Science fiction theatre

This chapter offers an introductory approach to sf theatre as a concept and as an increasingly relevant genre of theatre and mode of sf. It explores the origins, some core themes and potential of sf on stage. It includes a brief outline of key texts and authors working in this tradition, from early twentieth century – with the staging of Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. in 1921 – to the twenty-first, covering a century of genre material that is rarely categorised, criticised or marketed as belonging to sf. While this chapter focuses on British and American theatre, including discussion of the relationship between Afrofuturism and theatre, it also considers the genre in other languages and cultures, such as Greek sf theatre. While there is not yet a sense of an established sf movement in theatre, and playwrights tend to create such work independently of a wider community, it is nonetheless impossible to ignore the influence of other sf cultures – literature, cinema, comics – on new generations of theatremakers. This chapter concludes by arguing that sf engages with themes also being explored in realistic contemporary theatre, but does through bolder and in some respects more ambitious thought-experiments.