In every book, there is a road not taken; if the subject matter is sufficiently intriguing, there may be more than one. This is rather positive, as it opens up to the possibilities of the road that this specific author did not pursue, or at least not on this occasion, being taken up by someone else, opening, it follows, further roads, and paths, and journeys for others. It might be that the choice of itinerary that rules out another one, in the way that Robert Frost envisaged it in “The Road Not Taken” (1915 (2015)), might not be that much of a binary after all, if we imagine it, at least, as an act of continuity, flux and dialogue. I take from Frost the environmental imagery and the reference to paths that invite more footsteps, and extend an invitation to colleagues to take on those theoretical, critical and artistic roads that this book has not taken in their own pursuit(s). I am both fascinated and intrigued by what these dialogues might look like, what discursive space they might inhabit, and what creative impetus they might imagine as so compelling that it cannot but be written about.

For the purposes of the present book, however, the enquiry closes here. Its author does not imagine that a more concrete ‘Conclusion’ is required, because I stand by the view that I have also expressed in earlier work, that an event, which is still unfolding, as we inhabit, digitally and physically, our shared and individual environments, is not best served when presented as a neat story followed by a tidy epimyth. Each of the main chapters of this book closes with its own corresponding concluding section, which serves to capture the development of its arguments and its critical discoveries—in that way, those individual conversations are concluded, hopefully in a way that also reveals the bigger picture of the book. The book does not make a claim that the concerns it takes on are resolved by the end of its enquiry. The problematics that inform its discussions will continue to inform the near, but also the longer-term future(s).

I would like, then, to end here, by means of reference to three plays that were at one stage imagined as potentially featuring in the main body of the book, but which were, for different reasons, subsequently deemed as more appropriate for the task of attempting a full-stop to what is an ongoing conversation regarding the spatial coordinates of contemporary playwriting and performance. These texts are: Heisenberg by Simon Stephens (2015, Manhattan Theatre Club, director Mark Brokaw), What if if Only by Caryl Churchill (2021, Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, director James Macdonald) and I, Joan by Charlie Josephine (2022, Shakespeare’s Globe, director Ilinca Radulian). Each in its own way, these plays take on, embody and present different versions and possibilities for flow and transience, where the state of existing in-between is not presented as undesirable but as ultimately freeing, even when set against crushing practicalities, confronted by risks of failure, or impeded by rigid structures. Something, in these plays, always escapes, and breathes: it carves out for itself a new path, a space to exist alongside the so-called safe, or the realistic, or the systemic. Each of these plays also stages sites of disruption that materialise in transit sites and awkward public spaces, or charmless private ones, as in Heisenberg; in indeterminate spatial and perceptual zones that blossom outwards with hope from the very confining ground of one’s immediate rootedness, as in What if if Only; or in fissures in histories that take on those unrepresented, unaccounted for, suppressed and eliminated voices and narratives that now seek to reinscribe fluidity in history, and make it happen differently, as in I, Joan.

The subtitle of Heisenberg, referring to the play’s scientific context, is The Uncertainty Principle. Already from the start, the play introduces itself with a key acknowledgement: the only reality set in stone is that there can be no fixity. The text pursues the hypothesis with dedication as it unfolds in motion, acknowledging the fact that stopping—and resting, and defining, whether people, places or things, is a chimera. The only element of control comes in accepting to relinquish it, and in recognising that life is in the between—spatial and temporal—movements, gestures and encounters that appear peripheral to those other larger, seemingly more impactful segments, but that are, in fact, the event in themselves. To meet someone in the space where the main action is that predicated on the absence of the vehicle that will produce it—the train that is yet to arrive at and depart from—the station; to accept that the singular encounter is in itself the narrative, rather than the other way around—that is, that the everyday narrative allows the encounter. To allow for possibilities, with no promises, and no fixities—“That’s all I need. To know that. That just suits me down to the ground. Thank you” says one half of the play’s duo to the other in the final moments of Stephens’s play (2015, 57). The gratitude pertains to the story that has taken root outside of the dominant pattern of either character’s life journeys, to become a new journey. Other than certainty, Stephens’s play suggests, there is also no such thing as an objective definition of connection, companionship or even future. Except that there might actually be an attempt at each of these and all combined, in the very denial of their rigid affirmation.

Proliferating possibilities affect not only alternative futures, but, also, alternative constructions of histories that might be well-rehearsed in the public imagination; in other words, the theatre can produce interventionist gestures at the heart of the moment where that difficult past becomes difficult, setting it free, reenvisaging it, correcting the injustice, rebalancing the universe. I, Joan serves the symbolic purpose of opening up spaces in closed up histories, releasing, it seems, even the theatre auditorium itself (here the Globe) by treating it as not necessarily a long-established space of the historical canon, but, rather, as a pop-up environment for hope and disruption. Joan of Arc, here, does not die; and why, after all, should that be the case? The narrative of oppressive histories is—literally—interrupted, or, as Joan puts it, “Oh enough! Enough of your words, please, you’ve spoken, oh so many words”; it is now time for orthodox systemic histories to be displaced by “a joyous rebellion”, where binarisms—in gender, in success, in failure—cease to be relevant, as does the neat closing of a play within the dramatic structure (Josephine 2022, 161–62). Instead, through a fluid finale of “bodies moving together […] the release we all need [that] builds it builds it builds, the energy swirling […] and bursting up into the sky” neither the narrative, quite, nor hope ends (Josephine 2022, 162). Likewise, the space of the audience ceases to be delimited or delineated by means of that of the performance and performers. The two sites conjoin, creating an interspace, where the margin for change survives.

