You don't belong here: Blood and Chocolate and British remembrance rituals
Abstract
This article argues that the promenade theatre project Blood and Chocolate (York, 2013) offered a theatrical rebuttal to widespread British revisionist, celebratory views of the First World War that draw authority from annual remembrance rituals such as poppy-wearing and the two minute silence. Building on Richard Schechner’s argument that rituals ‘make belief’ I propose that over time, remembrance rituals have been exploited in order to make – or remake – history. This history does not come from the past, but exploits an idea of the past for contemporary political gain. By contrast, Blood and Chocolate dramatized aspects of history but emphasised its own theatricality in order to stress the absolute separateness of past and present.
Citation
Haddow , S 2017 , ' You don't belong here: Blood and Chocolate and British remembrance rituals ' , Studies in Theatre and Performance , vol. 37 , no. 3 , pp. 339-349 . https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2016.1226066
Publication
Studies in Theatre and Performance
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1468-2761Type
Journal article
Collections
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