The Sense of Place and Identity in David Greig's Plays

David Greig, though still young, becomes the pioneering figure of new Writing in the 1990s British Drama, a kind of writing which is mostly represented by 'In-yer-face' writers as part of the recognized cultural renaissance, known as Cool Britannia.
In her book, Dr. Dilek Inan profoundly examines in David Greig's plays close but complex relationships between space and characterization in accord with the continuously changing world view. She successfully explores and presents to the reader how Greig demonstrates in his plays a new emerging community that has been assimilated by postmodern superficiality. For her, being critical of the new values in our consumerist society, his plays show an aspect of moral degradation; he observes a new generation that is morally and politically aimless. In this respect, Greig's characters resemble many other characters in the contemporary fiction as being nihilist, bohemian and indifferent in their views of life. The other important point Dr. Inan stresses is that Greig's characters are not localized, stable or nationalist any more as in the traditional plays but global, flexible, diverse, fragmented, and mostly lost and displaced in a world that is ruled by the power of globalization. In her view, as well as reflecting on the relationship between place and identity in a changing world, Greig works to portray the lives of displaced characters and the new identities that they need to adopt in the age of globalization.

As for the mostly lost and displaced character, Dr. Inan also focuses in her book upon an important aspect of the contemporary issues in art and argues that Greig deeply undermines the basis of the master narratives of the Western art which has boosted the view of a stable, fixed and autonomous human identity since the period of Enlightenment in the 18th century. In Dr. Inan's view, David Greig uses his plays as an aesthetic and artistic medium, in which he represents the shifting perceptions of space and identity after the 1990s.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ali Gunes
International University of Sarajevo