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Full Description
Analysing an expanding body of theatre and performance works, Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre examines how the themes and images of science fiction are enabling practitioners to intervene on the most urgent social and political issues of the present moment.
By exploring the genre's impact on the live theatrical event, the book presents an original and topical interrogation of issues that remain at the heart of the national and global political agenda, including military conflict, social injustice, economic inequality, migration, nationhood, anti-democratic populism, and climate collapse.
The author draws upon a wide range of dramatic forms, from critically acclaimed plays by writers such as Alistair McDowall, Caryl Churchill, Dawn King, Anne Washburn and Ella Road, to devised work, site-specific performance, Shakespearean drama and physical theatre.
The book's chapters are based on some of the genre's most resonant images, including post-apocalyptic wildernesses, dystopian regimes and artificial lifeforms. Furthermore, by placing examples in dialogue with a range of theories and scholars, this book constructs an innovative interdisciplinary framework comprised of theatre studies, sociology, philosophy, economic and political science.
Providing an engagingly written, intellectually rich and uniquely compelling analysis, Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre charts a new and growing landscape of scholarly research, and establishes science fiction as an exciting, expanding and urgent dramatic and political practice.
Contents
Introduction
Science fiction in contemporary culture
Theatre and science fiction in scholarship
Chapter one - Theatre and science fiction: staging realism
Introduction
Realism in science fiction
Realism in culture and theatre
Playing with realism: Caryl Churchill
Exploding realism: Alistair McDowall
Chapter two - Theatre and post-apocalypse: staging ruins
Introduction
The modern ruin in society, theory and culture
Memory in ruins: Anne Washburn's Mr Burns
Language in ruins: Ed Thomas's On Bear Ridge
The ruins of capitalism: Stan's Cafe's Home of the Wriggler
The nation in ruins: Tajinder Singh Hayer's North Country
Conclusion: beyond ruination
Chapter three - Theatre and technology: staging the posthuman
Introduction
Posthumanism in society, theory and culture
Android camp: Thomas Eccleshare's Instructions for Correct Assembly and Tim Foley's Electric Rosary
Automating Consent: Philip Ayckbourn's Loving Androids and Nessah Muthy's Sex with Robots & Other Devices
From posthumanism to transhumanism
Staging virtual reality: Jennifer Haley's The Nether
Post-bodied, post-humanity: RashDash and Unlimited's Future Bodies
Chapter four - Theatre and dystopia: staging precarity
Introduction
Defining dystopia
Contemporary theatre: from crisis to dystopia
Defining precarity
Mark Ravenhill's The Cut, Fraser Grace's Lifesavers and Penelope Skinner's Meek: precarities of violence
Climate precarity: Caryl Churchill's Far Away, Dawn King's Foxfinder and Knaive's War with the Newts: climate precarity
Neoliberal precarity: Ella Road's The Phlebotomist
Conclusion: towards a utopian future
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
