This Element focuses on the frequent staging of the most precarious fraction of the working class in the context of a theatre industry, academy and audiences that are dominated by the cultural fraction of the middle class. It interrogates the staging of an abjectified figure as a means of challenging the stigmatisation of the poor in political discourse, defined here as an ideological imaginary of moral and cultural deficit. The Element argues that in seeking to subvert such an imaginary, ...

What do we mean when we describe theatre as political today? How might theatre-makers' provocations for change need to be differently designed when addressing the precarious spectator-subject of twenty- first century neoliberalism? In this important study Liz Tomlin interrogates the influential theories of Jacques Rancière to propose a new framework of analysis through which contemporary political dramaturgies can be investigated. Drawing, in particular, on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouff...

This series of three volumes provides a groundbreaking study of the work of many of the most innovative and important British theatre companies from 1965 to 2014. Each volume provides a survey of the political and cultural context, an extensive survey of the variety of theatre companies from the period, and detailed case studies of six of the most important companies. Volume Three, 1995-2014, charts the expansion of the sector in the era of Lottery funding and traces the resistant influenc...

Liz Tomlin is co-artistic director of the Point Blank theater company, based in Sheffield, and a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.