Theater in a Post-truth World: Texts, Politics, and Performance

This is the first book to examine how the concept and disagreements around post-truth have been explored in the world of theater and performance. It covers a wide spectrum of manifestations and expressions—from the plays of Caryl Churchill, Anne Washburn, and David Henry Hwang, to the inherent theatricality of press conferences, FBI interviews and protests that embrace the confusion created by post-truth rhetoric to muddy issues and deflect blame, to theatrical performance, where the nature of truth is challenged through staged visuals which run counter to what the audience hears, provoking a debate about where the truth actually lies. With contributions by scholars from around the world, Theater in a Post-Truth World considers a wide array of examples from American and British drama and politics, Australian theater, and the work of performance artist Marina Abramovic. Together these provide a glimpse into how the theater in its many forms provides a venue to raise awareness and encourage critical thinking about the contemporary ubiquity of post-truth.

William C. Boles holds the Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean Chair of English at Rollins College, USA. He edited Theater in a Post-Truth World: Text, Performance, and Politics and After In-Yer-Face: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution and authored The Argumentative Theatre of Joe Penhall, Understanding David Henry Hwang and Mike Bartlett.

Anja Hartl is Assistant Professor at the Department of English at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. She is the author of Brecht and Post-1990s British Drama: Dialectical Theatre Today and editor of the Methuen Drama Student Edition of The Threepenny Opera. Her research focuses on contemporary British theatre, Victorian fiction and adaptation studies. She co-edits the Methuen Drama Agitations Series.