Border Aesthetics, Resistance and Europeanness in David Greig’s “Anti-Brexit” Theatre

In 1992, responding to the impact of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the climate of tension generated by the Yugoslav wars, Derrida wrote that “something unique is afoot in Europe, in what is still called ‘Europe’ even if we no longer know very well what or who goes by this name”. Throughout his opera omnia, from the early 1990s onwards, the Scottish playwright David Greig has staged characters who encourage the audience to reflect upon or rethink of what Europeanness and European identity may mean. By engaging with the so-called “refugee crisis” and the problem of integration (Europe), and confronting past traumas to understand the present (Dr Korczak’s Example), Greig’s theatre addresses topics and issues that can be related to the British “Brexit” vote. In particular, one can identify a border aesthetics in his works that becomes an act of resistance against totalitarian and fundamentalist ideological apparatuses. Therefore, the aim of the article is to show how Greig’s plays, all deeply informed by his interest in Brechtian dramatic theories and in Modernist European theatre, represent a reaction to the current Euroscepticism and the provincial populist outlook underlying the Brexit phenomenon. Greig’s drama conveys an idea of cultural and (trans)national identity which involves permeable crossroad or border situations, while resisting against the resurgence of essentialist conceptions of nationality fixed on pre-determined defining terms and Self-vs.-Other dichotomies. Ultimately, the paper will provide evidence of what Greig once declared: perhaps the theatre cannot change the world, but, “if the battlefield is the imagination, then the theatre is a very appropriate weapon in the armoury of resistance”.