The Politics of Experimental Drama: Unexpected Conformity and Weird Resistance in Alistair McDowall’s Pomona

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the relationship between form, content, and politics. It challenges some significant positions by no lesser figures than Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller on the need for radical forms to function as a prerequisite for imagining alternatives to the prevailing sociopolitical order. The main focus for analysis is Alistair McDowall’s Pomona (2014), a much-produced and much-lauded play that certainly has an experimental dramaturgy, but one which serves more conservative political ends. The article goes on, however, to identify an instance of “the weird” in the play and argues that an element of content rather than an experimental form can call the world of the play into question.