The Riots: Expanding Sensible Evidence

Abstract

In the narrative of the economic crisis and the developing picture of an increasingly unequal society, the August 2011 UK riots have been read as a paradoxical flashpoint; as a moment in which consumption and combustibility became manifest and legible although not easily comprehensible. This chapter considers a range of cultural responses, including Gillian Slovo’s documentary theatre piece The Riots (Tricycle Theatre, 2011), Kieran Hurley and A. J. Taudevin’s two-hander play Chalk Farm (Oran Mor, 2012; Underbelly, 2013), the community dance and poetry work Unleashed (Barbican, 2012), and Fahim Alam’s documentary film Riots Reframed (2013).¹ Through these, the chapter explores the possible interventions, and limitations, of theatrical and documentary responses to an already mediatised, intensely image-and language-driven ‘crisis’, and to a set of events that were, in various ways, performative. To do so, I focus on the representational strategies employed and the politics these strategies reveal or enable, considering how such cultural responses contribute to and intervene in the discourse around social inequity, violence and crisis. These works, I argue, do more than react or respond: they offer interpretations, suggesting ways of apprehending and discussing the riots in particular and crisis more generally.