Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART ONE WRITING MODERNITY
- PART TWO THE EMERGING AVANT-GARDE
- PART THREE MODERNISM AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1918–1945
- PART FOUR POST-WAR CULTURES, 1945–1970
- PART FIVE TOWARDS THE MILLENNIUM, 1970–2000
- 32 The Seventies and the cult of culture
- 33 Feminism and writing: the politics of culture
- 34 The half-lives of literary fictions: genre fictions in the late twentieth century
- 35 Theatre and politics
- 36 Irish literature: tradition and modernity
- 37 Scottish literature: Second Renaissance
- 38 Towards devolution: new Welsh writing
- 39 British–Jewish Writing and the turn towards diaspora
- 40 Fiction and postmodernity
- 41 Postcolonial fictions
- 42 Writing lives
- 43 Poetry after 1970
- 44 Ending the century: literature and digital technology
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
35 - Theatre and politics
from PART FIVE - TOWARDS THE MILLENNIUM, 1970–2000
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART ONE WRITING MODERNITY
- PART TWO THE EMERGING AVANT-GARDE
- PART THREE MODERNISM AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1918–1945
- PART FOUR POST-WAR CULTURES, 1945–1970
- PART FIVE TOWARDS THE MILLENNIUM, 1970–2000
- 32 The Seventies and the cult of culture
- 33 Feminism and writing: the politics of culture
- 34 The half-lives of literary fictions: genre fictions in the late twentieth century
- 35 Theatre and politics
- 36 Irish literature: tradition and modernity
- 37 Scottish literature: Second Renaissance
- 38 Towards devolution: new Welsh writing
- 39 British–Jewish Writing and the turn towards diaspora
- 40 Fiction and postmodernity
- 41 Postcolonial fictions
- 42 Writing lives
- 43 Poetry after 1970
- 44 Ending the century: literature and digital technology
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
It is the run-up to Christmas 2001. A community centre in Homerton, in the East End of London, is hosting a series of acts by a range of performing artists. A man in a beard and long coat steps into the empty space. His extended arm begins slowly to trace a wide arc. In his hand he holds a small sleigh. Behind him there appears a projection of the twin towers in New York. The traditional image of Christmas blurs with the more recent image of another event, the terrorist attack of 11 September. Santa’s sleigh flies on.
Was this performance political? It touched a hot political topic, but did it take a position on it? Did it need to? Could it remain playful and enigmatic and yet be political? Was its effectiveness dwarfed by the thing it referred to? What precisely was the relationship between this piece of theatre and the politics of the event? Is that relationship political?
As he surveyed the contemporary scene in 1982, the playwright David Edgar was clear about the connection of theatre and politics. He defined it as ‘the project of explaining public events in a privatized way’. The key word perhaps is ‘explaining’. So, for example, John Arden and Margaretta d’Arcy’s Island of the Mighty from 1972 could be said to use the story of Arthur’s reign in the sixth century to explain what life in the modern UK felt like.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature , pp. 635 - 652Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005