Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre
Analysing an expanding body of theatre and performance works,Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre examines how the themes and images of science fiction are enabling practitioners to intervene on the most urgent social and political issues of the present moment.
By exploring the genre's impact on the live theatrical event, the book presents an original and topical interrogation of issues that remain at the heart of the national and global political agenda, including military conflict, social injustice, economic inequality, migration, nationhood, anti-democratic populism, and climate collapse.
The author draws upon a wide range of dramatic forms, from critically acclaimed plays by writers such as Alistair McDowall, Caryl Churchill, Dawn King, Anne Washburn and Ella Road, to devised work, site-specific performance, Shakespearean drama and physical theatre.
The book's chapters are based on some of the genre's most resonant images, including post-apocalyptic wildernesses, dystopian regimes and artificial lifeforms. Furthermore, by placing examples in dialogue with a range of theories and scholars, this book constructs an innovative interdisciplinary framework comprised of theatre studies, sociology, philosophy, economic and political science.
Providing an engagingly written, intellectually rich and uniquely compelling analysis,Science Fiction and Contemporary British Theatre charts a new and growing landscape of scholarly research, and establishes science fiction as an exciting, expanding and urgent dramatic and political practice.
Drama Research review (Paul Johnson):
鈥淭imely and substantial [鈥 Farnell effectively dismantles the narrative that science fiction is best suited to screen media, removing that as a point of competition, showing instead how live performance offers distinctive embodied, affective and political possibilities.
Farnell鈥檚 book makes a significant contribution to theatre and performance studies, science fiction studies and contemporary British drama scholarship. It is elegantly written, elegiac at times, and Farnell鈥檚 personal engagement with the work comes through clearly.鈥