Introductory description

This module will address the theatrical treatment of issues that have been at the heart of the British nation in the twenty-first century and subject to widespread public debate, media campaigns, political controversy and legislation: areas that may be covered include: migration, Gypsies and Travellers, riots, the 'chav', homelessness and Black British identities.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1: Introduction: National Abjects
This introductory session will outline the concepts, ideas and debates underpinning the module

Weeks 2: National Implosion/Riotous Behaviours
From the ‘urban riots’ that rocked cities across England in the early 1980s; to what Bea Campbell has
described as the ‘explosion of lawless masculinity in cities as disparate as Oxford, Cardiff and Tyneside’ in
1991 to the ‘race riots’ that exploded in small northern towns such as Oldham and Burnley in 2001 and the
violence that spread across English cities during the summer of 2011, riots have occupied a prominent
place in the fabric of post-war British history. This session will look at how dominant
political assessments and media treatments of these riots generally focus on dysfunctional families, poor
or absent parenting, lawlessness, immigration, racial antagonism, lack of aspiration and blame disaffected
youth derived from the multi-ethnic so-called ‘underclass’. We will look at various theatrical responses to
riots in recent British theatre history that may include Trevor Griffith’s Oi for England (1982); Bryony Lavery’s
Goliath (1997), Gillian Slovo’s The Riots (2011) and Alecky Blythe’s Little Revolution (2014), to explore the
different ways (thematically and aesthetically) that these playwrights have intervened to shed light on and
theatricalise the frictions and fissures that led to these enactments of riotous behaviours.

Week 3: Blighting these Green and Pleasant Lands: Gypsies and Travellers
Twenty-First Century Britain has witnessed an increasing fascination and visible unease with the presence
of gypsy and traveller communities. In media discourse and political rhetoric, Gypsies and Travellers are
constructed as disruptive forces that unsettle ‘settled communities’ through illegal land development;
criminality, misuse of the Welfare State and concerns with dirt and mess. As such, Gypsies and Travellers
are cast as problematic others, deviants who fail to contribute to wider society and instead represent a
social burden. We will look at various cultural representations of Gypsies and Travellers such as Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (2010-2012) and media campaigns such as the Sun’s ‘Stamp on the Camp’ initiative launched in 2005. In terms of theatre, we will look at John Arden’s Live Like Pigs (1958) and Chloe Moss's The Way Home, which although produced over fifty years apart, raise remarkably similar issues regarding the tense relations between traditionally nomadic and settled communities and anxieties around space, place and identity and the need to exert control over the other.

Week 4: In recent years there has been persistent concerns with the ‘migration problem’, human trafficking and the growing numbers of deaths at sea as thousands flea war-torn countries and persecution or seek a better standard of living. Even if migrants and asylum seekers reach Britain, the legacy of the British Empire and its history of colonization, slavery and colonial rule, means that new migrants to Britain are often perceived as inferior ‘alien’ and ‘Other’. In this session we will address the various manifestations of Britain’s un-ease with migration and look at how Clare Bayley’s play The Container (2007) and Lampedusa (2015) by Anders Lustgarten attempt to theatricalise the plight of those seeking to enter Britain.

Week 5: This week we will look at two theatrical first-hand accounts of the asylum process in Frances Poet’s Adam (2017) and Nicola McCartney and Dritan Kastrati How Not to Drown (2023 [2019]). We will consider how asylum journeys are narrated, the impact and politics of first-person testimonial and themes of safety, survival and identity.

Week 7: No Fixed Abode During this week’s session we will look at social, political and cultural responses to homelessness in Britain. We will look at two theatrical pieces that address the experience of living in temporary hostels. Exploring the multiplicity of experiences presented, we will consider representations of the state and the hostel inhabitants. We will think about the responses that are invited and how the pieces generate calls for a politics of different listening and care through the theatrical strategies they employ.

Week 8: Austerity and Abject Communities
Description: In this session we will consider how playwrights have explored the relationships between class, poverty and abjection in the context of periods of history when working-class communities and subjects have come under sustained attack from government policies that render them ‘chavs’, the ‘undeserving poor’ and socially abject. The session will look at a range of work that may include Gary Owen's, Iphigenia in Splott and Scottee's Class

Week 9: Telling Different Stories
The session will focus on Eclipse’s work particularly through Revolution Mix, which is an initiative to place Black narratives at the heart of British Theatre, with the express aim of highlighting that Black British stories are so much more than slavery, immigration and teenage gang crime. We will think about the dominance of ‘ghetto’ narratives and the ramifications of hidden histories and unheard stories.

Week 10: ‘Angry Black Women’
This week we will address ways that contemporary Black British playwrights have called out the persistence of white privilege and the denigration of Black subjectivities. The connecting thread for the discussion concerns ideas of legibility, particularly the ways that Black bodies; Black subjectivities are persistently framed in relation to a number of reductive and vilified racial stereotypes of the angry and/or violent person of colour. We will consider Jasmine Lee-Jones’s Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner (London, Methuen 2019) and Somalia Seaton’s Fall of the kingdom, Rise of the Footsoldier (London, Oberon 2016)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the ways in which playwrights and theatre-makers have used theatre to respond to, intervene in and debate issues around social abjection and display an understanding of why and how the concerns addressed relate to wider historical contexts.
• Show an awareness of how theories, issues and debates relating to social abjection, othering and British identity are explored in and through the subject matter, forms, creative processes and performance contexts utilised in a variety of theatre works.
• Describe and assess some of the textual, theatrical and performative strategies used in the works studied.

Indicative reading list

Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.

Briggs, Daniel, ed. The English Riots of 2011: A Summer of Discontent. Hook, UK: Waterside Press, 2012.

Clark, Colin and Margaret Greenfields, eds. Here to Stay: The Gypsies and Travellers of Britain. Hatfield, UK: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2006.

Cox, Emma. Theatre & Migration. Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2014.

Holdsworth, Nadine (2020) English Theatre and Social Abjection’, Palgrave, 2020

Sams, Victoria. Immigration and Contemporary British Theater: Finding a Home on the Stage. Peter Lang, 2014.

Tyler, Imogen. Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain. London: Zed Books, 2013.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Research element

Both of the assessments require the student to research concepts, theories and their application to cultural performance

Interdisciplinary

The students are asked to engage with political and cultural theory as a key part of the module

Subject specific skills

Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the ways in which playwrights and theatre-makers have used theatre to respond to, intervene in and debate issues around social abjection and display an understanding of why and how the concerns addressed relate to wider historical contexts.

Students will be able to show an awareness of how theories, issues and debates relating to social abjection, othering and British identity are explored in and through the subject matter, forms, creative processes and performance contexts utilised in a variety of theatre works.

Students will be able to describe and assess some of the textual, theatrical and performative strategies used in the works studied.

Transferable skills

Communication skills
research skills
presentation skills
analytical skills