Staging Grenfell: The Ethics of Representing Housing Crises in London

In this article, I think about the complex ethical terrain that the play Value Engineering navigates, as an artistic representation of the consequences of the Grenfell Tower fire that purports to have ‘documentary’ status, within a broader context of social and political inequality within and beyond the theatre industry. The fire, I propose, exemplifies structural violence in its most literal form, and demonstrates the ways in which the London housing crisis serves as a ‘canary in the coal mine’ for neoliberal policy and the dismantling of the welfare state. Following a discussion of this political context, I ask what might be at stake in cultural representations of this nationally significant event, what we risk in representing and “regarding” (Sontag) the pain of other people, and how and whether notions of solidarity might be reconciled with notions of ownership via cultural forms.