Virtual Realism and Black Feminist World-Building in seven methods of killing kylie jenner by Jasmine Lee-Jones

Hannah Greenstreet

doi:10.1515/jcde-2025-2010

Article

Virtual Realism and Black Feminist World-Building in seven methods of killing kylie jenner by Jasmine Lee-Jones

Hannah Greenstreet
is Lecturer in Creative Writing: Stage and Screen at the University of Liverpool. She completed her PhD in contemporary feminist theatre at the University of Oxford in 2021, winning the Swapna Dev Memorial Prize for best doctoral thesis submitted in the Faculty of English that year. Her monograph, Radical Realisms in Contemporary British Theatre: Feminist Form in Plays by Women, is forthcoming in Bloomsbury’s Methuen Drama Engage series. Her work has been published in Studies in Theatre & Performance and Contemporary Theatre Review.

Published/Copyright: April 29, 2025

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Journal of Contemporary Drama in English Volume 13 Issue 1

Abstract

While theatre-makers have responded to the challenges of staging the Internet in many different ways in the last thirty years, there persists a critical assumption that realism is incapable of representing this aspect of contemporary reality. However, I suggest such a dismissal of realism insists upon a false dichotomy between the “real” and the “virtual” that does not account for the intermeshing of the two in twenty‑first‑century life. I argue that Jasmine Lee‑Jones’s seven methods of killing kylie jenner (Royal Court Theatre, 2019) develops a form of “virtual realism” (Bay‑Cheng) that centres its characters’ subjective experiences as young Black women. While at first, Lee‑Jones’s script and Milli Bhatia’s production maintain “IRL” (In Real Life) and the “Twittersphere” as two distinct worlds with distinct theatrical languages, their eventual convergence suggests the impossibility of separating online activity from life offline. Moreover, the play and the production suggest a powerful analogy between Black feminist activism and theatrical realism as having the potential to imagine a different world, without neglecting critique of the status quo. Ultimately, thinking of seven methods as a realist play, not despite but because of its formal experimentation, productively expands our sense of what realism can do and how it can engage critically with the contemporary world.

Keywords: realism; feminism; virtual realism; digital theatre; Black feminism; Jasmine Lee-Jones; seven methods of killing kylie jenner

About the author

Hannah Greenstreet

is Lecturer in Creative Writing: Stage and Screen at the University of Liverpool. She completed her PhD in contemporary feminist theatre at the University of Oxford in 2021, winning the Swapna Dev Memorial Prize for best doctoral thesis submitted in the Faculty of English that year. Her monograph, Radical Realisms in Contemporary British Theatre: Feminist Form in Plays by Women, is forthcoming in Bloomsbury’s Methuen Drama Engage series. Her work has been published in Studies in Theatre & Performance and Contemporary Theatre Review.

Works Cited

Barnett, David. Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory, and Performance. London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2015. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <doi: 10.5040/9781408183144>.10.5040/9781408183144Search in Google Scholar

Bay‑Cheng, Sarah. “Virtual Realisms: Dramatic Forays into the Future.” Theatre Journal 67.4 (2015): 687–698. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/24582638>.10.1353/tj.2015.0132Search in Google Scholar

Bhatia, Milli. Personal Interview. 15 Sept. 2023.Search in Google Scholar

Bowlby, Rachel. “Foreword.” A Concise Companion to Realism. Ed. Matthew Beaumont. Chichester: Wiley‑Blackwell, 2010. xiv–xxi. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Brecht, Bertolt. “Against Georg Lukács.” Trans. Stuart Hood. New Left Review 1.84 (1974): 39–53. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <https://newleftreview.org/issues/i84/articles/bertolt-brecht-against-georg-lukacs.pdf>.Search in Google Scholar

Davis, Emily. “Review: seven methods of killing kylie jenner.” Exeunt, 10 July 2019. Web. 6 Sept. 2024. <https://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/review-seven-methods-killing-kylie-jenner>.Search in Google Scholar

Deller, Nadine, and Nadia Deller. “2010s, Nine Night, seven methods of killing kylie jenner and Jasmine Lee‑Jones.” That Black Theatre Podcast, Web. 21 Dec. 2020. <https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/blog/that-black-theatre-podcast>.Search in Google Scholar

Diamond, Elin. Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre. Abingdon: Routledge, 1997. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Editorial Staff. “Milli Bhatia Discusses Bringing seven methods of killing kylie jenner Back to the Royal Court.” WhatsOnStage, 15 June 2021. Web. 6 Sept. 2024. <https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/milli-bhatia-seven-methods-royal-court_54276.html>.Search in Google Scholar

Gilman, Sander L. “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature.” Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 204–242. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343468>.10.1086/448327Search in Google Scholar

