Victor Merriman. Austerity and the Public Role of Drama: Performing Lives-in-Common. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, x + 175 pp., £53.49 (hardback), £42.79 (PDF ebook).

Victor Merriman’s Austerity and the Public Role of Drama: Performing Lives-in-Common is a politically very informed and densely written report-cum-manifesto asking what role drama can play under “Project Austerity.” This introductory description already entails the following points: the book is entrenched in British and Irish economic history and recent politics, from the Thatcherite era until David Cameron’s time as Prime Minister, and thus also demands a great deal of knowledge of British culture and politics from its readers. For the most part, it also reads more like a report which relates the debates and measures taken in the context of the Performance and Civic Futures Research Group established by the author at Edge Hill University in 2013 (see, for instance, the enumeration of the participants of the group and their affiliations, 71–72). Thus, readers who do not share the author’s national background can feel somewhat excluded from the argument; the action of the study unfolds on a stage that is blocked not only by one but by several pillars. This is a pity, and it is surprising to find such a kind of specialized argument in the Palgrave Pivot series which proclaims to have been “breaking boundaries since 2012” (Palgrave Macmillan). A study that is framed in such a way creates more boundaries and, for readers from other countries, highlights differences instead of, perhaps, encouraging them to find similarities.

So, while there are severe disadvantages in being thrown in medias res of a highly specific economic discussion, the manifesto, which concludes the book and in which Merriman develops dramaturgies of ethical encounter under deficit culture, is very insightful and a real asset to future discussions of the intertwinement of the economy/economics with drama. The points he makes highlight the role of educational institutions and can also be transferred to other national contexts. This manifesto, indeed, takes on the role of a bridge between nations which is increasingly desired by both scholars and practitioners, as its findings and demands do go beyond a specific national context.

The introductory chapter lays the ground for the ensuing discussion and stresses the status of drama as a public art form and the two-way relationship between the fictional worlds unfolded in Drama and Performance (both capitalized) and actual life realities. Taking his cue from the developments across many Western democracies regarding globalisation and neoliberalisation as well as the politics of austerity taking effect in Britain after 2010, Merriman is interested in identifying, exposing, and problematizing the convolutions of political economy, the public and drama, as well as politics-as-drama. What I found somewhat missing in this first chapter is a more thorough exposition to the remainder of the study, to some of the economic terms and historical background because as it is, the whole study seems to be primarily addressed at readers who, like the author, already have a profound knowledge of British history and politics.

Chapter two elaborates further on what the motivations for writing the study were, namely, to understand “Project Austerity.” As the author writes:

Primarily a matter of reorganising relationships in the political economy of neo-liberalism, Austerity relied on the rigorous assertion of a compatible moral economy. If the former was essentially a technocratic adventure, the latter manifested in culture. As a public art form, Drama [. . .] would have to be affected by what has played out as a redefinition, across the Anglo-American world, of life experiences and horizons of human expectation. (11–12)

This passage illustrates the author’s style quite well: for readers unfamiliar with the context, such descriptions are not very helpful, and one wishes for a more specific contextualization. Nevertheless, the following pages offer a more nuanced introduction to key players in the austerity drama such as Margaret Thatcher and Cameron. Especially with regard to Thatcher, the argument picks up pace and displays a pleasantly essayistic style when her vision to alter people’s “hearts and souls” is unravelled and satirized. The following passage constitutes an illuminating vignette of British politics:

The development – and, especially, the dissemination – of Liberal ideas relies also on recognisably dramatic features: character, personality, belief, moral conflict, and heroic vision stock the social dramas which define the liberal spectrum, from Coleridge’s exemplary parson, to the mobilisation of political economy to pre-empt social unrest in nineteenth-century colonial Ireland, to the soap operas and morality plays [here referring to Mark Blyth’s Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea] of Project Austerity’s Deficit Culture. The soap opera UK plc chronicles the vicissitudes of its central couple, TINA (There Is No Alternative), and the Taxpayer. This exemplary pair is constantly affronted by “benefit cheats” and the “political correctness” of the “something-for-nothing society.” (16–17)

While providing an insight into the dramaturgy of “Project Austerity” and depicting a thought-provoking conflation of politics and theatre, this passage also highlights and critiques the consequences of the attention economy which are characteristic for deficit culture. The players of “Project Austerity” are narcissists, performing their life-in-public, “dedicated to promoting individualism and anti-communitarianism” (17). The main parts, when looking at the high phase of the project, are occupied by “Mrs. Thatcher and President Reagan (or Mrs. Miniver and Marlboro Man)” (17). Such an account is entertaining, definitely somewhat defamiliarizing to readers outside the UK, but certainly insightful in its astute bitterness.

