TL;DRAbstract
The collapse of ‘really existing socialism’ in 1989 caught many political commentators by surprise because it happened so quickly and decisively. Within a year, however, David Edgar had joined fellow playwrights Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton, and Tariq Ali in exploring the consequences and changing circumstances of those events. Beginning with The Shape of the Table (1990), his closest look at practical negotiation and the transfer of power in a formal political setting, Edgar wrote three plays over the next decade which form a trilogy following the unfolding drama of post-Communist politics. The other two plays, Pentecost and The Prisoner’s Dilemma, were written five and ten years on, respectively, when the politics of immigration and refugees generated deeply divisive fault lines for all of Europe. The former Eastern bloc countries faced extremely difficult problems establishing workable democracies because they were troubled by ultra-nationalism, ethnic conflict, racism, financial
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The collapse of ‘really existing socialism’ in 1989 caught many political commentators by surprise because it happened so quickly and decisively. Within a year, however, David Edgar had joined fellow playwrights Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton, and Tariq Ali in exploring the consequences and changing circumstances of those events. Beginning with The Shape of the Table (1990), his closest look at practical negotiation and the transfer of power in a formal political setting, Edgar wrote three plays over the next decade which form a trilogy following the unfolding drama of post-Communist politics. The other two plays, Pentecost and The Prisoner’s Dilemma, were written five and ten years on, respectively, when the politics of immigration and refugees generated deeply divisive fault lines for all of Europe. The former Eastern bloc countries faced extremely difficult problems establishing workable democracies because they were troubled by ultra-nationalism, ethnic conflict, racism, financial
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