Staying Dead: The Corpse, Burial and Exhumation in Three Contemporary British History Plays

TY - CHAP

T1 - Staying Dead

T2 - The Corpse, Burial and Exhumation in Three Contemporary British History Plays

AU - Poore, Benjamin

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - This chapter examines the acts of burial and exhumation in three contemporary British history plays. For my purposes, a ‘history play’ may be defined as a piece of writing for the theatre that engages with historical events and settings. Such plays inevitably, at the moment of their staging or revival, take on particular meanings for audiences, since theatre as a live, durational art from encourages spectators to compare the historical events depicted with their present historical moment. The chapter will argue that acts of burial and exhumation in contemporary British theatre are intimately tied to notions of land, soil and belonging. These have become increasingly pertinent ideas in the UK’s political climate following the 2016 Referendum on membership of the European Union. Of my three case studies, one dates from more than a decade before this vote, and two were written and staged in the interim between the Referendum result and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Victoria by David Greig (2000), Common by DC Moore (2017), and Eyam by Matt Hartley (2018) all feature corpses on stage as a means to consider time, temporality, place, and history. Each play offers a different interpretation of what it means to play dead and to stay dead.

AB - This chapter examines the acts of burial and exhumation in three contemporary British history plays. For my purposes, a ‘history play’ may be defined as a piece of writing for the theatre that engages with historical events and settings. Such plays inevitably, at the moment of their staging or revival, take on particular meanings for audiences, since theatre as a live, durational art from encourages spectators to compare the historical events depicted with their present historical moment. The chapter will argue that acts of burial and exhumation in contemporary British theatre are intimately tied to notions of land, soil and belonging. These have become increasingly pertinent ideas in the UK’s political climate following the 2016 Referendum on membership of the European Union. Of my three case studies, one dates from more than a decade before this vote, and two were written and staged in the interim between the Referendum result and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Victoria by David Greig (2000), Common by DC Moore (2017), and Eyam by Matt Hartley (2018) all feature corpses on stage as a means to consider time, temporality, place, and history. Each play offers a different interpretation of what it means to play dead and to stay dead.

M3 - Chapter

T3 - Emerald Studies in Death and Culture

BT - Death, Culture and Leisure

A2 - Coward-Gibbs, Matt

PB - Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.

ER -