{"id":588,"date":"2018-05-30T13:53:30","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T13:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/17\/?p=588"},"modified":"2023-03-19T10:29:58","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T10:29:58","slug":"brexit-brexit-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/17\/brexit-brexit-brexit\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit Brexit Brexit Brexit Brexit Brexit Brexit Brexit Brexit: UK Theatre and the Foreign Element"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bonjana Jankovi\u0107<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead of an opening point, I propose the title: to claim that to examine UK theatre is to question its position on and in Brexit. Anything else absolves theatre of political agency and responsibility, while negating that the country\u2019s departure from the EU shapes every aspect of the UK\u2019s recent past, present and future.<\/p>\n

Brexit here is understood as a detachment from an international community\u2014a formalisation of the UK\u2019s discomfort with the idea of belonging to, rather than ruling, a congregation of countries, and its reluctance to accept historical, geographical and cultural bonds to Europe.<\/p>\n

In light of this, the article will specifically consider theatre\u2019s relationship with foreign elements\u2014immigrants marginalised by Brexit and EU funds put at risk by it. It will do so to signpost how theatre contribute(d) to the Brexit discourse and to contemplate what a future freed of the EU might look like on UK stages.<\/p>\n

Theatre?<\/h5>\n

Before this analysis, an asterisk\u2014to problematize the word \u201ctheatre\u201d and introduce the landscape of artists and institutions explored.<\/p>\n

In the UK, \u201ctheatre\u201d refers primarily to plays and their staging. \u201cNew Writing\u201d is the focus of many venues; playwrights stand at the top of the hierarchy, with the role of directors still routinely questioned.[1]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cDevised theatre\u201d implies collective authorship, and an absence of a play as a starting point, but not necessarily a radical aesthetic or a deviation from text-driven work. Performance (art) is used equally by artists who stem from visual arts and use the body as the site of their work, and by those who want to distance themselves (aesthetically or politically) from theatre. Live Art is more clearly defined, but as a cultural strategy committed to marginalised experiences and practices, rather than formally.<\/p>\n

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The Gate theatre<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Theatre and performance and Live Art exist in almost entirely separate worlds, supported by different infrastructures. Theatre has a network of subsidised venues, a commercial wing (including the West End), and a well-oiled fringe machine. Performance and Live Art operate in a comparatively tiny realm, supported by dedicated organisations like the Live Art Development Agency<\/a>, Home Live Art<\/a> or Artsadmin<\/a> and a number of artist-led initiatives, including Glasgow\u2019s \/\/BUZZCUT\/\/<\/a>, performance s p a c e<\/a> in Folkstone, or Live Art Bistro<\/a> in Leeds. Radical practices have few dedicated spaces; instead, they lurk from experimental programmes of big venues, underground and club nights, festivals and, increasingly, museums and galleries eager to institutionalise them.<\/p>\n

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Albion<\/em>. Photo: Marc Brenner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Theatre and performance and Live Art differ in another way: their insularity. In 2013, just 3.2% of all plays performed in the UK were in translation,[2]<\/sup><\/a> a statistic reflecting the general trend of saving British stages for predominately British texts. Visits by foreign companies are a rarity, reduced primarily to several festivals (LIFT or the Edinburgh International Festival) and venues (like the Barbican, where Thomas Ostermeier and Ivo van Hove, who recently directed The Network<\/em> at the National Theatre, visit annually). Foreign infusions are reserved for theatres marked as \u201cinnovative\u201d\u2014this is the case with The Gate<\/a>, a tiny London venue with a big reputation, where Ellen McDougall\u2019s inaugural season as the Artistic Director encompassed both visiting playwrights (Falk Richter) and directors (Jean-Pierre Baro). Performance and Live Art are distinctly more international. SPILL<\/a> Festival\u2019s National Platform for emerging names, held in Ipswich, is filled with UK-based immigrant artists; visiting performances are guaranteed at many festivals\u2014including Fierce<\/a> (Birmingham) or Steakhouse Live<\/a> (London).<\/p>\n

Separated by aesthetics, politics and infrastructures, these two strands of performed work in the UK contest the term \u201ctheatre.\u201d The fracture of this term\u2014into traditional theatre and radical practices\u2014is used here as a starting point for analyses.<\/p>\n

Stages of Oblivion<\/h5>\n

On June 23, 2016, just over 72% of the UK voters answered a seemingly simple question at the polls: \u201cshould the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?\u201d 51.9% chose leave; on March 29, 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May officially started the two-year Brexit negotiation process. A frustrating year later, the European Commission released a draft agreement on key issues,[3]<\/sup><\/a> including the rights of 3 million EU citizens in the UK. Colour coded to illustrate levels of dispute, the document symbolises the uncertainty which prevails.<\/p>\n

Before there was a referendum however, there was a political promise of it\u2014and in between, three years passed. During this time, as the national debate on the EU steadily grew, theatre and performance stubbornly resisted it, with only rare, one-off events dedicated to the topic. The temporary blindness was acknowledged in the aftermath of the vote; articulating a defence, critic Matt Trueman argued that theatre should not respond to politics in real time\u2014but instead function as a place of considered reflection, \u201ca space for us to take pause, to see ourselves and our society afresh.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

What this discussion failed to acknowledge is that there were many other, more complex questions, hiding behind the simplistic one on the ballot. They concern economic insecurity, intensified by the disassembling of the welfare state, and a fear of decreasing sovereignty, amplified by the loss of imperial power; for over a decade, they were blamed on immigrants (stealing jobs, burdening the state) and the EU (giving Estonia a vote, shaping British bananas).<\/p>\n

Eight days before the referendum, the Leave campaign unveiled a billboard picturing a long line of unspecified migrants of colour and the tag line \u201cBreaking Point\u201d; several hours later, Labour MP Jo Cox was assassinated by a man shouting extreme-right slogans. These events were the culmination of a sustained campaign of nationalism, racism, xenophobia and post-colonial mourning, which a week later delivered the Leave victory. The question is not whether theatre and performance addressed the referendum itself, but what they did, in the preceding years, to nurture the idea that immigrants are people, that the EU is not a bureaucratic dictatorship, or that nationalism and colonialism are bad.<\/p>\n

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Natasha Davis, Internal Terrains<\/em>. Photo: Bob Karper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The relationship of theatre and performance to immigrants is especially pertinent when it comes to Eastern Europeans, a demographic so systematically vilified in the years before the referendum that the leave vote inspired an outburst of celebratory hate crimes that started with leaflets (\u201cno more Polish vermin\u201d), progressed to arson and led to murders.[5]<\/sup><\/a> A point of constant deliberation in the British media, Eastern European immigrants appeared on UK stages only sporadically; their experiences were explored with most nuance within Live Art and performance. Natasha Davis<\/a>\u2019 work starts from feelings of displacement and belonging, locating them in the body, a site of political pressures and memory alike.<\/p>\n

Video 1<\/h6>\n