Dramaturgies of Contagion in Contemporary British Speculative Theatre
This article looks at three contemporary British speculative plays – Dawn King’s Foxfinder (2011), Stef Smith’s Human Animals (2016) and Alistair McDowall’s X (2016) – to show how their approach to the theme of transmission interrogates the simplified forms of contagion based on binary categories su...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte"
2021-10-01
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| Series: | Sillages Critiques |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/11483 |
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| Summary: | This article looks at three contemporary British speculative plays – Dawn King’s Foxfinder (2011), Stef Smith’s Human Animals (2016) and Alistair McDowall’s X (2016) – to show how their approach to the theme of transmission interrogates the simplified forms of contagion based on binary categories such as present/absent, before/after, cause/symptom, human/nonhuman. It is my belief that these plays’ conception of contagion, not as a mere epidemiological fact but as a metaphor for disruption and relationality, transformation and conformity, invokes a distinct utopian method of the twenty-first century, which is best characterised by uncertainty. |
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| ISSN: | 1272-3819 1969-6302 |