Abstract
Over the past decade, the plays of Anders Lustgarten have taken a prominent place in the English theatre repertoire. Performed by companies including Red Ladder, Cardboard Citizens, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Lustgarten’s dramatic writing places social and political issues centrestage, ranging from the housing crisis and the electoral ascendancy of far-right parties to the alienation of the urban working class and the racist scapegoating of immigrants. This article focuses on Lustgarten’s landmark play inspired by the Occupy movement, If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep (Royal Court Theatre, 2013). I explore how the play engages with, and reflects on, economic austerity, forms of contemporary mass protest, and, indirectly, evolving conceptions of English nationhood. I also examine Lustgarten’s notion of “Radical Optimism” – a term he identifies with the global anti-austerity protests following the 2007-8 financial crisis – and consider its importance to what he calls “anti-prop” political theatre. The first part of the article probes the relationship between If You Don’t Let Us Dream and the established “tradition” of state-of-the-nation playwriting; the second part identifies the play’s challenge to this “tradition,” which is informed by its proximity to the Occupy protests.
About the author
Chris Megson is Reader in Drama and Theatre and Director of the Centre for Contemporary British Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research focuses on documentary and verbatim theatre, post-war British theatre, and contemporary playwriting. His publications include Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present (with Alison Forsyth; Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Decades of Modern British Playwriting: the 1970 s (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2012) and numerous journal articles and chapters in edited collections including, most recently, British Theatre Companies: From Fringe to Mainstream, Volume One, 1965–1970 (ed. John Bull; London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016) and Performing the Secular: Religion, Representation, and Politics (ed. Milija Gluhovic and Jisha Menon; London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
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