Confronting the Labor-Market and Housing Crises in Post-Recession U.S. Drama: Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit and Stephen Karam’s The Humans

Abstract

This article analyses how the representation of the effects of economic crisis and increasing labour precarity in post-recession U.S. drama was concomitant with a gradual discernment of the cruel promises of the American Dream and the associated myth of equality of opportunity based on individual merit. It presents a close reading and performance analysis of Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit (2010) and Stephen Karam’s The Humans (2014) as exemplary post-recessionary plays that summoned on stage scenarios of economic crisis and a realization of the many dissatisfactions brought about by impending downward mobility. The staging of economic precarity as a political, theatrical trope points to larger social and economic forces at play in the characters’ advancement or lack thereof and, within the material world of the stage, the most obvious way in which these plays show visually, spatially and symbolically a new, real struggle to move up the social ladder is through the unattainability of homeownership. The house, the quintessential locale of the American dramatic tradition, is a dilapidated, ghostly space in these plays, engaging thus with a recurring motif in U.S. drama. In an uncannily familiar setting, dramatic characters measure their disappointments and vulnerabilities within the parameters of a grand narrative of effort and success with initial shame, almost apologetically. And yet, uttering the truth to others about their shared plights, this article contends, is ultimately liberating and transformative, reinforcing for both characters and audiences a new perception of human life as relational rather than autonomous and individualistically sovereign.