Political and Protest Theatre after 9/11: Patriotic Dissent ed. by Jenny Spencer (review)

Jenny Spencer has collected a wide range of essays exploring politically engaged theatre made in the United States and the United Kingdom, between 11 September 2001 and Barack Obama’s election in 2008. Despite the fact that both markers centre on events in the United States, the volume is well balanced and explores resonances shared by artists in the United States and the United Kingdom. Spencer explains, in her introduction, “This book is premised on the belief that the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent U.S.-led wars on terror produced a radically different sociohistorical context in both the United States and Britain for all kinds of politically engaged art, but especially for theatrical performance” (1). Spencer finds evidence of this shared context in the close political relationship between George W. Bush and Tony Blair as well as in a “period of self-censoring silence,” experienced in the United States after 9/11 and in the United Kingdom after the London bombings of 7 July 2005 (3). Without conflating experiences or political perspectives, the essays collected here illuminate, instead, the ways in which artists on both sides of the Atlantic attempted to negotiate the “double stance” of patriotism and dissent reflected in the volume’s subtitle (4).

Limiting the volume to United Kingdom and United States theatre creates, of course, a particular frame for the events following 9/11, just as the use of 9/11 as a historical divider suggests a particular narrative structure. Nevertheless, Spencer argues that the authors in the volume avoid the overly simplified reading of 9/11 as a tragedy, complete with a traumatic moment of crisis, and she is right. And, while the volume’s focus does risk privileging voices (albeit ones of protest) from within the nation leading the “war on terror” and its primary ally, Spencer and her contributors are not claiming a global or comprehensive approach. Rather, the contributors all attend rigorously to the sociohistorical context of the performances they discuss. Even as they ground their analyses in a particular time and place, they contribute to the wider discourse on the history of political theatre. In particular, the contributors to this volume are decidedly cautious in their assessment of what political theatre might achieve. As Spencer writes, “those engaged in political and protest theatre after 9/11 appeared more aware than ever of their limitations” (13). What political and protest theatre did do, Spencer argues, was “mitig[ate] against the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness” felt by many during the Bush-Blair years (13).

The essays are divided into two sections. The first, “Mainstages,” focuses on traditional theatre productions in major venues, from Broadway to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The second section, “Alternative Spaces,” encompasses a broader range, from alternative theatre spaces, to street theatre and protest, to mainstream media events. This wide scope emphasizes the point that political theatre is “[n]either a distinct dramatic form nor a stable category of analysis” (1).

Many essays explore the “double stance” of patriotism and dissent that Spencer identifies as characteristic of the period under examination. Marcia Blumberg argues that the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch offers, simultaneously, a glorification of the regiment, a critique of British betrayals of it, and a critique of the regiment’s own role in British imperialism. Dalia Basiouny, meanwhile, traces the way that Arab-American theatre artists responded to a political climate of patriotism that refused to include them, leading many artists “to a position of dissent because of their descent” (143). Sara Warner analyses how a seemingly radical feminist zine could be “domesticated and defanged” in a musical adaptation post-9/11, reflecting the ways in which some queer subjects found acceptance by aligning themselves with patriotic narratives of the state (231).

Other essays directly confront the limitations of political theatre post-9/11 (and more generally). Ryan Claycomb...