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Austerity and the Public Role of Drama

Performing Lives-in-Common

  • Book
  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Victor Merriman

    1. Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire, UK

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  • Takes a transnational approach that brings in performance and critical perspectives under-represented in theatre scholarship

  • Challenges received readings of classical and radical scripts and performances

  • Argues for social science to take account of readings of performance tropes and conventions developed by performance theorists

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
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  2. Neo-liberalism’s Political and Moral Economic Project: The End of Public Life?

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Introduction: Austerity and Drama’s Public Role

      • Victor Merriman
      Pages 3-9

    3. The Public World: An Idea Under Pressure

      • Victor Merriman
      Pages 11-43

    4. Drama in Public Worlds

      • Victor Merriman
      Pages 45-61

  3. Performance, the Academy, and the Politics of Austerity

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 63-63
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    2. Drama Worlds As Public Worlds

      • Victor Merriman
      Pages 65-84

    3. Confronting Corporate Neo-liberalism in Jim Nolan’s Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye (2016)

      • Victor Merriman
      Pages 85-99

    4. (Re)Public Worlds: Drama As Ethical Encounter

      • Victor Merriman
      Pages 101-125

    5. Beyond Deficit Culture: Conceptualising Collectives

      • Victor Merriman
      Pages 127-139

    6. Beyond Repair: A Critical Performance Manifesto

      • Victor Merriman
      Pages 141-168

  4. Back Matter

    Pages 169-175
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Keywords

About this book

This book asks what, if any, public role drama might play under Project Austerity – an intensification phase of contemporary liberal political economy. It investigates the erosion of public life in liberal democracies, and critiques the attention economy of deficit culture, by which austerity erodes life-in-common in favour of narcissistic performances of life-in-public. It argues for a social order committed to human flourishing and deliberative democracy, as a counterweight to the political economy of austerity. It demonstrates, using examples from England, Ireland, Italy, and the USA, that drama and the academy pursue shared humane concerns; the one, a critical art form, the other, a social enabler of critical thought and progressive ideas. A need for dialogue with emergent forms of collective consciousness, new democratic practices and institutions, shapes a manifesto for critical performance, which invites universities and cultural workers to join other social actors in imagining and enabling ethical lives-in-common.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire, UK

    Victor Merriman

About the author

Victor Merriman is Professor of Critical Performance Studies at Edge Hill University, UK. He is author of Because We Are Poor: Irish Theatre in the 1990s (2011). He was a member of An Chomhairle Ealaíon/Arts Council of Ireland (1993-1998), and chaired the council’s Review of Theatre in Ireland (1995-1996).

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