Staging Systemic Violence

Alex Watson is a principal lecturer at the Institute of Contemporary Theatre, Brighton, BIMM University, UK. His publications include articles for Theatre Notebook (2022) and Contemporary Theatre Review (2022), as well as chapters for Methuen Engage (2022), Contemporary Drama in English (2023), and The Routledge Companion to 20th-Century Theatre (forthcoming).

• Introduction (Camilla Whitehill's Mr Incredible)'Staging the Systemic': Context and MethodologyUnspectacular: The Representation of Violence in 2010s British Theatre and Mr IncredibleOverviewChapter One: Violence (Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone)Tea and Catastrophe: Churchill in the 2010sThe Necessary Difficulty of Defining Violence: Arendt, Sontag, and Escaped AloneMaking Invisible Violence Visible: Evans, Giroux, Žizek, and Escaped Alone Violence and 'Truth': Butler, Nancy, and Escaped AloneConclusionChapter Two: Performativity (Lulu Raczka and Barrel Organ's Some People Talk About Violence and Martin McDonagh's A Very Very Very Dark Matter)Theatrical Strategies and Reality-Making: Perspectives on Performativity and TheatreInjurious Speech: The Violence of Performativity and Some People Talk About ViolenceOppressive Recitation: The Performativity of Violence and A Very Very Very Dark MatterConclusionChapter Three: Protest (Chris Thorpe's There Has Possibly Been An Incident and debbie tucker green's ear for eye)(Ir)relevancy and (Il)legitimacy in the Public Sphere: Protest, Theatre, and (Non)ViolenceNonviolent Progress/Revolutionary Change: Witnessing Black Witnessing in ear for eyeConclusionChapter Four: Climate Crisis (Ella Hickson's Oil, Duncan Macmillan's Lungs, and Lucy Kirkwood's The Children)The Violent Performativity of Resource Exploitation: Magic Realism and Perspective in OilDramaturgies of 2010s British CCT: Domesticity, Cli-Fi, Posthumanism, and MaterialityPerformative Taxonomical Violence: The Slow Theatre of The ChildrenConclusionChapter Five: Brexit and Neoliberalism (Rose Lewenstein's Cougar, Alistair McDowall's Pomona and Simon Stephens's Three Kingdoms)Apocalypse and Dystopia: Theatrical Visions of 2010s British NeoliberalismEmpty Europe: Cross-Cultural British-European Theatre and Dramaturgies of ViolenceConclusionChapter Six: Brexit and Racism (Anders Lustgarten's Lampedusa, Zinnie Harris's How to Hold Your Breath, and Somalia Nonyé Seaton's Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier)Europeanness and the Other: Lampedusa and How to Hold Your BreathRacism and British Identity: Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot SoldierConclusionChapter Seven: Gender-Based Violence (Katherine Chandler's Bird and Jasmine Lee-Jones's seven methods of killing kylie jenner)The Performative 'Reality' of Gender-Based Violence: Fluid Realism and BirdBreaking (Violent) Forms: Realism-without-truth and seven methods of killing kylie jennerConclusionConclusion (Travis Alabanza's Burgerz)Violence and Performativity in 2010s British Theatre: Three ContentionsThe Power of Performativity: Showing Structural Violence and BurgerzConcluding RemarksWorks CitedAppendix: List of PerformancesBibliographyIndex

This book offers a rich and transformative account of how violence in all its forms intersects with race and gender, politics and protest, and threads itself through most of the key British plays and performances of the last decade. Watson has written a remarkable book that helps us see our recent theatre in blazingly new light.