Distributed Agencies in Dramatic Form: A Posthuman Perspective on Lucy Prebble’sThe Sugar Syndromeand Sarah Ruhl’sDead Man’s Cell Phone

Abstract

The past two decades have seen a significant increase in western drama incorporating digital technologies on stage. While theatre scholars have regularly applied posthuman or cyborg theory to make sense of digital spectacle in performance, this article extends a posthuman approach to dramatic form by considering two plays from the early 2000s, a time of substantial technological change within affluent western societies. In both Lucy Prebble’s The Sugar Syndrome (2003) and Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone (2007), the human characters share dramatic agency with the digital devices that surround them, co-initiating and co-escalating the drama. This distributed agency creates a shift in how the humans begin to perceive themselves and each other: from rational, coherent, autonomous selves – a liberal humanist subjectivity – to heterogeneous assemblages reminiscent of a digital computer – a posthuman subjectivity. While much posthuman theatre scholarship has focused on digital or bodily spectacle, dramaturgical analysis can also reveal the neglected technology of dramatic form to construct posthuman subjectivities for the stage.