Taboo

Abstract

There is an intricate link between the theatre, cruelty and taboo, which reflects society’s relationship to cruelty and taboo. Historically located after the ‘In-yer-face’ wave of British theatre, the New War Plays examine the roots of human aggression, and the wars that result, by exploring contemporary society’s position towards what is taboo and ‘sacred’. However, by redefining the aesthetics and politics of cruelty, the In-yer-face theatre movement has inflected this debate. The New War Plays draw from the surrealist tradition and the ‘theatre of the absurd’ to portray the state of exception as the norm in times of war, exposing, at the centre of the plays, the primary object of taboo: the homo sacer.