Affects in 21st-Century British Theatre: Exploring Feeling on Page and Stage

✍ Scribed by Mireia Aragay (editor), Cristina Delgado-García (editor), Martin Middeke (editor)

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 285
• Edition: 1st ed. 2021
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book explores the various manifestations of affects in British theatre of the 21st century. The introduction gives a concise survey of existing and emerging theoretical and research trends and argues in favour of a capacious understanding of affects that mediates between more autonomous and more social approaches. The twelve chapters in the collection investigate major works in Britain by playwrights and theatre makers including Mojisola Adebayo, Mike Bartlett, Alice Birch, Caryl Churchill, Tim Crouch and Andy Smith, Rachel De-lahay, Reginald Edmund, James Fritz, David Greig, Idris Goodwin, Zinnie Harris, Kieran Hurley, Lucy Kirkwood, Anders Lustgarten, Yolanda Mercy, Anthony Neilson, Lucy Prebble, Sh!t Theatre, Penelope Skinner, Stef Smith, Kae Tempest and debbie tucker green. The interpretations identify significant areas of tension as they relate affects to the fields of cognition, politics and hope. In this, the chapters uncover interrelations of thought, intention and empathy; they reveal the nexus between identities, institutions and ideology; and, finally, they explore how theatre can accomplish the transition from a sense of crisis to utopian visions.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Chapter 1: Introduction: Thinking-Feeling Our Way
Theatre Scholarship and Affects: Recent Interventions
The Many Affective Turns in the Humanities
Affects as Autonomous Intensities
The Cultural Circulation of Affects
A Capacious Understanding of Affects
References
Part I: Affects and Cognition: Thought, Intention, Empathy
Chapter 2: Feel and Think, Think and Feel: Complicating Empathy in debbie tucker green’s hang
Introduction: Framing the Argument
Politicising Empathy
“You couldn’t get anywhere near”: Ugly Feelings and Trajectories of Repulsion
A Noncathartic Aesthetic: Temporality and “Lines of Flight”
“Just Emotions”: Feeling, Thought and (In)justice in hang
References
Chapter 3: Moving Parts: Emotion, Intention and Ambivalent Attachments
Turning?
Power Flux: Defining Affect
Dynamic Structures, Affective Scenarios
Affect Algorithm: Love and Information
Good Life/Half-Life: The Children
Moving the (Im)material: What happens to the hope at the end of the evening
Incendiary Acts: Parliament Square
Moving Parts
References
Chapter 4: Love and the Intentionality of Affect in Lucy Prebble’s The Effect and debbie tucker green’s a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (-noun)
“A Viagra for the Heart”: Love Chemistry in The Effect
Recognising Precariousness: Responding to a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (-noun)
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Political Dramaturgies of Affect: Anthony Neilson’s God in Ruins and The Wonderful World of Dissocia
Postdramatic Politics of Affect
Reality Effects and Affective Ruptures
Affective Expressionism
Conclusion
References
Part II: Affects and Politics: Identities, Institutions, Ideology
Chapter 6: Black Lives, Black Words at the Bush Theatre: Art, Anger, Affect and Activism
Talking About Race, Rage and Black Theatre
Black Lives, Black Words
Rage, Anger and Creative Activism in Reginald Edmund’s Speaking for the Unheard Voices
Defensiveness, Denial and White Fragility in Idris Goodwin’s #Matter
Racial Microaggressions and Race Allies in Rachel De-lahay’s My White Best Friend
Witnessing Police Brutality in Mojisola Adebayo’s The Interrogation of Sandra Bland
Concluding Thoughts
References
Chapter 7: “Feeling Feminism”: Politics of Mischief in Contemporary Women’s Theatre
Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.: A “Feminist Killjoy” Manifesto
The Feminist Precariat: Letters to Windsor House
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: Contemporary British Theatre, Democracy and Affect: States of Feeling
Theatre and Democracy in the UK, 2010–2019
Democracy and Affect in Our “Populist Moment”: A Theoretical Framework
Theatre and Democracy: New Questions to Ask
“Lest One Day the Citizens Fill My Hall”: Democracy, Fear and Awe in David Greig’s The Suppliant Women
ATC’s Production of The Suppliant Women: Mixed Feelings
Conclusion
References
Chapter 9: Affect and the Politics of Abstraction in British New Writing
Abstraction and Affect in Neoliberal Times
Anxiety, Abstraction and tucker green
Fear, Abstraction and Anders Lustgarten
Abstraction as an Affective Process
References
Part III: Affects and Hope: From Crisis to Utopian Feelings
Chapter 10: Vibrant Materials: Affective Arrangements, the Allure of Glamour and Architexture(s) in Penelope Skinner’s Eigengrau and Mike Bartlett’s Game
Introduction: Affective Arrangements, Intensity, Vibrancy and Intra-action
Object Intra-action, the Allure of Glamour and the Transversality of Affect
Duration, Disruption and Textures
The Appeal Structure of Eigengrau and Game
References
Chapter 11: Entanglements: Transaction and Intra-action with the Devil in How to Hold Your Breath
Happiness and Life as a Project
Entanglements and Intra-action
Responsibility and the Freedom to be Unhappy
References
Chapter 12: Theatre at the End of the World
The Future of the End of the World
Catastrophe
And the Sky Can Still Fall on Our Heads
Political Affect
From Pity to Com-Passion
The End of Empathy
Someone Just Like Me
Coda
References
Chapter 13: Affects and the Development of Political Subjectivity: From Resilience to Agency in Kae Tempest’s Wasted
Introduction
The Stickiness of Affects, Immunity and Political Subjectivity
Beyond Resilience: The Power to Affect and Be Affected
“Negative Affects”: Swaying Between Change and the Known
Self-Empowerment, the Chorus and Spectatorship
Conclusion
References
Index