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A Sense of Place: Staging Psychogeographies of the UK Housing Crisis

  • Jen Harvie

    is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Queen Mary University of London. Her research explores how theatre and performance artists make their work and the cultural politics of performance, focussing especially on urban inequalities, gender, and sexuality. Her publications include: two books with queer artists, Scottee: I Made It and The Only Way Home Is through the Show: Performance Work of Lois Weaver, and the monographs Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism, Theatre & the City, Staging the UK, and the co-authored Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance. She co-edited Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes; three special issues of Contemporary Theatre Review, on feminisms, the cultural politics of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, and globalisation; and The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945 (forthcoming 2023). She has published several articles on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She is currently writing a monograph on how gendered inequalities in housing, care, and employment are manifested in and addressed by recent feminist performance in the UK. She co-edits the book series Theatre &, now with Bloomsbury (formerly Palgrave Macmillan), and releases open access interviews with performance-makers on her podcast Stage Left (soundcloud.com/stage_left).

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Published/Copyright: May 12, 2023
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Journal of Contemporary Drama in English
From the journal Journal of Contemporary Drama in English Volume 11 Issue 1

Abstract

Contemporary Britain is experiencing an enduring and devastating housing crisis spearheaded in 1980 by Margaret Thatcher’s introduction of the “Right to Buy” social housing and sustained by an enduring neoliberal hegemony. This article contextualises the housing crisis through data and information drawn from journalism, charities, and government. It then explores how the crisis is conveyed in two recent plays. Sh!t Theatre’s 2016 Letters to Windsor House focusses on company members Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit’s overcrowded and unsafe North London flatshare. Home is a verbatim show set in a hostel for homeless young people in East London, produced by the National Theatre and co-researched and directed by Nadia Fall in 2013. As well as exploring the shows’ narration of the devastating social and material impacts of the housing crisis, the article draws on urban theory’s concept of psychogeography alongside video documentation of both plays to explore how they affectively convey the spatial and emotional consequences of the crisis. The article shows how the spatialisation of theatre – not just its textual elements – helps articulate both the spatiality of the housing crisis in contemporary urban life in neoliberal Britain and, especially, how that spatiality feels. It makes the case for thinking psychogeographically about theatre in order to focus on the ways it braids spatial and emotional understanding – crucial factors for properly comprehending, and potentially changing, the UK housing crisis.

Keywords: Sh!t Theatre; Letters to Windsor House ; Nadia Fall; Home ; housing crisis; psychogeography; spatiality; affect

About the author

Jen Harvie

is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Queen Mary University of London. Her research explores how theatre and performance artists make their work and the cultural politics of performance, focussing especially on urban inequalities, gender, and sexuality. Her publications include: two books with queer artists, Scottee: I Made It and The Only Way Home Is through the Show: Performance Work of Lois Weaver, and the monographs Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism, Theatre & the City, Staging the UK, and the co-authored Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance. She co-edited Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes; three special issues of Contemporary Theatre Review, on feminisms, the cultural politics of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, and globalisation; and The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945 (forthcoming 2023). She has published several articles on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She is currently writing a monograph on how gendered inequalities in housing, care, and employment are manifested in and addressed by recent feminist performance in the UK. She co-edits the book series Theatre &, now with Bloomsbury (formerly Palgrave Macmillan), and releases open access interviews with performance-makers on her podcast Stage Left (soundcloud.com/stage_left).

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Published Online: 2023-05-12
Published in Print: 2023-05-03

