Problems of Stasis in My Country: The National Theatre and the crisis of general enculturation in post-referendum Britain. (17th November 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fisher, Tony
• Is Part Of: Performance research. Volume 24:Number 8(2019)
• Page Start: 125
• Page End: 132
• Publication Date: 2019-11-17
• Subjects: Stasis -- Civil War -- National Theatre -- UK Referendum -- Oresteia; Performing arts -- Periodicals; 791
• DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2019.1718446
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1352-8165

Abstract

Abstract : This essay explores the discursive invocation of 'civil war' to describe the polarization of the political terrain in post-Referendum Britain in order to contextualize the National Theatre's production of Carol Ann Duffy and Rufus Norris's 'verbatim' play My Country and its representation of Brexit. It shows how the political reality of Brexit, understood as a crisis of 'general enculturation', undermined the NT's attempt to transcend the impasse of the political context. It argues that in identifying the NT with the play's central figure of Britannia, an image of reconciliation, the theatre failed to account for its own implication in the wider crisis of enculturation.