“…Andrea Dunbar in many ways typifies the turn towards capitalist realism in social realist work that accelerated after Thatcher. A teenager in the 1970s and 80s as Thatcher was elected to office, Dunbar's first play The Arbor was produced in 1980, at the Royal Court Theatre, known for its ostensibly radical, social realist plays, which often stressed the authorial authenticity of its playwrights (see Bell and Beswick 2014), when she was eighteen years old. Hailed as the authentic voice of the northern working classes, a 'genius straight from the slums', Dunbar's authenticity was secured not only by her adherence to realist forms, the autobiographical nature of her plays and her working-class identity (secured by her upbringing on the Buttershaw council estate in Bradford), but also her youth and vulnerability -when the Royal Court decided to produce Dunbar's play, she was living in a Women's Aid refuge with her baby daughter, having escaped a violent relationship (parts of her play included fictionalized versions of her own trauma).…”