Howard Barker’s Brutopia: history in politics, politics in history

Howard Barker can be considered as one of the most prolific writers of the British stage who has written numerous plays as well as poetry and theoretical writings on drama. He is especially a significant name for political drama due to the strong political themes explored in his works. Brutopia: Secret Life in Old Chelsea, as its full name, is a historical play that combines political criticism together with Barker’s understanding of theatre in line with his Theatre of Catastrophe. In this play, Barker invites the audience and/or the readers to the fictionalised world of the play, decorated with the historical facts of Thomas More’s life and its timeline. Barker applies history to lay out the ground for social and political criticism of the contemporary society. He skilfully blends history with fiction in order to disturb the audience and/or the readers to make them think about the present. Consequently, this paper aims at analysing Brutopia within Barker’s creation of imaginary place as thinly disguised in history and focuses on social and political criticism that exemplifies Barker’s specific approach towards drama, Theatre of Catastrophe.