Fake News and Drama: Nationalism, Immigration and the Media in Recent British Plays
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Ellen Redling
Ellen Redling is a lecturer in drama at the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham. Her main areas of research include contemporary British drama, medieval and early modern drama, the Gothic and Victorian literature. Her dissertation focused on the Victorian novelist William Makepeace Thackeray and examined intersections between allegorical drama and narrative. It was published as a monograph entitled Allegorical Thackeray (Zurich: LIT, 2015). She has written articles about contemporary drama, which were published by Winter, WVT and the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, and co-edited a volume on Non-Standard Forms of Contemporary Drama and Theatre (Trier: WVT, 2008). Currently, she is working on a postdoctoral book project that has the title “Theatre in Times of Uncertainty: Politics, Ethics and Aesthetics in British Big Issue Plays after 2000.”
Abstract
Fake News is often not taken seriously enough. It might appear like a mere hoax and too fantastical or bold to believe, just like the so-called ‘alternative facts’ presented about the size of the crowd at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Similarly, nationalistic tendencies, often driven by fake news and promoted by authoritarian leaders, can be underestimated. Recent British plays and performances about fake news which appeared after the Brexit vote make clear that the typical strategies of the liberal left of fighting against nationalism and authoritarianism seem to no longer work when taken on their own. These strategies include, for instance, postmodern techniques, the exposure of a misuse of power through the media or documentary theatre, or the foregrounding of marginalised and oppressed groups, e. g. by means of verbatim practices. They often lack efficacy nowadays because they have become undermined by ‘post truth’ or because they can reflect, rather than challenge, the mechanisms of fake news as well as the widespread feeling of uncertainty in the Western world, which in turn can be found at the root of a growth in nationalism and power of authoritarian leaders. This paper suggests that theatre is currently creating new strategies of dealing with these harmful developments. It argues that recent plays about fake news show that, in order to counter the disorientating effects of fake news, a new type of viewer is needed, the particularly ‘alert spectator,’ whose senses are strengthened through the performance, and who in times like these when people reach out for (fake) certainties amidst confusing uncertainty is able to develop a double vision: a postmodern and a post-postmodern one.
About the author
Ellen Redling is a lecturer in drama at the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham. Her main areas of research include contemporary British drama, medieval and early modern drama, the Gothic and Victorian literature. Her dissertation focused on the Victorian novelist William Makepeace Thackeray and examined intersections between allegorical drama and narrative. It was published as a monograph entitled Allegorical Thackeray (Zurich: LIT, 2015). She has written articles about contemporary drama, which were published by Winter, WVT and the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, and co-edited a volume on Non-Standard Forms of Contemporary Drama and Theatre (Trier: WVT, 2008). Currently, she is working on a postdoctoral book project that has the title “Theatre in Times of Uncertainty: Politics, Ethics and Aesthetics in British Big Issue Plays after 2000.”
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction
- Nation and Negation (Terrible Rage)
- “Can I Tell You about It?”: England, Austerity and “Radical Optimism” in the Theatre of Anders Lustgarten
- Theatricalizing the National Housing Crisis in Mike Bartlett’s Game and Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin
- BlackLivesMatter: Remembering Mark Duggan and David Oluwale in Contemporary British Plays
- Fake News and Drama: Nationalism, Immigration and the Media in Recent British Plays
- Experiencing Nationlessness: Staging the Migrant Condition in Some Recent British Theatre
- Multiculturalism, (Im)Migration, Theatre: The National Arts Centre, Ottawa, a Case of Staging Canadian Nationalism
- ‘For We Are American’: Postmodern Pastiche and National Identity in Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play
- ‘The State of Us’: Challenging State-Led Narratives through Performance during Ireland’s ‘Decade of Centenaries’
- The State We’re in: Violence and Working-Class Women on and off the Contemporary Irish Stage
- Before the Fall: Looking Back on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “This Other Eden” Season (2001)
- From Chimera to Reality: Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica or ‘What State Are We in?’
- Does Verbatim Theatre Still Talk the Nation Talk?
- “What I’m Aspiring to Be Is a Good Dramatist”: Alecky Blythe in Conversation with Chris Megson
- A Victory for Real People: Dangers in the Discourse of Democratisation
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction
- Nation and Negation (Terrible Rage)
- “Can I Tell You about It?”: England, Austerity and “Radical Optimism” in the Theatre of Anders Lustgarten
- Theatricalizing the National Housing Crisis in Mike Bartlett’s Game and Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin
- BlackLivesMatter: Remembering Mark Duggan and David Oluwale in Contemporary British Plays
- Fake News and Drama: Nationalism, Immigration and the Media in Recent British Plays
- Experiencing Nationlessness: Staging the Migrant Condition in Some Recent British Theatre
- Multiculturalism, (Im)Migration, Theatre: The National Arts Centre, Ottawa, a Case of Staging Canadian Nationalism
- ‘For We Are American’: Postmodern Pastiche and National Identity in Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play
- ‘The State of Us’: Challenging State-Led Narratives through Performance during Ireland’s ‘Decade of Centenaries’
- The State We’re in: Violence and Working-Class Women on and off the Contemporary Irish Stage
- Before the Fall: Looking Back on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “This Other Eden” Season (2001)
- From Chimera to Reality: Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica or ‘What State Are We in?’
- Does Verbatim Theatre Still Talk the Nation Talk?
- “What I’m Aspiring to Be Is a Good Dramatist”: Alecky Blythe in Conversation with Chris Megson
- A Victory for Real People: Dangers in the Discourse of Democratisation
