21st Century Liquid Hubris on Stage: a theatrical response to the 2008 financial crisis

Abstract

The 2008 financial crisis impacted catastrophically on people’s lives on a global basis, leaving the world population a feeling of shock and non-understanding. British theatre has tried to respond to this phenomenon both immediately upon the crisis-related events and also when a few years had passed and people started to make sense of what had happened. This dissertation provides an analysis of four British plays dealing with the theme of the crisis, its causes and its aftermath. Namely, the plays are David Hare’s 2009 The Power of Yes, Lucy Prebble’s 2009 Enron, Dennis Kelly’s 2012 The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas, and Clare Duffy’s 2013 Money The Gameshow. Whilst broaching issues such as greed, hubris and Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of ‘liquid modernity’, the focus of this dissertation will be that of analyzing the different approaches to the theme of the financial crisis which were chosen by the four playwrights. The body of this dissertation is composed of four chapters – each one pertaining to the analysis of one of the four plays ¬–, and of a final chapter specifically designed as a comprehensive comparative discussion of the plays analysed. As far as the source material is concerned, apart from academic material, the assessment of the plays finds its basis on the released playscripts and on the video recordings of the performances viewed in theatre archives in the UK, courtesy of the National Theatre Archive, the V&A Museum Archive of Theatre & Performance, and of Unlimited Theatre.