Staging Interspaces in Contemporary British Theatre Environment and Fluidity

This open access book considers how relationships to place and spatial ecologies more broadly are becoming redefined in light of intersecting climate, health, identity and care crises. Through an interdisciplinary, intersectional discourse it investigates how spaces of liminality frame contemporary human conditions in their interactional modes with both human and non-human ecologies. The interspace grounds the discussion, indicating states of flux and transience, where the in-between is the defining characteristic. This open access monograph, then, takes up the new complexity in one’s relationship(s) to their surrounding spaces through a rigorous discussion of texts and performance contexts in cutting-edge contemporary British theatre on a national and international scale. It seeks to address how in-betweenness spatially, temporally, environmentally, geographically and socially conceived has been emerging as the primary state for the unmoored individual of our time – and how it might serve as catalyst for performing one's agency in modes more empathetic not only to other humans, but, also, and equally, to the non-human world.

1. Introduction: environments and interspaces.- 2. Theorising interspaces: creative and critical intersections.- 3. The room: intimate microcosms and world formation.- 4. The transient: palindromic nomadisms and invisile transports.- 5. The limbo: liminal loci and timeless travels.- 6. The deviant: unruly spaces and errant experiences.- 7. The virtual: hybrid environments and deepfake realities.- 8. Afterword.

Vicky Angelaki is Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mid Sweden University / Mittuniversitetet, Sundsvall, Sweden. She is the recipient  of a sabbatical grant for the project “Performing Interspaces: Social Fluidities in Contemporary Theatre”, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (2022). Vicky's previous publications include The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange (2012), Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain: Staging Crisis (2017), Theatre and Environment  (2019), Martin Crimp’s Power Plays: Intertextuality, Sexuality, Desire (2022). Vicky is also the co-editor of the series 'Adaptation in Theatre and Performance' (Palgrave Macmillan).