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ToolsStuart, Isabel (2026) Seeing double: alcohol, gender, and English Nationalism in Sh!t Theatre Drink Rum with Expats. Theatre Research International, 51 (2). pp. 334-345. ISSN 0307-8833
Abstract
This article introduces ‘seeing double’ as a strategy for analysing performances which are politically challenging or stage juxtapositions. In Sh!t Theatre Drink Rum with Expats (2019–2021), performance art duo Sh!t Theatre uncover the scale of corruption in Malta, all while getting drunk at an English expat pub. By drawing attention to the relationality between drinking with expats and migrant death, I argue Expats urges audiences to consider their own complicity in systemic border violence. First, through examining the expat pub, I argue that Expats exposes pubs, drinking, and drunkenness as signifiers of English patriarchal nationalism abroad. Second, I analyse Sh!t Theatre’s contrasting dramaturgy which stages juxtaposed realities of fun and horror simultaneously. Ultimately, I argue that investigating alcohol in performance illuminates how our social activities are entangled within systems of power, and propose seeing double as a methodology in which performances that dramaturgically engage with juxtapositions can be interrogated.
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