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  • Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991 by Jeanne Colleran
  • Jenna L. Kubly
Theatre and War: Theatrical Responses Since 1991. By Jeanne Colleran. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; pp. 252.

In her own words, Jeanne Colleran’s Theatre and War aims “to investigate how the media, beginning with the Persian Gulf War, has altered political analysis and how this altercation has in turn affected socially critical art” (6)—specifically, dramas written for and produced in “mainstream” British and American theatrical venues (6–7). Although earlier scholarship deals with theatrical representations of other wars, Colleran’s book is among the first to deal exclusively with theatrical works written since 1991 that portray war and its aftermath. Although she both begins and concludes on a hopeful note of “art’s restorative powers” (11), the book’s most significant contribution is a skillful engagement with Baudrillard and a wide range of other theorists who critique the role of the media in the performance of war, followed by an inquiry into the theatrical works that sought to expose the media’s simulations, obfuscations, and biases.

Colleran opens by setting forth her overarching approach with a consideration of how the rapid growth in media influenced the perception and presentation of war—the “new semiotic environment” (7). She traces the rise of the media and its power to construct news to the coverage of the First Gulf War in 1991, which marks a “historical juncture” (31), as the images broadcast directly into home televisions “provoke[d] public response and policy response” (14). This shift was evident in the ways in which media, politics, and even military strategy “converged [to] reshape the public sphere” (31). This coverage, Colleran and others argue, changed the way in which the public responded to the war, as the quantity of information did not necessarily equal veracity, leaving the spectator with the difficult task of interpretation.

The theatrical works analyzed in the chapters that follow each respond to this evolving task of interpretation, as each work attempts to tell the “truth” about the war, often in conversation with, if not opposition to, mass media’s initial portrayal of the event. Among the forty works discussed are those by well-known playwrights like Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and Harold Pinter alongside less familiar plays, such as Richard Norton-Taylor’s Justifying War and Judith Thompson’s Palace of the End. The book is organized thematically, each chapter considering an aspect of war and its presentation in the media plays that deal with the First Gulf War; dramatic responses to 9/11; sympathetic and historically based dramatic representations of “the enemy”; more abstract and allegorical modes; “war documents” and the reemergence of documentary drama; and plays tied to specific sites—namely Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Afghanistan.

Several themes run through Colleran’s analysis: the unresolved legacy of Vietnam; emergent US neoimperialist policies and their ties to a militarized, capitalistic culture; and the possibility of dissent and activism. Just as some plays point to the American past and its influence on political rhetoric, others take an even broader view of history, attempting to counteract the average American’s incomplete understanding of Middle Eastern history and the tendency to view Muslim people stereotypically—both deficiencies, the result of how the media chooses to frame their stories.

In cataloging and analyzing the various theatrical responses to 9/11, Colleran argues that many of the earliest dramas tackled fundamental questions like “Why” and “Who,” and in seeking these answers, quickly moved beyond the heroes of 9/11 to instead “interrupt hypernationalist discourse” (104) and investigate how globalization, US dominance, and incorrect assumptions contributed to ongoing instability. Other works take a different angle, seeking to put a face on the “enemy” and their motivations, whether rational or beyond comprehension. Despite staging the terrorist, who might be “another man’s freedom fighter” (115), other plays also depict the constant state of anxiety about terrorists/terrorism in which post-9/11 citizens exist. The images of past acts are part of the constant fear that terrorists create, in that another, more horrific act is both “unprecedented” and yet “already imagined” (120).

Finally, a theme that binds these...

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