Description:
This study offers a historicization of the 2010s in British theatre with a focus on the representation of systemic violence, exploring productions that engage with concerns of protest, climate crisis, neoliberalism, racism and gender-based violence.
It offers a range of case studies from established and emergent playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Martin McDonagh, Anders Lustgarten, Lucy Kirkwood, Ella Hickson, Jasmine Lee-Jones, debbie tucker green, Zinnie Harris, and Travis Alabanza. Productions of their work in the 2010s are analysed through a framework of cultural theory, philosophy, and theatre and performance studies that offer insightful conceptions of violence and performativity. Central to this book is the belief that theatre has the ability to depict issues of systemic violence in thoughtful and valuable ways, drawing on the medium's specific relations between creatives, texts, spectatorship and audiences to mindfully engage participants in the most pressing societal and cultural concerns of their time.Brief description: Alex Watson is a principal lecturer at Performers College Brighton, BIMM University, UK. He researches and publishes work on contemporary British theatre, theatrical representations of violence, climate crisis theatre, site-specific theatre, and one-person plays. His monograph, Staging Systemic Violence: British Theatre 2010-2019 (2024) is published in the Methuen Engage series, as is a chapter in the edited collection Harold Pinter: Stages, Networks, Collaborations (2022, eds. Basil Chiasson and Catriona Fallow). Other publications include articles for Theatre Notebook (2022) and Contemporary Theatre Review (2022) as well as chapters for Contemporary Drama in English (2023), and The Routledge Companion to 20th-Century Theatre (2025).
Review Quotes: "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." --Dan Rebellato, Professor of Contemporary Theatre, Royal Holloway University of London, UK