Staging Systemic Violence: British Theatre 2010-2019

by Alex Watson, Mark Taylor-Batty (Editor), Enoch Brater (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350387287
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/19/2026
Series:	Methuen Drama Engage
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

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 (forthcoming).

Mark Taylor-Batty is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Deputy Head of School in the School of English at the University of Leeds, UK. His previous publications include The Theatre of Harold Pinter (Bloomsbury, 2014), About Pinter: The Playwright and the Work (Faber and Faber, 2005), Roger Blin: Collaborations and Methodologies (Peter Lang, 2007) and, he co-authored with his wife, Juliette Taylor-Batty, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (Continuum, 2009).

Enoch Brater is the Kenneth T. Rowe Collegiate Professor of Dramatic Literature, Professor of English and Theater at the University of Michigan and the series editor of Methuen Drama's Miller scholarly editions. He has written extensively on the work of Samuel Beckett and Arthur Miller.

Enoch Brater is the Kenneth T. Rowe Collegiate Professor of Dramatic Literature, Professor of English and Theater at the University of Michigan. He is series editor of Methuen Drama's Arthur Miller scholarly editions, and with Mark Taylor-Batty of Methuen Drama's Engage series. He has written extensively on the work of Samuel Beckett and Arthur Miller.

Table of Contents

Introduction (Camilla Whitehill's Mr Incredible)
'Staging the Systemic': Context and Methodology
Unspectacular: The Representation of Violence in 2010s British Theatre and Mr Incredible
Overview

Chapter One: Violence (Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone)
Tea and Catastrophe: Churchill in the 2010s
The Necessary Difficulty of Defining Violence: Arendt, Sontag, and Escaped Alone
Making Invisible Violence Visible: Evans, Giroux, Žizek, and Escaped Alone
Violence and 'Truth': Butler, Nancy, and Escaped Alone
Conclusion

Chapter Two: Performativity (Lulu Raczka and Barrel Organ's Some People Talk About Violence and Martin McDonagh's A Very Very Very Dark Matter)
Theatrical Strategies and Reality-Making: Perspectives on Performativity and Theatre
Injurious Speech: The Violence of Performativity and Some People Talk About Violence
Oppressive Recitation: The Performativity of Violence and A Very Very Very Dark Matter
Conclusion

Chapter Three: Protest (Chris Thorpe's There Has Possibly Been An Incident and debbie tucker green's ear for eye)
(Ir)relevancy and (Il)legitimacy in the Public Sphere: Protest, Theatre, and (Non)Violence
Nonviolent Progress/Revolutionary Change: Witnessing Black Witnessing in ear for eye
Conclusion

Chapter Four: Climate Crisis (Ella Hickson's Oil, Duncan Macmillan's Lungs, and Lucy Kirkwood's The Children)
The Violent Performativity of Resource Exploitation: Magic Realism and Perspective in Oil
Dramaturgies of 2010s British CCT: Domesticity, Cli-Fi, Posthumanism, and Materiality
Performative Taxonomical Violence: The Slow Theatre of The Children
Conclusion

Chapter Five: Brexit and Neoliberalism (Rose Lewenstein's Cougar, Alistair McDowall's Pomona and Simon Stephens's Three Kingdoms)
Apocalypse and Dystopia: Theatrical Visions of 2010s British Neoliberalism
Empty Europe: Cross-Cultural British-European Theatre and Dramaturgies of Violence
Conclusion

Chapter Six: Brexit and Racism (Anders Lustgarten's Lampedusa, Zinnie Harris's How to Hold Your Breath, and Somalia Nonyé Seaton's Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier)
Europeanness and the Other: Lampedusa and How to Hold Your Breath
Racism and British Identity: Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier
Conclusion

Chapter Seven: Gender-Based Violence (Katherine Chandler's Bird and Jasmine Lee-Jones's seven methods of killing kylie jenner)
The Performative 'Reality' of Gender-Based Violence: Fluid Realism and Bird
Breaking (Violent) Forms: Realism-without-truth and seven methods of killing kylie jenner
Conclusion

Conclusion (Travis Alabanza's Burgerz)
Violence and Performativity in 2010s British Theatre: Three Contentions
The Power of Performativity: Showing Structural Violence and Burgerz
Concluding Remarks

Works Cited
Appendix: List of Performances
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher