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ToolsGrochala, Sarah (2014) Going Straight: The Politics of Time and Space in David Eldridge’s Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness. Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2 (1). pp. 145-158. ISSN 2195-0164
Abstract
Amelia Howe Kritzer states that a contemporary British play is commonly thought of as political if it presents "a political issue or comments on what is already perceived as a political issue" (10). Since 1989, however, the economic and political system in the UK has become increasingly monologic. In such a monologic political system, Shavian dialogic forms of political theatre, which present a dialectical discussion of a political issue, lose their efficacy. As a result, some British playwrights have moved toward more interventionist strategies of political engagement, which involve our lived experience of social structures through their dramaturgy. These plays re-order normative representations of social structures, of offering a symbolic re-ordering of social structures within their form. As such, their form represents what Adorno terms, "and analogy of that other condition which should be" (194). David Harvey argues that in late capitalist society, our experience of time and space has become increasingly compressed. Consequently, our temporary axis of succession, which constitutes the fundamental organisation of Shavian drama, no longer reflects our lived experience of time in the world outside the theatre. Therefore, plays that re-order structures of time and space have political efficacy in that they expose a gap between representations of time and space as linear and concrete and our lived experience of time and space as compressed. This essay argues that David Eldridge's 'Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness' articulates a complete breakdown in the temporal axis of succession in its structure. Its dramaturgy reflects the experience of space-time compression. Thus, it is a highly political play, not on the basis of its content, but in terms of the way in which its structure mediates and negotiates our lived experience of social structures under the pressures of late capitalism.
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