Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre

Siân Adiseshiah’s Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre offers both a broad and a concise overview of a dramatic genre that has, so far, escaped scholarly attention. Struck by the discrepancy between the theatrical wealth of utopian explorations, on the one hand, and the shortage of critical attention on the subject matter both in utopian and theater studies, on the other hand, Adiseshiah sets out to fill a blatant research lacuna. In addition, she rectifies a methodological and intellectual imbalance latent in utopian studies. Traditionally, they have built their concepts and methods almost exclusively around one genre, prose narrative. The author, however, raises the question of how utopia is rendered in drama and enquires into the implications for utopian theory.Examining the generic, thematic, and stylistic features of utopian plays, Adiseshiah challenges the traditional frameworks of utopian literary studies and theater studies. Concerning the former, she opens up utopian studies’ conventional (and rather tight) conceptual boundaries for the consideration of new, so far neglected generic forms of utopia. Regarding the latter, she aims at broadening theater studies’ thematic and theoretical scope, complementing the decided focus on dystopian plays by critically appreciating theatrical utopias, too. In addition to her intellectual endeavor of reconceptualizing utopia academically, Adiseshiah presents her book as political intervention. Revalorizing utopia in general and theatrical utopia in particular, she frames the genre as collective imaginative counter discourse: At a time in which dystopian discourses abound in the political sector, artistic production, and the media (as necessary and justified as they are, for example, concerning climate change), theatrical utopias and their analysis enable both optimistic and constructive imaginaries of the future; they may even be able to incite positive change.Utopian Drama is framed by an introduction, which delineates the study’s aims and concerns, and an epilogue, in which Adiseshiah enlists some of her discoveries, among them that utopian plays throughout literary history tend to appear in comic form or that dramatic utopia relies heavily on embodiment, and she briefly addresses the challenge of finding a concise academic definition of utopian drama in the face of a multitude of politics and styles of utopian plays across literary history. In lieu of an answer, she highlights once again, with reference to trans theater practitioner Ezra Brain, the sociopolitical potential of utopian drama, or, in her opinion, its necessity for a critical engagement with the cultural status quo and an imagination of non-oppressive, liberating futures.Within this general framing, Adiseshiah explores utopian drama in six chapters, the first of which provides an introduction to utopian concerns and concepts relevant to drama and performance: Discussing utopia, genre, and drama successively but also connecting them, the author aims at establishing the basic theories and approaches for the chapters to follow. To do so, she pays special attention to the formal particularities of drama in generating utopian worlds, especially in comparison to fiction. In addition, by pointing out drama’s low status within the classical and early modern hierarchy of genres (she refers, for instance, to Plato’s and Francis Bacon’s general criticism of drama and the performing arts), Adiseshiah roughly sketches the possibly historically grown dismissal of drama as a genre of utopian expression in criticism and culture.In her second chapter, entitled “Genealogical Beginnings: Old Comedy, Longing, and Laughter,” Adiseshiah challenges the hegemonic assumption within contemporary utopian studies that the utopian tradition begins with More’s 1516 Utopia (and/or with earlier utopias identified as “golden age” or fantasies, respectively). She convincingly argues that some examples of ancient Greek comedy, more precisely “Old Comedy,” must be regarded as genuine literary utopias. It is them that can be considered as the earliest examples of utopian literature in the Western canon. And this in spite of their inconsistencies and problematic nature: The plays’ use of satire can be said to actively destabilize possible utopian semantics; at the same time, the very use of satire enables the depiction of entirely different worlds, worlds in which “everything is possible.” Adiseshiah provides evidence of utopian motifs and structures in plays by Aristophanes (she focuses on The Birds and The Assemblywomen) and, even more clearly, in fragmentary works of his contemporaries. She argues that especially Aristophanes’s comedies are very likely to have influenced Plato’s Republic (c. 380 BC), a dialogic tractate that has long been regarded as one of the earliest works featuring utopian thinking.With a leap from utopia’s roots in ancient Greek drama to its early modern dramatic realizations, Adiseshiah turns to Margaret Cavendish’s utopias. On the one hand, Cavendish’s closet plays of the 1660s, The Female Academy, The Convent of Pleasure, and Bell in Campo, are read against the backdrop of the then flourishing prose utopias, penned by authors such as Francis Bacon and Francis Godwin. On the other hand, Cavendish’s utopias are compared to other early modern and Restoration plays that feature utopian topics, such as William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) and Aphra Behn’s The Emperor of the Moon (1687). Against the backdrop of these works and of the Morean tradition, Adiseshiah “genders” utopia: She delineates the proto-feminist innovations that Cavendish introduces to the utopian genre, which also anticipate markers of later feminist utopias. Among these innovations are the unusual, if not unprecedented, alternation of utopian and non-utopian scenes as well as the salient enjoyment of female solidarity, companionship, and the good life of fine food and music in an all-female community—a utopian setup that stands in stark contrast to both patriarchy and the more ascetic utopias hitherto penned by male authors. Cavendish’s plays are decidedly proto-feminist: Severing utopian forms and themes from their patriarchal roots and adding dystopian elements, they illustrate the essential precariousness but political necessity of far-reaching social, proto-feminist change.Turning to the first half of the twentieth century in her fourth chapter, Adiseshiah focuses on George Bernard Shaw’s oeuvre, especially zooming in on Back to Methuselah (1921) and Farfetched Fables (1950), which she categorizes as full-fledged utopias in dramatic form. Whereas Cavendish presents an all-female community as a means to imagine a better world, Shaw’s utopias are concerned with individual subjects and their capability to contribute to the common