“Bridget is there”: Accelerating the Cybernetic Subject in Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman’s More Life

Title
“Bridget is there”: Accelerating the Cybernetic Subject in Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman’s More Life
Publication Date
2026-06
Author(s)
Jordan, Richard
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4581-1566
Email: rjordan7@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:rjordan7
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Association Internationale des Critiques de Theatre,International Association of Theatre Critics
Place of publication
Canada
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/74246
Abstract

This article examines the accelerated dramaturgy of More Life (2025) by Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman through a posthuman lens. First produced at the Royal Court Theatre in London, Mooney and Yeatman’s text ironically foregrounds embodiment through taking a cybernetic approach to dramatic form: splitting its protagonist’s body and mind across two actors and manipulating the unfolding action to mirror the speed and simultaneity of concurrent computer processing. Cybernetic culture, according to Katherine Hayles, produces a subjectivity unique to the digital age, in which the human is defined by the logic of the intelligent machine, even within a biologically-unaltered present. Through accelerating the logic of the cybernetic subject, More Life interrogates the embodied implications of the transhumanist fantasy, by anchoring the play’s speculative plot in the materially felt consequences of the here and now.

Link
Citation
Critical Stages, v.33, p. 1-21
ISSN
2409-7411
Start page
1
End page
21
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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