Molièreâs Tartuffe , Friedrich Schillerâs Wilhelm Tell and Henrik Ibsenâs Peer Gynt are considered to be part of the canon of the worldâs dramatic literature, and all three are indeed memorable and outstanding texts. All the same, over the years they have become deeply rooted in the domestic cultural consciousness of, respectively, France , Switzerland and Norway; so deep that they can be considered as national plays. As Erika Fischer-Lichte showed, quoting the American anthropologist Milton Singer in her History of European Drama and Theatre, theatre has long been closely linked to questions of cultural identityâa place âwhere a culture could articulate its image of itself and its self-understanding and display this image before its own members and members of other culturesâ.1 This is exactly what seems to have become the case with Tartuffe , Wilhelm Tell and Peer Gynt. They incorporate and sometimes even actively reflect upon cultural tendencies in a theatrical context, and by doing so for an extended period of time they have not just become part and parcel of a national culture , but have shown themselves to be supremely apt for taking the nationâs cultural temperature, and allowing us to read off the changes, as it were, to its self-image . By approaching plays such as Tartuffe , Wilhelm Tell and Peer Gynt as national plays, we have sought to shed light on the relation between texts like these and the nation, and the way stagings of these dramatic texts constitute, respond to, reflect and articulate changes in the imagination of national identity and the nation-state itself. An analysis of that relation can be helpful to a better understanding of both these dramas and national identity, especially so at a time when the concept and future of the nation-state are being challenged andâat the same timeâreconsidered.
The concept of the nation and national identity as such is controversial and in several countries, such as Germany , highly sensitive. The concept has, particularly since the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1920s, been criticized from different positions as being Western, exclusionary and essentialist. Yet recent (geo-)political developments have shown that the concept still is very powerful. In 1983 two influential studies on national thought and nationalism appeared. In his Imagined communities (1983) Benedict Anderson not only introduced the idea of the nation as a variable cultural artefact, and imagined community , but also showed how these imagined communities were naturalized. That same year Ernest Gellnerâs Nations and nationalisms (1983) appeared. Here Gellner illustrated that ânationalism is not what it seems, and above all not what it seems to itself. The cultures it claims to defend and revive often are its own inventions [and] [t]he cultural shreds and patches used by nationalism are often arbitrary historical inventionsâ.2 Thereafter questions of identity and (national) affiliation were being rethought by scholars in fields such as critical theory, gender studies, post-colonial criticism, new theory and cultural studies. They have argued that concepts such as nationality and identity construction build on dichotomies like the Self versus the Other and go hand in hand with the production of differences. Issues such as anti-semitism, religious bigotry, racism, misogyny and other forms of social marginalization illustrate nationalismâs exclusionary, Western, masculine nature. Of course criticism didnât start in 1983. Long before it had been fuelled by political processes such as decolonization and warfare. Though it needs to be stated that from the late 1980s onwards, events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, and the following expansion of and integration within the EU, as well as far-reaching neo-liberalism combined with extensive globalism, have challenged the concept of the nation-state and emphasized a transnational or even post-national worldview even more. Yet, recent discussions on the future of the welfare state, fuelled by issues such as immigration and the financial crisis, have shown that the idea of the united nature of nations seems to be somewhat utopian. Solidarity appears to be quite restricted, something which is amply illustrated by the popularity of ultra nationalist parties in Europe and leaders such as Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and the establishment of right-wing governments in Poland and Hungary . These developments demonstrate the topicality of nationalism and national political and cultural identity.
Here it might be helpful to note that post-structuralist and post -colonialist theory did not repudiate concepts like the nation and national identity altogether, but denounced their supposed fixed and essentialist character. In The Location of Culture Homi Bhabha proposes to perceive those categories as hybrid entities that are constantly challenged and renegotiated.3 Bhabha considers the nation as a narrative strategy (and not as a holistic cultural identity), a strategy which is characterized by a double narrative movement, in which two contesting narrative structures claim authority. Next to a pedagogical strategy, that finds its narrative authority in a tradition of the people , he discerns a performative, recursive strategy that is focused on the present.4 By introducing the performative, Bhabha distances himself from naturalist and essentialist views. He regards the nation as âa liminal signifying space that is internally marked by discourses of minorities, the heterogeneous histories of contending peoples, antagonistic authorities and tense locations of cultural differenceâ.5 We believe an analysis of ânational playsâ will be able to provide thought-provoking insights in the way questions like these have been reflected and encountered in theatre, both in the past and present.
Albeit several scholars, Stephen Wilmer being one of the most prominent, have written on the concept of national theatres,6 surprisingly national plays is a topic that until now has been neglected. The term is not to be found in dictionaries, yet it has since long been used to describe plays such as Peer Gynt, The Good Hope and Wilhelm Tell . The term has in these descriptions been used to indicate that plays such as Peer Gynt and The Good Hope not only have been rooted deeply in the cultural memory of respectively Norway and the Netherlands , butâover the course of timeâhave been regarded as representations of the nation and its national identity. The term is related to, but not identical to terms such as national theatre, âclassicâ plays, and âstate-of-the-nationâ playsâas defined in Nadine Holdsworthâs Theatre and Nation.7 The relation between these terms will be examined in the next paragraphs. Thereafter, we will provide a set of criteria and variables for the concept of national plays. In the chapters following, eight case studies will be presented in order to illustrate the concept of national plays. The focus for these case studies is on Europe . The selection is motivated partly by...