‘‘Form Follows Function’’: Meaning and Politics in Martin Crimp’s Fewer Emergencies

Abstract

This article shows how Crimp, in his 2005 trilogy of short playlets, both constructs meaning and explores the difficulties of constructing meaning. The article analyses the form and content of Fewer Emergencies in two contexts: what Hans-Thies Lehmann calls ‘‘postdramatic’’ theatre and what Frank Furedi calls the ‘‘culture of fear.’’ Crucially, both of these considerations feed into another, more important question: in what is sometimes seen as a ‘‘post-radical’’ or ‘‘post-human’’ world, what exactly are the politics of Fewer Emergencies? The article shows how Crimp’s trilogy is radical in both its form and its content, but that this radicalism is achieved at a cost.