In this lecture on neoliberalism, theatre, and performance, I start by outlining what neoliberalism is and why it has been widely criticised as socially detrimental, especially for the ways it widens and deepens inequality. I then consider why neoliberalism is important to think about in relation to theatre and performance, exploring how they have been damaged by neoliberalismâs priorities, and how plays, performances, and theatre workers have countered some of its worst effects. My core concern is with the social problems neoliberalism has been seen to cultivate, especially problems of inequality, an apparently inevitable consequence of neoliberalismâs blinkered commitment to free market competition. I argue that theatre and performance are important sites for both highlighting neoliberalismâs problems and challenging them, especially through modelling alternative practices of social engagement that draw less on competition and more on collaboration and solidarity.
Neoliberalism
First, what is neoliberalism? The Oxford English Dictionary (OED 2015) defines neoliberalism as âa modified [or new] form of liberalism tending to favour free-market capitalismâ. That definition relies on understanding what liberalism is; so, what is liberalism? There are many definitions of the word âliberalâ, several of them radically different, all with the Latin root âliberâ, meaning âfreeâ. I will focus only on the meaning of âliberalâ that âneoliberalâ draws on. This meaning operates in political and economic contexts and describes an attitude that favours âindividual liberty [and] free tradeâ (OED 2015). The emphasis on individual liberty means liberalism advocates for the freedom of individuals to do what they want. The emphasis on free trade means that economic markets should be unrestrained by state intervention, state ownership, and state regulations such as tariffs, taxes, and laws, allowing individuals and their businesses to do what they want.
This understanding of liberalism enjoyed popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its emphasis on individual liberty supported movements which advocated for the popular dispersal of power and for taking power away from the state and other authorities of the times, including monarchies, monarchical monopolies, state religions, and class systems built on hereditary and aristocratic privilege. This liberalism informed anti-monarchy, pro-republic revolutions in Britain in the late seventeenth century, and in the United States and France in the eighteenth century. In many ways, this liberalism had an importantly democratising effect, diminishing the power held by ruling elites and distributing it more broadly among more people, enhancing equality.
So if neoliberalism is often accused of exacerbating inequality, what changed between that democratising liberalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the neoliberalism that operates today? Where those earlier incarnations had emphasised the âindividual libertyâ element of liberalism, nineteenth-century liberalism was especially associated with free market or laissez-faire economics. âLaissez-faireâ means âlet doâ in French and, in this context, it suggests letting markets, businesses, and business people do what they want without government interference in the form of trade tariffs, taxation, state ownership, and other forms of regulation.
Neoliberalism is generally understood to affiliate less with the socially democratising tendencies of liberalismâs earlier versions and more with the emphasis on laissez-faire economics of the nineteenth century; whatâs âneoâ or new about it is that it takes free market economics further by very actively supporting them.1 This form of neoliberal capitalism really began to take hold in the 1980s, under many global neoliberal stewardships, across South America, in Australia, and famously through Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and President Ronald Reagan in the United States, both of whom were strong advocates of capitalism in a Cold War context that pitted capitalism against communism and socialism. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, âcapitalismâ is âan economic and political system in which a countryâs trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the stateâ.
In neoliberal capitalism, often referred to simply as neoliberalism, the emphasis is especially on the liberty of capitalists and capitalism to seek the most profit. Its defendants would say it is not intrinsically an unjust system since it is designed:
to stimulate competition, making it efficient;
to generate profit, jobs, and increased demand as more workers earn money;
and to serve not only the captains of industry but all its workers, who enjoy its trickle-down benefits.
(I will come back to the arguments of its detractors.) Neoliberalism is both an economic approach and an ideology or way of understanding the world. It organises state policy, and it also radically affects peopleâs daily lives, because it has become an organising principle that influences not only governments and markets but also such things as schooling, work, and law â possibly all aspects of our lives.2
Neoliberalismâs social implications
Thatâs what neoliberalism means technically, but what are its social implications, how do we see them affecting theatre and performance, and how do theatre and performance respond? I address this by focusing on some key ideas: first, individual liberty, and second, market dominance and competition.
Individual liberty
While the emphasis on individual liberty has historically helped to disperse power and enhance democracy, it is now seen by many as damaging to democracy because neoliberalismâs approach to it reinforces elitism, enhancing inequality.