Then, there is the question of (the) future(s). In the final pages of Mobile Lives, Anthony Elliott and John Urry imagine scenarios of what these ‘futures’ that are not one might entail “for the middle years of the twenty-first century” (2010, 150). Their vocabulary in this section is rather spectacular, though not spectacularised: in the scenario of a crisis radical, and annihilating, the need is for dialogue, for probing for persevering, for planting a root and following through—even while acknowledging that other roots have been destroyed, and that much has already been eroded. Firstly presenting four scenarios: “Perpetual motion” (2010, 141–42); “Local sustainability” (2010, 142–44); “Regional warlordism” (2010, 144–47); and “Digital networks” (2010, 147–50, all emphasis original), Elliott and Urry then move towards the closing of their book through a reflective section titled “Multiple futures” (2010, 150–53). Here, they also rather decisively dismantle the ecology/economy binary:

It is probable that [...] neoliberalism will continue to set economic and political agendas, making widespread, concerted state actions to deal with climate change unlikely. [...]

But that is not certain, only probable. It could turn out that climate change and peak oil turn out to be issues of such significance that, through catastrophic events, they lead to the dramatic modification or rejection of neo-liberalism. [...A]s economist Nicholas Stern writes, ‘Climate change … is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure.’ Climate change shows that the private pursuit of individual gain across the world, especially since around 1990, has resulted in a collective outcome at the global level that threatens the future of capitalism. (2010, 151)

It is precisely these untenabilities of capitalism and its various, extensive, destructive effects that the plays examined in this book investigate vis-à-vis capitalism’s deep-seated inscription as a reliable system for the organisation and evaluation of benefit versus liability. The plays examined here, each in their different way, reveal how capitalism has persistently marginalised voices of dissent to monetise, mine and deplete each and every environmental and spatial resource—physical and virtual alike, and to instate relations of profit and reward in societies across time. It is these wounds, on surfaces, soils, atmospheres, cyber-sites, non-human and human life that the plays that this book has dealt with take on through their respective forays into the interspatial and its possibilities.

Without dryly instructing, but, nonetheless, thoughtfully historicising, the plays on which this book has concentrated ask a similar set of questions to the ones that Elliott and Urry pose: “[h]ow should we anticipate the future? How will future historians refer to the next few decades? Will they be known as the climate change years, or maybe even the end of (mobile) civilization years?” (2010, 140). Here lands, in my view, the most striking vocabulary that proves, resolutely, that theatre and society are intimately intertwined, and that the vocabularies of theatre studies and sociologies are not antagonistic, but shared. Or, to return to Elliott and Urry for one final thought, there are “futures that are possible, those that are probable and those that are preferable. And the last of these, the preferable futures, are often neither probable nor even possible” (2010, 140).

This is the space that Churchill’s What if if Only inhabits, not only anticipating, imagining, fearing or hoping for this future, but, in fact, giving flesh to it—in one of those most inauspicious contexts: the private site of grief for a partner lost, and a future interrupted. There is not only one future; rather, there are several—and the path of desire, and of loss, and of expectation leads to many of these, and to all at the same time, as they contest each other, claiming space, taking root—losing it, once exposed as a delusion, an impossibility, and regaining it, not in spite of, but because of reasoning. The rationality required to appreciate that ecology and economy are not antithetical—and that against fear, theatre can be both pragmatic and instil hope, comes to shape the powerful final image of this play by Churchill that acknowledges devastation but resiliently winks at optimism. Space does not open up easily for such hope; the interspace of disruption is a fleshy and messy process—and it requires sustenance and perseverance. Amongst the different options that have been/could have been/will not be/will happen, imagined by Churchill as “Present”, “Future”, and “Futures”, the one that prevails, through energy that begins to swell and fill the space of the text, the stage and the theatre, right as the short performance draws to a close, is that of “Child Future”. Or, as the text reads in its final moments: “A small child future is there” (Churchill 2021, 3–14). The Child Future, irreverent to what has been, and free of devastation, and sorrow, and demise, asks, and in fact demands: “I want want to happen I’m going to happen shall I happen?” before eventually, defiantly declaring: “I’m going to happen” (Churchill 2021, 3–14).

In the 2022–23 theatre season, the Swedish premiere of the text played at the large stage of Stockholms stadsteaterFootnote 1 as Tänk om om bara [Think if if Only], part of a double bill alongside Churchill’s Escaped Alone (2016, as Undkom ensam), programmed in a space accommodating almost twice the size of the audience that the Royal Court’s Theatre Downstairs has capacity for. The production was directed by Ole Anders Tandberg with scenography by Sven Haraldsson. Here, the role/time/space designated as “Child Future” was portrayed by a child actor (shared between Billie Höper Edfeldt and Hedvig Sahlin) who enters the vast, now suddenly dreamlike, soft-hued stage decisively, blue hair all unruly, bursting with irreverence, carrying a branch, taking root—occupying the space at the same time as creating it and altering it through presence and agency. In so doing, the Child Future, even in a balance still tenuous, and a context still tentative, allows no margin for doubt that the future is very much going to happen, and that we can still, collectively, decide to believe in it, nourish it and subscribe to it as a common endeavour. It is in the sudden, the uninvited, in that very margin that opens, and that grows, where the action will take place; where the event will occur.