The Immobility of Power in British Political Theatre after 2000: Absurdist Dystopias

Merle Tönnies

doi:10.1515/jcde-2017-0012

Article

The Immobility of Power in British Political Theatre after 2000: Absurdist Dystopias

Merle Tönnies
Merle Tönnies is professor of English literature and British cultural studies at the University of Paderborn. Among her main fields of interest are British drama from the 19^th to the 21^st century, questions of space and British identities, gender studies and Black British culture. Apart from articles and reviews in those areas, she has for instance published the monograph (En-)Gendering a Popular Theatrical Genre. The Roles of Women in Nineteenth-Century British Melodrama (2014) as well as (co)-editing the volumes Das englische Drama der Gegenwart: Kategorien – Entwicklungen – Modellinterpretationen (2010), Narrative in Drama (Contemporary Drama in English 18, 2011, with Christina Flotmann) and Anglistentag 2015 Paderborn: Proceedings (2016, with Ilka Mindt and Christoph Ehland). She is also a co-editor of the series ‘anglistik’ & englischunterricht' (Winter Verlag, Heidelberg).

Published/Copyright: April 28, 2017

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From the journal Journal of Contemporary Drama in English Volume 5 Issue 1

Abstract

The paper focuses on the twenty-first-century resurgence of political concerns in British theatre, in the traditional (post-1950s) sense of criticising the unequal distribution of power in society. A key approach combines the seemingly incompatible genre characteristics of dystopia and the Theatre of the Absurd to foreground immobility, and two representative cases of such absurdist dystopias are studied in detail: Mark Ravenhill's The Cut (2006) and Edward Bond’s Have I None (2000).

Mobility is denied in a number of respects in these works: In contrast to earlier political theatre in Britain, the unjust hierarchies are not portrayed as changeable, and audiences are pointedly not supposed to be ‘moved’ by any clear-cut messages either. Moreover, the system representatives and their domestic relationships are shown to become increasingly static through the corrupting force of power, both literally and metaphorically. On the whole, these curiously abstract representations result in claustrophobic scenes, which can have profound indirect effects on the spectators. As the plays also allude to the developments in political discourse from New Labour onwards, the pervasive immobility on stage can at the same time be read as obliquely mocking the recurrent insistence on ‘change’ in the rhetoric of all major parties in Britain.

About the author

Merle Tönnies

Merle Tönnies is professor of English literature and British cultural studies at the University of Paderborn. Among her main fields of interest are British drama from the 19^th to the 21^st century, questions of space and British identities, gender studies and Black British culture. Apart from articles and reviews in those areas, she has for instance published the monograph (En-)Gendering a Popular Theatrical Genre. The Roles of Women in Nineteenth-Century British Melodrama (2014) as well as (co)-editing the volumes Das englische Drama der Gegenwart: Kategorien – Entwicklungen – Modellinterpretationen (2010), Narrative in Drama (Contemporary Drama in English 18, 2011, with Christina Flotmann) and Anglistentag 2015 Paderborn: Proceedings (2016, with Ilka Mindt and Christoph Ehland). She is also a co-editor of the series ‘anglistik’ & englischunterricht' (Winter Verlag, Heidelberg).

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Published Online: 2017-4-28

Published in Print: 2017-4-1

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2017-0012

Keywords for this article

Samuel Beckett; Waiting for Godot; Edward Bond; The Chair Plays; Have I None Saved; “The Third Crisis”; dystopia; Martin Esslin; hegenomy; Eugène Ionesco; Les Chaises; Harold Pinter; The Birthday Party; The Room; political rhetoric; political theatre; power relations; Mark Ravenhill; The Cut; Theatre of the Absurd