You don’t belong here: Blood and Chocolate and British remembrance rituals

Abstract

This article argues that the promenade theatre project Blood and Chocolate (York, 2013) offered a theatrical rebuttal to widespread British revisionist, celebratory views of the First World War that draw authority from annual remembrance rituals such as poppy wearing and the two-minute silence. Building on Richard Schechner’s argument that rituals ‘make belief’ I propose that over time, remembrance rituals have been exploited in order to make – or remake – history. This history does not come from the past, but exploits an idea of the past for contemporary political gain. By contrast, Blood and Chocolate dramatised aspects of history but emphasised its own theatricality in order to stress the absolute separateness of past and present.

Keywords:

• Promenade theatre
• remembrance rituals
• World War One
• commemoration
• historiography debates
• political performance