It does this because neoliberal governments and societies do not ensure that the conditions in which people exercise their âindividual libertyâ are equally free or fair for everyone. Instead, neoliberals tend to promote meritocracy, where power or liberty goes to those with the most merit. A meritocratic approach is supposed to ensure whatâs called âsocial mobilityâ, enabling all people to âclimb a ladder of successâ, no matter what their origins, provided they try hard enough. Ideas of meritocracy resonate in the American Dream but are powerfully held in many predominantly capitalist societies, including the United Kingdom at least since Thatcherâs time.
On the surface, meritocracy might seem to be a fair and even desirable approach to social organisation; however, there are a number of problems with it. First, who decides what âmeritâ is? If it includes, for example, charisma and the ability to self-promote, it will likely prefer people who have been socially trained to be confident over those socially trained to see themselves as second-class citizens. In other words, implicit ideas of merit in meritocracies are often exclusive, reproducing and reinforcing hierarchies run by a ruling elite rather than dismantling them. I am thinking here of hierarchies of, for example, class, gender, race, disability, age, sexuality, and more.
A second, related, problem with meritocracies is the issue of who has the best opportunities to achieve and demonstrate their merit. In the unregulated markets of neoliberalism, the people most likely to achieve and demonstrate their merit will be those with the best access to both excellent education and helpful social connections, or what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called âsocial capitalâ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 119). In other words, meritocracies tend to favour people born into structures of economic and social privilege. Despite highly publicised exceptions, it is not as easy to be a self-made person as neoliberals would have us believe. Hierarchies of advantage and disadvantage are structural; itâs not that an individual doesnât try hard enough to succeed; itâs that some people live in social, material, economic, educational, and other structures that disadvantage them more than other people.
So, an important critique of neoliberalism is that while it claims to support everyoneâs individual liberty, it actually supports the liberty of those best placed to succeed; it doesnât expand democratic power or social mobility, it contracts them; it doesnât spread resources amongst more people but concentrates power, privilege, and resources in the hands of a few who are already privileged. Neoliberalismâs advocacy of meritocracy exacerbates inequality, it reinforces elitism, and it damages diversity. You might ask: if itâs so awful, why on earth is it still dominant? It persists because its myth or dream that everyone has a chance at success is so powerfully cherished by so many. American cultural critic Lauren Berlant (2011) describes this as a condition of âcruel optimismâ, âwhen something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishingâ (1). The dream of neoliberal success is desirable for many; but believing in it reinforces neoliberalism, which actually exacerbates inequality.
Reproducing privilege in theatre and film
Neoliberalismâs effect of privilege reproducing privilege is very familiar in theatre, film, and television in debates around representation. In the film industry, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite was started in 2015 by social activist April Reign in response to the paltry number of Academy Award nominations for people of colour. Reign argued, âItâs not because thereâs a lack of quality films that star or feature people of colorâ (in Murphy 2015). She noted that those who vote on Oscar awards âare 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and the average age is 63 years old ⊠and they might not be as interested in seeing Selmaâ (Selma is a 2014 film about the American black civil rights movement directed by African-American Ava DuVernay and starring black British actor David Oyelowo). Reignâs point is that those in power in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tend to reproduce their own power, whether consciously or unconsciously. Similar criticisms have been made about gender, class, and other aspects of identity and representation in film, television, and theatre. Recent work by sociologists in the UK (Friedman, OâBrien, and Laurison 2017) has shown that actors from working-class backgrounds are significantly underrepresented in the profession, and this is not for lack of effort: itâs structural. The greatest roles and rewards continue to go to actors with class privilege, thanks to the advantages of family money and social networks, directorsâ entrenched tendencies to typecast, and attitudes which privilege particular accents, especially Received Pronunciation.
To play the devilâs advocate, I might ask: how is the economic approach of neoliberalism producing these social problems? I have tried to show how neoliberalismâs particular ways of supporting individual liberty are based on ideas of meritocracy and that meritocracy is inherently unfair because it doesnât interrogate its own values, rules, privileges, or structures. Furthermore, neoliberal capitalism favours industries that are unregulated. An unregulated neoliberal capitalist theatre industry is likely to keep making casting and award decisions that are unequal, unfair, and, for many, less interesting because fairness is not its core concern; profit is. By contrast, a theatre market within a social democratic tradition â which combines capitalism with state intervention to promote social justice (Miller 2005) â might do some things that are more socially just. It might insist on quotas for fair and diverse representation. It might offer additional training to those who havenât had the opportunities the social elite have had. It might work fundamentally to revise ideas about...