Introduction

Abstract

This book attempts to map out how contemporary anti-war plays work to influence spectator responses to the violence of war after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The plays I examine are written and devised in precarious times—in times of violent conflict in the Middle East, what President George W. Bush called the ‘War on Terror’, as well as the escalating conditions of the Global Financial Crisis, new revolutionary landscapes in the Middle East and North Africa and the global Occupy Movement. In light of these historical processes of change, we require not only new political strategies and new dramatic aesthetics but also new ways to talk about them. The anti-war plays considered in this book are created by renowned playwrights and theatremakers from a range of Western nations. The plays include: Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul (2001) and Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall be Unhappy (2003–4), Théâtre du Soleil’s Le Dernier Caravansérail (2005), Elfriede Jelinek’s Bambiland (2004) and Caryl Churchill’s Iraq.doc (2003) and Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza (2009).