Abstract
This chapter contends that since the 1990s, as the outcomes of the neoliberal turn of the previous decade became increasingly palpable, one of the most noticeable aspects of a contemporary 'structure of feeling' is an evolving sense of crisis as individual and as communal. The essay explores this sensibility in a sample of six plays: David Hare's Skylight (1995), Mark Ravenhill's Some Explicit Polaroids (1999), Tim Crouch's The Author (2009), David Greig's The Events (2013), Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone (2016) and debbie tucker green's ear for eye (2018).
Despite their formal and thematic diversity, these works present images of crisis that expand from local to global. Skylight and Some Explicit Polaroids gauge the mood at the end of the twentieth century in terms of social alienation and a clash of values.
In contrast, The Author and The Events mine the collective itself as a paradoxical site of magnetism and ambivalence. Finally, Escaped Alone and ear for eye, through disruptions of form and language, render systemic crises tangible.
Drawing together Lauren Berlant's notion of 'crisis ordinariness' with theatre's proto-communal predisposition, the essay unpacks how crisis is evident not only thematically, but also in representational strategies that emphasise states of precarity.