Abstract
This chapter reflects on the patterns of crisis that precede the theatre of the 21st century and draws lines of connection and contrast. British theatre in the twenty-first century, using a diverse array of aesthetic strategies, is strongly attuned to crises that are global, systemic, and relational in ways necessarily distinct from the former century.
It stands at the crossroads of a conjuncture where the previous state of the nation might be substituted by a more cosmopolitan state of the community approach that displaces the analysis of the big political questions in terms of well-defined and established ideological blocks, to embrace a regenerative approach focused on the restoration of the social fabric that has been systematically eroded during the hegemonic phase of neoliberalism. The success and consolidation of an alternative will depend, among other things, but most crucially, on the short duration of this coming interregnum; and the ability to forge alliances and affective networks that cut across the widest possible sections of society and the citizens.
The performance and display of vulnerability on the stage brings to the fore the inequalities and injustice that have been obscured by neoliberal narratives of economic utopianism. It is not an exercise of self-deprecation but of visibility instead, reclaiming our extant humanity as a subversive, disruptive element of struggle.