‘Oceans and Earth and Ancient Gods’: Remote islands and emerging geo-social class on British stages

This article explores how contemporary British theatre stages the emergence of a ‘geo-social class’ – a concept proposed by Bruno Latour and Nikolaj Schultz to describe solidarities formed around ecological vulnerability rather than traditional economic structures. Through readings of Zinnie Harris’s Further than the Furthest Thing , Kae Tempest’s Paradise and Stef Smith’s The Outrun , the article examines how remote island settings articulate new class identities shaped by climate crisis, extractivism and colonial legacies. These plays reimagine class through territoriality, multispecies kinship and shared precarity. Islands become sites where ecological collapse intersects with migration, gender and survival, enabling new forms of resistance and care. Engaging feminist, ecological and materialist frameworks, the article argues that these dramaturgies not only critique dominant systems but also offer performative blueprints for solidarities ‘down to earth’ – rooted in land, place and the conditions of habitability.