policies put in place to emerge from the crisis, like Price’s take on the Occupy movement. Others ensconce themselves in the world of those completely unaffected by the crisis, like the spoiled young men protected in the comfortable web of being a 1%er as in Laura Wade’s Posh. On the contrary, faced with an almost instantaneous collapse of the financial systems in Europe, Harris’s main character Dana, who is her response to the canonical Everyman character, has to make a choice because her self-interested value system no longer is a viable option in this new world. A change must be made. In doing so, she has to decide who she will become in the face of this crisis. How will she now act? What choices will she make in the face of such an overwhelming situation? In essence, the question of “Who do you become?” is an essential and oft returned to question for Harris, as she challenges her audiences to consider the ramifications of an immediate disruption to one’s life and the lasting effect it will have on one’s identity. Considering the globe is concurrently struggling to deal with a cataclysmic economic collapse and a medical pandemic, Harris’s question is, unfortunately, presciently apt.
Abstract
The economic crisis of 2007-2009, a financially devastating event that encircled the globe, prompted British playwrights to turn their theatrical gaze toward the world of finance, a topic not usually at the forefront of theatrical productions. Within a five-year span, a myriad of plays inspired by the Great Recession premiered, including David Hare’s The Power of Yes (2009), Lucy Prebble’s Enron (2009), Laura Wade’s Posh (2010), Clare Duffy’s Money: The Game Show (2013), and Tim Price’s Protest Song (2014). Hovering just outside this group of plays is Zinnie Harris’s How to Hold Your Breath (2015), but unlike the plays of her peers which are invested in the contemporary crisis of the day, or in the case of Enron, recent history, her play explores a not far away future, where an immediate, cataclysmic crisis ravages Europe over the space of a weekend. How to Hold Your Breath impresses the audience by its extreme, experimental, personal, and devastating aesthetics. Zinnie Harris’s dramatic peers’ plays are distanced from those sheer moments of financial terror and uncertainty in the spring, summer and fall of 2008 where everything seemed to be tottering on the brink of an economic cataclysm. They examine the moments before, trying to explain how it all happened, like Hare and Duffy’s work, or examine the moments after, looking at the debilitating impacts of policies put in place to emerge from the crisis, like Price’s take on the Occupy movement. Others ensconce themselves in the world of those completely unaffected by the crisis, like the spoiled young men protected in the comfortable web of being a 1%er as in Laura Wade’s Posh. On the contrary, faced with an almost instantaneous collapse of the financial systems in Europe, Harris’s main character Dana, who is her response to the canonical Everyman character, has to make a choice because her self-interested value system no longer is a viable option in this new world. A change must be made. In doing so, she has to decide who she will become in the face of this crisis. How will she now act? What choices will she make in the face of such an overwhelming situation? In essence, the question of “Who do you become?” is an essential and oft returned to question for Harris, as she challenges her audiences to consider the ramifications of an immediate disruption to one’s life and the lasting effect it will have on one’s identity. Considering the globe is concurrently struggling to deal with a cataclysmic economic collapse and a medical pandemic, Harris’s question is, unfortunately, presciently apt.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Table of Contents VII
- Introduction: “Are We Not Over That?” 1
-
I Ecodramaturgies and Global Crisis
- Population Concerns, Reproductive Justice, and Gendered Perspectives in Florence Keith-Roach’s Eggs (2015), Vivienne Franzmann’s Bodies (2017) and Maud Dromgoole’s 3 Billion Seconds (2018) 9
- Sexual and Gender-Based Violence on Female Bodies: Ecofeminism in Lucy Kirkwood’s Maryland (2021) and Ellie Kendrick’s and RashDash’s Hole (2018) 35
- Lucy Prebble’s Enron (2009): The Financial Crisis as Theatrical Spectacle in the Era of Liquid Modernity 57
- How To Survive a Crisis: Forming a New Self in Zinnie Harris’s How to Hold Your Breath (2015) 75
-
II The Politics of Intimacy
- Ella Hickson’s ANNA (2019) and Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes (2017): Staging the Female Body Electric 91
- debbie tucker green’s ‘troumatic’ dramaturgy 111
- “Who Gets to Speak and How?”: Staging Autofiction in Debris Stevenson’s Poet in da Corner (2018) and Ella Hickson’s The Writer (2018) 131
-
III Experimenting with Forms
- “I Want the World to Change Shape”: Form and Politics in Ella Hickson’s The Writer (2018) 151
- Challenging Realism: The Confines of Domesticity in Morna Pearson’s Plays 171
- Alice Birch – A Poet in the Theatre 191
- Alecky Blythe and “Headphone Verbatim”: a Study of The Girlfriend Experience (2008) 205
-
IV In Conversation with…
- Feeling a Responsibility to Art: An Interview with Ella Hickson 225
- The Gordian Knots of Theatre: An Interview with Lucy Kirkwood by Elisabeth Angel-Perez and Aloysia Rousseau 239
- Notes on Contributors 247
- Index of playwrights, theatre practitioners and key concepts 251
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Acknowledgements V
- Table of Contents VII
- Introduction: “Are We Not Over That?” 1
-
I Ecodramaturgies and Global Crisis
- Population Concerns, Reproductive Justice, and Gendered Perspectives in Florence Keith-Roach’s Eggs (2015), Vivienne Franzmann’s Bodies (2017) and Maud Dromgoole’s 3 Billion Seconds (2018) 9
- Sexual and Gender-Based Violence on Female Bodies: Ecofeminism in Lucy Kirkwood’s Maryland (2021) and Ellie Kendrick’s and RashDash’s Hole (2018) 35
- Lucy Prebble’s Enron (2009): The Financial Crisis as Theatrical Spectacle in the Era of Liquid Modernity 57
- How To Survive a Crisis: Forming a New Self in Zinnie Harris’s How to Hold Your Breath (2015) 75
-
II The Politics of Intimacy
- Ella Hickson’s ANNA (2019) and Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes (2017): Staging the Female Body Electric 91
- debbie tucker green’s ‘troumatic’ dramaturgy 111
- “Who Gets to Speak and How?”: Staging Autofiction in Debris Stevenson’s Poet in da Corner (2018) and Ella Hickson’s The Writer (2018) 131
-
III Experimenting with Forms
- “I Want the World to Change Shape”: Form and Politics in Ella Hickson’s The Writer (2018) 151
- Challenging Realism: The Confines of Domesticity in Morna Pearson’s Plays 171
- Alice Birch – A Poet in the Theatre 191
- Alecky Blythe and “Headphone Verbatim”: a Study of The Girlfriend Experience (2008) 205
-
IV In Conversation with…
- Feeling a Responsibility to Art: An Interview with Ella Hickson 225
- The Gordian Knots of Theatre: An Interview with Lucy Kirkwood by Elisabeth Angel-Perez and Aloysia Rousseau 239
- Notes on Contributors 247
- Index of playwrights, theatre practitioners and key concepts 251