good. Building on and developing the Morean tradition, Shaw mixes, in creating his dramatic utopias, styles such as science fiction and fantasy, and combines topics as varied as aging and longevity, the human body, and the human will. At a time in which Europe suffers from war trauma and anxiety and in which popular fictional dystopias abound (such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World [1932] and George Orwell’s 1984 [1949]), the twentieth-century playwright stands out by creating better worlds. Exploring what Adiseshiah calls the “enhanced human” (127), intellectually and spiritually enhanced, long-living superhumans, Shaw inquires into the now problematic concept of Creative Evolution and an individual’s potential to create and maintain a better society. Doing so, he provides utopias that propose radically new ways of thinking about identities and aging.The plays dealt with in the subsequent chapter stand in stark contrast to Shaw’s superhuman imaginaries. At the height of Thatcherism, Howard Brenton delivers a trilogy of utopian plays that celebrate ordinary life. Sore Throats (1978), Bloody Poetry (1984), and Greenland (1988) imagine, in their succession, a development from a proto-“in yer face” violence to a postcapitalist, non-spectacular utopian society. In an intertextual dialogue with several fictional utopias (e.g., More, Utopia; William Morris, News from Nowhere [1890]; Sally Miller Gearhart, The Wanderground [1979]), and inspired by forms of socialist countercultures of the 1960s as well as Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1969), the socialist playwright envisions life beyond any capitalist spectacle. In Greenland, Brenton realizes a radical systemic alterity and imagines a future that lacks spectacle. Ordinary life is framed as “the good place,” the ideal form of life, in which regular people are enjoying the bliss of simplicity and unhurried everyday practices.In her final literary-historical chapter, Adiseshiah focuses on contemporary plays. Pointing out the pervasiveness of dystopian and postapocalyptic theater, she highlights the scarcity of utopian plays and play cycles; at the same time, she expresses her confidence that a shift away from what she calls “aesthetics of despair” (10) might be imminent in the wake of works by the authors she examines, who combine post-dramatic aesthetics with a reframing of the traditional, dialogic structure of the Morean utopia. Claire MacDonald, Cesi Davidson, and Mojisola Adebayo, in contrast to the playwrights discussed in the previous chapters, do not try to depict or represent entire utopian worlds. MacDonald’s trilogy, Utopia: Three Plays for a Postdramatic Theatre (performed in the late 1980s and, the third play, at the beginning of the twenty-first century), Cesi Davidson’s “Voice Lessons: Wishes to the Outside” (2019), and Mojisola Adebayo’s STARS (2018) are utopian plays that almost exclusively rest on dialogue. Experimental and conversational modes prominently figure in the plays’ structure and form. Content-wise, and in contradistinction to contemporary apocalyptic plays on, for instance, the climate crisis, they boldly design their futures as completely and optimistically open. In dialogic form and in encounters with systemic “otherness,” they aim at center-staging hope as an organizing, political principle.With Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre, Siân Adiseshiah presents a delightful, necessary, and topical study. Delightful, because I have enjoyed reading it. It is rather liberating to focus for once, in the face of ubiquitous bad news and the prevalence of apocalyptic plays, on beautiful scenarios and hopeful futures. So, I gather readers in academia and beyond will be grateful to the author that she has taken on the task to find and discuss some of the rare plays that do not simply feature any sporadic utopian elements, but which can be called “utopian plays proper,” that is, fully fledged utopias (in spite of all of their fissures and dystopian components, which Adiseshiah does not gloss over).Necessary is the present book for at least three reasons. First, the author points out blatant research lacunae: So far, the “utopian play” as a genre is yet to be explored in greater detail and to be theoretically framed. Not only genre and drama theory will profit from this book, but also utopian studies itself: Utopia is no longer exclusively a prose genre. In consequence, and second, Adiseshiah makes clear that utopian studies’ borders have to be widened to include other genres; and that utopia itself, as a concept, has to be reframed in order to accommodate new research results from utopias written in other genres. Third, Utopian Drama might also broaden the view of theater studies. Laying bare that there is more to theater than the dominant dystopian mode, which is, at least at the moment, prominent in theater practice and theater research, the study highlights the potential value of considering “the niche” in the arts and in research.Topical—and, one might say, political—is Adiseshiah’s study because of its careful contextual readings, which take into account the political circumstances and important currents in the history of ideas to which the selected plays respond. Above this, Utopian Drama is part of an emergent, much needed strand of research within the humanities and the social sciences that is geared toward political intervention. Without being naïve or under-complex, politically conscious researchers reframe “crisis” into “resilience and possibility,”1 focus on the good life and well-being,2 and partake in furthering the “eudaimonic turn.”3 More broadly, Utopian Drama also shows that it is vital for literary studies, drama studies, and the study of culture to participate in the interdisciplinary and trans-sectorial discussions of what constitutes a “good life,” and to communicate how literature and the arts—including utopian plays—are able to construct important world-knowledge and innovative cultural models that might help building hopeful, inclusive, fair, and sustainable futures.Adiseshiah’s book is by no means exhaustive. Genre theorists might miss concise conceptualizations of the genre; literary historians might find the gaps between the considered periods too broad; they might also question the necessity of going back to Greek drama, there being an English utopian tradition. However, the book’s strengths lie less in such detail but in its grand, groundbreaking vision. With Utopian Drama, Adiseshiah starts the “search” for a genre that has to be continued—and, thanks to her study, can be continued, too. She unveils the utopian play as key to contemporary, political research in a whole lot of disciplines (genre theory, cultural criticism, play traditions of different national literatures, etc.) and takes first, important steps toward a necessary generic conceptualization.