Brechtian Gestus and the Politics of Tea in Christina Reid's Tea in a China Cup

Abstract

As the title of Christina Reid's play suggests, tea and its rituals provide key moments of insight into the dynamics of the narrative and characters of Tea in a China Cup. Reid constructs in Tea a female order around the phenomena of tea and china, the authority of which she emphasizes by equating it with the public, masculine, and what is usually considered more politically fraught, league of the Orange Order. She demonstrates that the domestic sphere of the female characters parallels that of the Orange Order and is steeped in as much of the Irish Protestant politics of the day as is the official organization. In Tea Reid investigates the gendered aspect of Northern Irish socializing processes and reveals how the perpetuation of social and political systems arises and is maintained in the private, traditionally female sphere of the house. While very little critical attention has been paid to her work — as Maria DiCenzo remarks, in his survey of Northern Irish political drama D.E.S. Maxwell's extremely narrow definition of "political" relegates Reid's undiscussed play to a "subsidiary list" — Tea directly engages with political issues in Northern Ireland. Diderik Roll-Hansen's treatment of the play suggests its political agenda by arguing the anti-naturalism of Reid's work, its difference from social realism. I would like to continue this discussion by exploring the political commentary that Reid conducts when she constructs tea — the drinking of it and discourse that surrounds it — as a Brechtian gestus. Through the female characters' custom of tea-drinking Reid both exemplifies and critiques the social relationships of the women themselves and the traditional values that they eternalize. Furthering the significance of tea as a political construct, I would like to discuss how it partakes in Elin Diamond's theory of a gestic feminist criticism, whereby the gestus enacts a social commentary on gender through an engagement among women specifically.