The ensuing chapters are dissected into extremely short chunks that are typically only half a page long, and bear titles (or spotlights) such as “Neo-Liberal Culture: Survivalism,” “Post-Liberal Culture: Economic Determinism and Social Palliation,” “Dramatising Crisis,” and “Corporate Incest.” They only make sense, really, when read as vignettes or scenes, and it is very likely that this is indeed their purpose. The examples chosen to show how the hegemonic status of dominant ideologies is performative are lesser-known theatre events, for instance, when (in chapter four) Dario Fo’s interventi and the New York-based Reverend Billy Talen’s “interruptions” are put side-by-side as they both employ the persona of Francis of Assisi as the Fool for Christ to address contemporary circumstances. Chapter five presents an interesting case study of Jim Nolan’s Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye (2016), focusing on how it links the events of the anti-imperialist Irish rebellion from 1916 with the collapse of Ireland’s banks in 2008, two events from opposite ends of the neoliberal canvas, connecting these intertwinements to the role or function of public memory more generally. I found much value in the long quotes from Nolan’s playtext; a most welcome appreciation of playwriting and a writing practice that establishes a more even balance between scholarship/criticism and the object of scrutiny. This practice continues in chapter six with discussions of further work that has emerged from the author’s Performance and Civic Futures Research Group, namely the One Hour Theatre Company (OHTC), which is concerned with connecting ethical, political, and aesthetic questions. Chapter seven, then, looks at deficit culture more generally as “a contemporary, mediated mythology” (127). It explores the potential of collectives against the background of neoliberalism, but is written in a rather inaccessible way, mixing references to “Brexitania” (132–134) with references to The Hunger Games (2008), BBC radio programmes, and discussions in the House of Commons.

As mentioned above, the last chapter, “Beyond Repair: A Critical Performance Manifesto,” concludes with an overview, a manual for performers, suggesting that and exemplifying how drama can create ethical encounters that may bring about new forms of public consciousness and even new democratic practices. The overview concluding this chapter follows the structuring principle of Aristotelian drama in five acts entitled “Problem – Principle – Action – Relation to Democratic Culture – Implications for Performance” (163–167). The problems (and ways of repairing them) shown here are extremely valuable and open up the discussion, which – despite all originality – has so far been rather narrow. Such an opening up yields results which can be transferred to other contexts. One example of a “Problem” – or act one – is that “Theatre institutions and conventions have been captured by neo-liberal logic” – a problem indeed, with which most European theatre institutions can identify. Act two (“Principle”) suggests to “Focus on Drama as a public art form and social process,” which culminates in act three (“Action”) to “Negotiate space and support within universities for critical performance projects” (164). Crucially, this necessitates a closer collaboration between universities (students, researchers, scholars) and theatre-makers and creatives. Act four (“Relation to Democratic Culture”) details that such action will enable “universities to perform a public role, as sites of critical deliberation” (164). Importantly, this again functions as a note of caution and a reminder that deficit culture and “Project Austerity” point to a renewed necessity of scholars and educators acting as mediators between politics and the public. Act five (“Implications for Performance”) closes the curtain with the resolution that performance needs to take “Drama beyond those with ‘theatre-in-common.’ Repertoire, casting, and event design must foreground ethical questions around Others” (164). Such specific and transnationally relevant guidelines can be discussed not only at theatre institutions but also within drama departments at universities – they blend theory with activism and present concrete ways to turn the ideas presented into realities outside of the book covers between which they are outlined. Thus, while some of the preceding chapters do document some of the fragmentation characteristic for neoliberal societies, the closing chapter leaves the reader with the hope that culture – thought of as a European project – may actually not be beyond repair.