Martin Crimp’s pulverized cities: Dislocation, places and theatre spaces

Abstract

Abstract This article considers how Martin Crimp’s plays imagine and create space starting with his cities, and moving into his houses, as they appear in his playtexts and in production. Considering both original plays such as Attempts on Her Life (1997), The City (2008), Fewer Emergencies (2002/2005) and In the Republic of Happiness (2012) and his contemporary adaptation Cruel and Tender (2004) (after Sophocles’ Trachiniae), the article traces Crimp’s translations, transpositions, allusions and dislocations of space and particularly the circulation of the image of a city under siege. Reading these pulverized cities in tandem with some of the ideas about the ‘inferno’ from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities ([1972/1974] 1997), the article suggests that the creation of contested imaginary space opens up questions and possibilities for audiences of his plays.