English theatre in the 1990s and beyond

This chapter addresses that the generally coherent political protest of much of English theatre in the 1970s and 1980s was replaced in the 1990s by a diversity of political positions that replicated, rejected or challenged fin de siècle post-modernism. It discusses theatrical practices that were already selected as significant by the cultural, economic and political powers that promoted theatre and supported its continuation. The chapter demonstrates that there was a surprisingly common preoccupation, across diverse types of theatre, with problems surrounding the post-modern crisis of identity and a consequent anxiety about the inefficacy of theatre in an age shaped by mass-mediated cultural forms. In the early years of the twenty-first century, the post-modern conventions established by Forced Entertainment and others in the 1980s and 1990s became widespread and commonplace in English experimental theatre, and in parts of the mainstream, in the process losing their artistic and political edge