Community and Manipulation in the “Parallel Worlds” of Tim Crouch
-
Ondřej Pilný
is Professor of English and American Literature and Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at Charles University, Prague. He has published widely on modern and contemporary anglophone theatre and Irish literature and has translated into Czech works by J. M. Synge, Flann O’Brien, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Martin McDonagh, Enda Walsh, Mark O’Rowe, and others. His recent publications include:
Ireland: Interfaces and Dialogues (co-edited with Radvan Markus, Daniela Theinová, and James Little, 2022),Cultural Convergence: The Dublin Gate Theatre, 1928–1960 (co-edited with Ruud van den Beuken and Ian R. Walsh, 2021), and the thematic journal issueDialogue, Performance and the Body Politic in Contemporary Theatre , co-edited with Clare Wallace (Litteraria Pragensia , 2022).
Abstract
This article closely examines two recent works for the stage by British conceptualist theatre-maker Tim Crouch, Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation (2019) and Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel (2022), discussing in particular the manipulative aspects of community formation accentuated in the former and the slight shift in emphasis towards the collective experience of live theatre apparent in the latter, his first play to be staged after the COVID-19 pandemic. The essay argues that by presenting “parallel worlds” to be measured against the present world of crisis, Crouch’s complex metatheatrical work may be seen to explore in practice the ideas of emancipated spectatorship theorised by Jacques Rancière on the one hand and to engage with the influential ideas on community elaborated by Jean-Luc Nancy on the other. Crouch’s recent work thus highlights the essential link of community to finitude while maintaining a strong emphasis on imagination being exercised by the individual.
About the author
is Professor of English and American Literature and Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at Charles University, Prague. He has published widely on modern and contemporary anglophone theatre and Irish literature and has translated into Czech works by J. M. Synge, Flann O’Brien, Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Martin McDonagh, Enda Walsh, Mark O’Rowe, and others. His recent publications include: Ireland: Interfaces and Dialogues (co-edited with Radvan Markus, Daniela Theinová, and James Little, 2022), Cultural Convergence: The Dublin Gate Theatre, 1928–1960 (co-edited with Ruud van den Beuken and Ian R. Walsh, 2021), and the thematic journal issue Dialogue, Performance and the Body Politic in Contemporary Theatre, co-edited with Clare Wallace (Litteraria Pragensia, 2022).
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Note
- Acknowledgements
- Articles
- Introduction: Theater and Community. Poetics, Politics, Performances
- Sensing a Twenty-First-Century Commons in the Theater: Relationality in a Climate of Distrust and Destruction
- The Inoperative Community in Twenty-First-Century British Theatre
- The Poetics and Politics of We-Narration on the Contemporary British Stage
- “You Are Alone”: Singularity, Community, and the Possibility of Solidarity in Slavoj Žižek’s The Three Lives of Antigone
- Community and Manipulation in the “Parallel Worlds” of Tim Crouch
- Dissensual Performances of Race and Community in Claudia Rankine’s The White Card and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview
- Staging the Theatrical Public Sphere in The Laramie Project
- Mary Kathryn Nagle in Conversation with Nina De Bettin Padolin and Ilka Saal
- The Politics of Queer Be-longing and Acts of Hope in Peter McMaster’s Solo Performance A Sea of Troubles and Split Britches’ “Zoomie” Last Gasp (WFH)
- Queer Hope in Working-Class Performance: Scottee’s Bravado and Class
- “Be Yo’self. It’s Just a Show”: Performing Community through the Comic Grotesque in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Neighbors
- Identity Politics as Lingua Franca?
- Reviews
- Avra Sidiropoulou, ed. Staging 21st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics, and Global Crisis. New York: Routledge, 2022, 276 pp., £130.00 (hardback), £35.99 (paperback), £32.39 (ebook).
- Michael Meeuwis. Property and Finance on the Post-Brexit London Stage: We Want What You Have. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021, vi + 144 pp., £130.00 (hardback), £38.99 (paperback), £35.09 (ebook).
- Nicola Abram. Black British Women’s Theatre: Intersectionality, Archives, Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, xiii + 224 pp., $109.99 (hardback), $109.99 (softcover), $84.99 (ebook).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Note
- Acknowledgements
- Articles
- Introduction: Theater and Community. Poetics, Politics, Performances
- Sensing a Twenty-First-Century Commons in the Theater: Relationality in a Climate of Distrust and Destruction
- The Inoperative Community in Twenty-First-Century British Theatre
- The Poetics and Politics of We-Narration on the Contemporary British Stage
- “You Are Alone”: Singularity, Community, and the Possibility of Solidarity in Slavoj Žižek’s The Three Lives of Antigone
- Community and Manipulation in the “Parallel Worlds” of Tim Crouch
- Dissensual Performances of Race and Community in Claudia Rankine’s The White Card and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview
- Staging the Theatrical Public Sphere in The Laramie Project
- Mary Kathryn Nagle in Conversation with Nina De Bettin Padolin and Ilka Saal
- The Politics of Queer Be-longing and Acts of Hope in Peter McMaster’s Solo Performance A Sea of Troubles and Split Britches’ “Zoomie” Last Gasp (WFH)
- Queer Hope in Working-Class Performance: Scottee’s Bravado and Class
- “Be Yo’self. It’s Just a Show”: Performing Community through the Comic Grotesque in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Neighbors
- Identity Politics as Lingua Franca?
- Reviews
- Avra Sidiropoulou, ed. Staging 21st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics, and Global Crisis. New York: Routledge, 2022, 276 pp., £130.00 (hardback), £35.99 (paperback), £32.39 (ebook).
- Michael Meeuwis. Property and Finance on the Post-Brexit London Stage: We Want What You Have. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021, vi + 144 pp., £130.00 (hardback), £38.99 (paperback), £35.09 (ebook).
- Nicola Abram. Black British Women’s Theatre: Intersectionality, Archives, Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, xiii + 224 pp., $109.99 (hardback), $109.99 (softcover), $84.99 (ebook).