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Acknowledgements
  4. Place-Making, Identities, and the Politics of Urban Life: Theatre and the City. An Introduction
  5. Punchdrunk’s Kabeiroi: Taking Immersive Theatre to the Streets
  6. (Un)real City: Spatial and Temporal Ghosting in ANU Productions’ The Party to End All Parties
  7. Performing the City: Space, Movement, and Memory in O Ben’Groes at Droed Amser
  8. A Sense of Place: Staging Psychogeographies of the UK Housing Crisis
  9. Interrelating Necrocities and Borderscapes in the Migration Performances The Jungle, Lampedusa, and The Walk
  10. The Impossibility of Fleeing: The Deconstruction of Urban Space in Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living
  11. Place on Parade: Consumerism and Disidentification in the Parade Genre
  12. Criticising Capitalism in the City and on the Stage: The City Street Movement Occupy Wall Street and Tim Price’s Protest Song
  13. “Racism Isn’t Just Someone Shouting at You from a Passing Car”: Roy Williams in Conversation with Gemma Edwards
  14. “Violence, Ritual, and Space”: Aleshea Harris in Conversation with Julie Vatain-Corfdir and Jaine Chemmachery
  15. “Your Proscenium Is as High as the Sky”: Anne Hamburger in Conversation with Julie Vatain-Corfdir and Émilie Rault
  16. Walkshop Paris: Notes on a Creative Process with the Urban Landscape
  17. Dramaturgy and Design: A Roundtable Discussion with Anne Hamburger, Cristiana Mazzoni, and Andrew Todd
  18. Jeanette R. Malkin, Eckart Voigts, and Sarah J. Ablett, eds. A Companion to British-Jewish Theatre since the 1950s. London: Methuen, 2021, x + 259 pp., £103.50 (hardback), £35.95 (paperback), £82.80 (ebook PDF and Epub).
  19. Tiziana Morosetti, ed. Africa on the Contemporary London Stage. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, xv + 246 pp., £99.99 (hardcover).
  20. Liz Tomlin. Political Dramaturgies and Theatre Spectatorship: Provocations for Change. London: Bloomsbury, 2019, viii + 205 pp. £85.00 (hardback), £28.99 (paperback), £26.09 (PDF ebook).
  21. Caridad Svich. Toward a Future Theatre: Conversations during a Pandemic. London: Bloomsbury, 245 pp., $26.95 (paperback), $90.00 (hardback), $24.25 (PDF ebook), $24.25 (Epub and Mobi ebook).
  22. Dom O’Hanlon, ed. Theatre in Times of Crisis: 20 Scenes for the Stage in Troubled Times. With an Introduction by Edward Bond. London: Bloomsbury, 2020, xxii + 296 pp., $30.02 (paperback), $25.16 (ebook PDF and Epub).
  23. Peta Tait. Theory for Theatre Studies: Emotion. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2021, vii + 188 pp., £45.00 (hardback), £12.99 (paperback), £9.35 (PDF ebook), £9.35 (Epub and Mobi).
https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2023-0005
Keywords for this article
Sh!t Theatre; Letters to Windsor House; Nadia Fall; Home; housing crisis; psychogeography; spatiality; affect

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Acknowledgements
  4. Place-Making, Identities, and the Politics of Urban Life: Theatre and the City. An Introduction
  5. Punchdrunk’s Kabeiroi: Taking Immersive Theatre to the Streets
  6. (Un)real City: Spatial and Temporal Ghosting in ANU Productions’ The Party to End All Parties
  7. Performing the City: Space, Movement, and Memory in O Ben’Groes at Droed Amser
  8. A Sense of Place: Staging Psychogeographies of the UK Housing Crisis
  9. Interrelating Necrocities and Borderscapes in the Migration Performances The Jungle, Lampedusa, and The Walk
  10. The Impossibility of Fleeing: The Deconstruction of Urban Space in Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living
  11. Place on Parade: Consumerism and Disidentification in the Parade Genre
  12. Criticising Capitalism in the City and on the Stage: The City Street Movement Occupy Wall Street and Tim Price’s Protest Song
  13. “Racism Isn’t Just Someone Shouting at You from a Passing Car”: Roy Williams in Conversation with Gemma Edwards
  14. “Violence, Ritual, and Space”: Aleshea Harris in Conversation with Julie Vatain-Corfdir and Jaine Chemmachery
  15. “Your Proscenium Is as High as the Sky”: Anne Hamburger in Conversation with Julie Vatain-Corfdir and Émilie Rault
  16. Walkshop Paris: Notes on a Creative Process with the Urban Landscape
  17. Dramaturgy and Design: A Roundtable Discussion with Anne Hamburger, Cristiana Mazzoni, and Andrew Todd
  18. Jeanette R. Malkin, Eckart Voigts, and Sarah J. Ablett, eds. A Companion to British-Jewish Theatre since the 1950s. London: Methuen, 2021, x + 259 pp., £103.50 (hardback), £35.95 (paperback), £82.80 (ebook PDF and Epub).
  19. Tiziana Morosetti, ed. Africa on the Contemporary London Stage. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, xv + 246 pp., £99.99 (hardcover).
  20. Liz Tomlin. Political Dramaturgies and Theatre Spectatorship: Provocations for Change. London: Bloomsbury, 2019, viii + 205 pp. £85.00 (hardback), £28.99 (paperback), £26.09 (PDF ebook).
  21. Caridad Svich. Toward a Future Theatre: Conversations during a Pandemic. London: Bloomsbury, 245 pp., $26.95 (paperback), $90.00 (hardback), $24.25 (PDF ebook), $24.25 (Epub and Mobi ebook).
  22. Dom O’Hanlon, ed. Theatre in Times of Crisis: 20 Scenes for the Stage in Troubled Times. With an Introduction by Edward Bond. London: Bloomsbury, 2020, xxii + 296 pp., $30.02 (paperback), $25.16 (ebook PDF and Epub).
  23. Peta Tait. Theory for Theatre Studies: Emotion. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2021, vii + 188 pp., £45.00 (hardback), £12.99 (paperback), £9.35 (PDF ebook), £9.35 (Epub and Mobi).
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