‘The majority has spoken’: performing referenda at the National Theatre

Abstract

The Majority was performed at the National Theatre of Great Britain in August 2017. Ostensibly a one-man show, written and performed by Rob Drummond and directed by David Overend, the play explores democracy, dissent and abstention through the story of the author's challenging encounter with a far-left activist in rural Scotland. Utilising audience voting technology to intersperse and inform the narrative with a series of 'mini referenda', the play cautions against shouting at each other across the void, instead advocating a more measured, considered and open approach to engaging with those with whom we disagree. Based on an analysis of in-performance audience participation data, this article identifies unexpected correlations and reveals hidden trends and tendencies. It argues that voting theatre operates as a temporary space from which to test, interrogate and rehearse the wider processes of electoral politics. However, the article also considers the productive tensions at play between the reductive binary of the votes and their affective and emotional context. This complicates a straightforward comparison of the 'social performances' of voting in theatre to voting in elections and referenda.

Right from the centre: The dramaturgy of right-wing politics in Chris Hannan’sWhat Shadows, Chris Bush’sThe Assassination of Katie Hopkins, and Rob Drummond’sThe Majority

“…Rob Drummond's The Majority has already had the benefit of detailed scholarly exploration in the form of David Overend and Oliver Heath's article, which uses the statistical voting data gathered throughout the production's run at the National Theatre in its analysis (Overend and Heath 2019). 4 A one-man show about the relationship of the exercise of democracy to collective decision-making via a series of participatory 'yes or no' votes, the piece is set in the aftermath of the Scottish Independence referendum of 2014 and is steeped within the rancorous political miasma inaugurated by the UK's Brexit vote, although in fact it syncopates equally well with large-scale electoral outcomes that were considered improbable before they eventually happened, such as the election of Donald Trump in the US in 2016.…”