2025, Vol.38, No.1

Journal of Modern English Drama 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.11

pISSN : 1226-3397
https://journal.kci.go.kr/medak

This article examines how J.T. Rogers’ play Oslo (2017) dramatizes the clandestine peace negotiations known as the Oslo backchannel, culminating in the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel. By analyzing the dramaturgical reconstruction of historical events, the study explores how the play not only recounts the political process but also interrogates the psychological and interpersonal dimensions of diplomacy. It argues that Rogers identifies five interrelated factors as critical to the success of the negotiations: the exclusion of the United States, which allowed for direct and independent dialogue; the voluntary nature of participation, fostering mutual ownership; a gradualist, step-by-step approach; Norway’s evolving role from discreet facilitator to active mediator; and a pragmatic, future-oriented vision centered on coexistence. At the heart of these efforts lies a historic act of mutual recognition, which the play presents as both a political and emotional breakthrough. While acknowledging that the long-term outcomes of the Oslo Accords have been undermined by subsequent violence and political impasse, this paper contends that Rogers’ dramatization of the process invites renewed reflection on the Oslo model as a potentially instructive framework for contemporary peace efforts. In doing so, the play reanimates the possibility of diplomacy grounded in human connection and incremental trust-building, even amidst intractable conflict.

This article highlights that the distant future worlds envisioned by the current posthumanism was already represented by Shaw in his play Back to Methuselah. By examining the play through the lens of posthumanism, the author aims to explore various subjects such as the overcoming of human physical limitations, the emergence of neoanthropinae, the desire for immortality, and the problem of human identity caused by the development of science and technology. Eve wished for a posthumanism that would allow her to produce offspring for herself and enable them to enjoy longevity in order to perpetuate the Garden of Eden. Immediately after World War I, the Brothers Barnabas preached a new gospel that humanity would need a lifespan of 300 years to secure the wisdom and conscience necessary for the advanced civilization. By the 22nd century, the advances in technology and social policy enable innovative daily life and the longlivers of 300-year lifespans slowly begin to emerge. In 3000 A.D., the world is divided between the nations of the shortlivers, the descendants of modern humans, and the country of the longlivers, a new human race. The longlivers are transhumans who can live 300 years and emit electric shock waves. The scene in which the Elderly Gentleman is killed by the electric shock wave symbolizes the end of Homo Sapiens. In the future of 31920 A.D., the oviparous longlivers are posthumans who experience four years in adolescence and, upon reaching adulthood, begin to immerse themselves in philosophical contemplation while gradually acquiring supernatural abilities, and then ultimately expect unlimited freedom and immortality as they get older. But against the older Ancients who wish to become vortices with divine supernatural powers and believe that life is thought, the Youth argue for the proper expression of bodily sensations, desires, and pleasures along with their artistic sublimation. It can be inferred that human life is a tangible process and substantive phenomenon that exists in the constant interaction of body and mind. Regardless of Shaw’s intent, the worlds of transhuman longlivers and posthuman oviparous longlivers seem to present not a utopia but a dystopia, presaging that the posthumanist future may not be an optimistic blueprint. Although Back to Methuselah is Shaw’s futuristic fable and a drama of nonrealism, the writer’s tendency to unwittingly infuse reality into it seems to create a dramatic irony throughout.

This paper regards the reimagining and restaging of catastrophe as central to Anthropocene dramaturgy and aims to examine this practice within the historical context of dramatic theory and actual theatre performance. After critically scrutinizing the dominant apocalyptic narratives and assessing the ecological limitations inherent in the form of classical tragedy and realism, the study analyzes three works—Dimanche, The Fisherman’s Nucleus, and Far Away—as cases of Anthropocene dramaturgy that reconstruct catastrophe through a communal imagination encompassing both human and non-human beings. These works depart from the Aristotelian trajectory by reconfiguring catastrophe as an ongoing, unresolved, “collective” event, within which moments of revelation for new beginnings are suggested. The depiction of catastrophe with non-human beings participating as agents rather than mere background or props dismantles anthropocentrism and reveals that humans share agency with a multitude of other beings. The open-ended conclusions common to all three works transform the instability and chaos into a potential for coexistence. Much like the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come” in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which enables Scrooge to pre-experience a future, thereby positioning him at a new starting point, Anthropocene dramaturgy invites audiences to confront catastrophe in advance and thereby recognizing the present crisis as a turning point and a moment of recognition. Ultimately, Anthropocene dramaturgy calls for an ecological imagination that redefines peripeteia and anagnorisis, breaking free from the classical tragic trajectory rushing toward irreversible downfall.