My Name Is Rachel Corrie: The End of “End of Ideology” in Post-9/11 British Documentary Theatre

The “end of ideology” was a theory put forward by conservative American intellectuals at the height of the Cold War, serving the purposes of western politicians in their crusade against Marxism/Communism in the polarized post-war world. Reemerging in a variety of names and forms, the “end of ideology” came to be the dominant political, social, and cultural discourse of the second half of the twentieth century, and frustrated the possibility of meaningful resistance to the status quo. Nevertheless, in the past two decades, especially after the momentous post-9/11 events, we can see clear signs of challenge to this discourse. Investigating the influence of these discursive changes on contemporary British theatre and introducing the little-known form of documentary theatre, the present study will focus on the return of ideology to the British theatre in documentary works. My Name Is Rachel Corrie and, in passing, two other documentary plays will be considered to shed light on the core premise that an important part of the British theatre is once again ideological.