Goddard, Lynette. Staging Black Feminisms: Identity, Politics, Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.10.1057/9780230801448Search in Google Scholar

Gordon‑Chipembere, Natasha. “Introduction: Claiming Sarah Baartman, a Legacy to Grasp.” Representation and Black Womanhood: The Legacy of Sarah Baartman. Ed. Natasha Gordon‑Chipembere. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 1–14. Print.10.1057/9780230339262_1Search in Google Scholar

Greenstreet, Hannah. Radical Realisms in Contemporary British Theatre: Rethinking Feminist Form in Plays by Women. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Hansberry, Lorraine. To Be Young, Gifted and Black: An Unofficial Memoir. Ed. Robert Nemiroff. New York: American Library, 1970. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Harrison, Daniella. “Review: seven methods of killing kylie jenner (Royal Court).” WhatsOnStage, 23 June 2021. Web. 6 Sept. 2024. <https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/review-seven-methods-of-killing-kylie-jenner-royal-court_54336>.Search in Google Scholar

Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Print.10.4324/9781315831824Search in Google Scholar

Hobson, Janell. Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <doi: 10.4324/9781315299396>.10.4324/9781315299396Search in Google Scholar

Hung Han Yun, Jessica. Personal Interview. 8 Sept. 2023.Search in Google Scholar

Ilter, Seda. Mediatized Dramaturgy: The Evolution of Plays in the Media Age. London: Bloomsbury, 2021. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <doi: 10.5040/9781350031180>. 10.5040/9781350031180Search in Google Scholar

Innes, Christopher, ed. A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre. Abingdon: Routledge, 2000. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Jackson, Lauren Michele. “We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs.” Teen Vogue, 2 Aug. 2017. Web. 6 Sept. 2024. <https://www.teenvogue.com/story/digital-blackface-reaction-gifs>.Search in Google Scholar

Jacobson, Kelsey. Real-ish: Audiences, Feeling and the Production of Realness in Contemporary Performance. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2023. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liverpool/detail.action?docID=30298116>.10.1515/9780228016410Search in Google Scholar

Lee‑Jones, Jasmine. seven methods of killing kylie jenner. London: Oberon, 2019. Print.10.5040/9781350208803.00000003Search in Google Scholar

–-. seven methods of killing kylie jenner. London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2021. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Mukhtar, Amel. “Meet the 20-Year-Old Playwright Behind the Provocative Drama seven methods of killing kylie jenner.” Vogue, 4 July 2019. Web. 6 Sept. 2024. <https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/jasmine-lee-jones-seven-methods-of-killing-kylie-jenner-interview>.Search in Google Scholar

Olufemi, Lola. Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power. London: Pluto Press, 2020. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liverpool/detail.action?docID=6129653>. Search in Google Scholar

Peterson‑Salahuddin, Chelsea. “Posting Back: Exploring Platformed Black Feminist Communities on Twitter and Instagram.” Social Media + Society 8.1 (2022): 1–13. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <doi: 10.1177/20563051211069051>. 10.1177/20563051211069051Search in Google Scholar

Rebellato, Dan. “Theatre Review 2019.” Homepage Dan Rebellato, 31 Dec. 2019. Web. 6 Sept. 2024. <http://www.danrebellato.co.uk/spilledink/2019/12/31/theatre-review-2019>.Search in Google Scholar

Ryan, Marie‑Laure. “Cyberspace, Virtuality, and the Text.” Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory. Ed. Marie‑Laure Ryan. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999. 78–110. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Schroeder, Patricia R. “Remembering the Disremembered: Feminist Realists of the Harlem Renaissance.” Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition. Ed. William W. Demastes. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1996. 91–106. Print.Search in Google Scholar

Watson, Alex. Staging Systemic Violence: British Theatre 2010–2019. London: Methuen Drama, 2024. Web. 11 Nov. 2024. <doi: 10.5040/9781350387317>.10.5040/9781350387317Search in Google Scholar

“WHO Director General’s Opening Remarks at the Media Briefing: 5 May 2023.” World Health Organisation, 5 May 2023. Web. 8 Oct. 2024. <https://www.who.int/news-room/speeches/item/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing–-5-may-2023>.Search in Google Scholar

Zhou, Debbie. “seven methods of killing kylie jenner Review: A High-Octane Interrogation of Racism and Twitter.” The Guardian, 21Apr. 2021. Web. 6 Sept. 2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/apr/21/seven-methods-of-killing-kylie-jenner-review-a-high-octane-interrogation-of-racism-and-twitter>.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2025-04-29

Published in Print: 2025-04-24

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2025-2010

Keywords for this article

realism; feminism; virtual realism; digital theatre; Black feminism; Jasmine Lee-Jones; seven methods of killing kylie jenner