(Non-)spectacles of discipline :|institutions in the plays of Stoppard, Wesker, Pinter, and Nesin

Abstract

“We are neither in the amphitheater nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine,” Foucault observes. Yet the stage remains steadily interested in the panoptic machine. Hubs of institutional power continue to concern playwrights, as discipline and surveillance are turned into spectacles on stage. This thesis studies Every Good Boy Deserves Favour by Tom Stoppard, Chips with Everything by Arnold Wesker, The Hothouse by Harold Pinter and Yaşar Ne Yaşar Ne Yaşamaz by Aziz Nesin—all plays that are centered around institutions of power and discipline, such as prisons, hospitals, schools and military complexes. In other words, these plays take place in, and are concerned with, institutions in their most Foucauldian incarnations. In this, they have to engage with a considerable question: How does one put the panoptic machine onto the stage, if the peculiar power of the machine lies in its invisibility, in its unspectacular nature, in the subtlety of its operation? In these four plays, we can mark common thematic concerns and dramatic strategies as they grapple with these questions. Thematically, language, visibility and sentiment constitute particularly productive venues of analysis in this examination. Formally, certain structural and tonal choices in the plays’ staging, including utilizations of music and humor, respond to the peculiarly unspectacular and subtle formulation of institutional power. This thesis studies representations of institutions in these works, to find how their dramatic strategies respond to the many contradictions of institutional power, in order to understand the representative limits and possibilities of theater.