The Significance of Insignificance: Contemporary Allusion Through Imagined Meetings

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper discusses Terry Johnson’s 1982 stage play, Insignificance.
Commenting on Britain in the 1980s through a nostalgic look at the1950s, the play was written at a time when Thatcherism was makingextensive cuts in funding for the arts and the stationing of AmericanCruise missiles in the south of England was reviving fears of nuclearconfrontation. Insignificance addresses these and other personal and publicissues in an indirect manner, defusing the seriousness of its content byplacing its characters in a semi-farcical, imagined-meeting setting. In thisway, the playwright depicts a culture that distracts its citizens throughsport and cinema, while political dogmatism stifles social comment andscientific progress threatens the survival of the species. As the myths offame and infamy are exposed and the vulnerability of individual citizensin society is revealed, the ironic title of the play comments on the trivialityof the iconic status attributed to the representatives of a society thatrefuses to be accountable for its actions. Such insignificance also containsits antithesis, however, as the climactic denouement provides atimeless commentary on the state of human consciousness.

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