National Frontiers on Stage: An Ironic Reality in Europe

• John London ^[1]
  1. [1] University of London

     University of London

     Reino Unido

     
• Localización: De fronteres i arts escèniques / coord. por Núria Santamaria, Francesc Foguet i Boreu, 2015, ISBN 978-84-943779-0-7, págs. 147-167
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • Three principal ironies can be specified in relation to frontiers on stage and outside the theatre. These serve as a starting point from which to analyse drama about movement to and within Europe as well as the vagaries of European politics. As Heiner Müller noted in the post-Communist 1990s, Europe had turned into a fortress which did not offer greater security. Frontiers created a series of paradoxes through a clash of legislative conceptions of nationality. In plays by Timberlake Wertenbaker, David Greig and Juan Mayorga there are allusions to the new controls. However, Kay Adshead’s The Bogus Woman (2001) presents a more accomplished and precise manipulation of multiple ironies in the portrayal of an African woman seeking asylum in the UK. In contrast, a cynical, but no less theatrical, reading of the desire to become a legal refugee came in Shumona Sinha’s novel Assommons les pauvres! (2011) where stories of suffering are revealed to be lies and the irony in the text had a palpable result in the outside world.

    Of course, the development of the European Union (EU) over the last fifteen years has entailed a re-organization of frontiers according to which nations are theoretically part of the greater unit from which they were previously excluded. The irony here is that new legislative barriers have arisen actually dividing countries within the EU. Significant in this context are the cases of Romania and Bulgaria, admitted to the EU in 2007. Performing the EU is different depending on where you live and who you are. That is why the premiere of a Romanian play in Ireland and the UK in 2007 is so revealing: the fate of Gianina Cǎrbunariu’s Kebab serves to underline how frontiers remain even when they are least visible. And these frontiers received an overwhelming popular vote in 2012.