Going Straight: The Politics of Time and Space in David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness
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Sarah Grochala
Abstract
Amelia Howe Kritzer states that a contemporary British play is commonly thought of as political if it presents “a political issue or comments on what is already perceived as a political issue” (10). Since 1989, however, the economic and political system in the UK has become increasingly monologic. In such a monologic political system, Shavian dialogic forms of political theatre, which present a dialectical discussion of a social issue, lose their efficacy. As a result, some British playwrights have moved towards more interventionist strategies of political engagement, which involve our lived experience of social structures through their dramaturgy. These plays re-order normative representations of social structures, so offering a symbolic re-ordering of social structures within their form. As such, their form presents what Adorno terms, “an analogy of that other condition which should be” (194). David Harvey argues that in late capitalist society, our experience of time and space has become increasingly compressed. Consequently the temporal axis of succession, which constitutes the fundamental organising principle of Shavian drama, no longer reflects our lived experience of time in the world outside the theatre. Therefore, plays that re-order structures of time and space have political efficacy in that they expose a gap between representations of time and space as linear and concrete and our lived experience of time and space as compressed. This essay argues that David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness articulates a complete breakdown in the temporal axis of succession in its structure. Its dramaturgy reflects the experience of time-space compression. Thus, it is a highly political play, not on the basis of its content, but in terms of the way in which its structure mediates and negotiates our lived experience of social structures under the pressures of late capitalism.
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© 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Theatre and Politics: Theatre as Cultural Intervention
- Articles
- Intervention, Interaction, Insufficiency: Theatre’s Critical Repertoire?
- From Theatre & Everyday Life to Theatre in the Expanded Field: Performance Between Community and Immunity
- Between Homeland and Exile: Witnessing the Homo Sacer at the Heart of Hotel Medea
- Gob Squad’s Act of Rebellion – Revolution Now!
- Remixing Politics: The Case of Headphone-Verbatim Theatre in Britain
- Navigating New Patterns of Power with an Audience
- “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”: Staging Treatments of Riots in Recent British Theatre
- Bola Agbaje’s Off the Endz. Authentic Voices, Representing the Council Estate: Politics, Authorship and the Ethics of Representation
- Staging the unsayable: debbie tucker green’s political theatre
- (Sub)Versions of the Them/Us Dichotomy in Iraq War Drama
- Going Straight: The Politics of Time and Space in David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness
- New Plays of Ideas and an Aesthetics of Reflection and Debate in Contemporary British Political Drama
- Howard Brenton and the Improbable Revival of the Brechtian History Play
- “Surreal and unbelievable and fantastical”
- Reviews
- Elżbieta Baraniecka. Sublime Drama: British Theatre of the 1990s. CDE Studies 23. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013, x + 270 pp., € 82.95.
- Jeanne Colleran. Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses since 1991. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 241 pp., $ 90.00.
- Astrid Haas. Stages of Agency: The Contributions of American Drama to the AIDS Discourse. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011, 334 pp., € 38.00.
- Barbara Ozieblo and Noelia Hernando-Real (eds.). Performing Gender Violence: Plays by Contemporary American Women Dramatists. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, vi + 198 pp., $ 85.00.
- Patrick Duggan. Trauma-Tragedy: Symptoms of Contemporary Performance. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2012, ix + 214 pp., $ 88.00.
- Philip C. Kolin (ed.). Contemporary African American Women Playwrights: A Casebook. London and New York: Routledge, 2012, x + 207 pp., £ 80.00 (hardback, 2007), £ 28.00 (paperback, 2012), £ 28.00 (ebook, 2007).
- Helen H. Lojek. The Spaces of Irish Drama: Stage and Place in Contemporary Plays. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, x + 181 pp., £ 55.00 (hardback).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Theatre and Politics: Theatre as Cultural Intervention
- Articles
- Intervention, Interaction, Insufficiency: Theatre’s Critical Repertoire?
- From Theatre & Everyday Life to Theatre in the Expanded Field: Performance Between Community and Immunity
- Between Homeland and Exile: Witnessing the Homo Sacer at the Heart of Hotel Medea
- Gob Squad’s Act of Rebellion – Revolution Now!
- Remixing Politics: The Case of Headphone-Verbatim Theatre in Britain
- Navigating New Patterns of Power with an Audience
- “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”: Staging Treatments of Riots in Recent British Theatre
- Bola Agbaje’s Off the Endz. Authentic Voices, Representing the Council Estate: Politics, Authorship and the Ethics of Representation
- Staging the unsayable: debbie tucker green’s political theatre
- (Sub)Versions of the Them/Us Dichotomy in Iraq War Drama
- Going Straight: The Politics of Time and Space in David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness
- New Plays of Ideas and an Aesthetics of Reflection and Debate in Contemporary British Political Drama
- Howard Brenton and the Improbable Revival of the Brechtian History Play
- “Surreal and unbelievable and fantastical”
- Reviews
- Elżbieta Baraniecka. Sublime Drama: British Theatre of the 1990s. CDE Studies 23. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013, x + 270 pp., € 82.95.
- Jeanne Colleran. Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses since 1991. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 241 pp., $ 90.00.
- Astrid Haas. Stages of Agency: The Contributions of American Drama to the AIDS Discourse. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2011, 334 pp., € 38.00.
- Barbara Ozieblo and Noelia Hernando-Real (eds.). Performing Gender Violence: Plays by Contemporary American Women Dramatists. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, vi + 198 pp., $ 85.00.
- Patrick Duggan. Trauma-Tragedy: Symptoms of Contemporary Performance. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2012, ix + 214 pp., $ 88.00.
- Philip C. Kolin (ed.). Contemporary African American Women Playwrights: A Casebook. London and New York: Routledge, 2012, x + 207 pp., £ 80.00 (hardback, 2007), £ 28.00 (paperback, 2012), £ 28.00 (ebook, 2007).
- Helen H. Lojek. The Spaces of Irish Drama: Stage and Place in Contemporary Plays. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, x + 181 pp., £ 55.00 (hardback).
