Liminality, Resilience and Refugeehood in Zinnie Harris’s How to Hold Your Breath

Abstract

The dystopian play How to Hold Your Breath (2015) written by Scottish playwright Zinnie Harris not only echoes a bleak future, but also visualises a subversive narrative in which Europe goes through an economic collapse, and Europeans become refugees, trying to immigrate to African countries on boats. Dana, the protagonist who is an expert in customer relations with a university degree and ambitious career plans, and her sister Jasmine are seen getting on a boat and trying to reach Alexandria, Egypt just like many other Europeans. It is not coincidental that Dana’s and her sister’s lives turn topsy-turvy after Dana’s having a sexual intercourse with a man working for the United Nations named Jarron who claims that he is a demon. Due to a couple of catastrophic events orchestrated by the demon, both women get drowned at the end like a majority of refugees in recent years. In this study, the experiences of Dana and Jasmine throughout the play and their resilience will be explored within the framework of the concept of “liminality” with a special focus on the meaning and (im) possibility of going beyond liminality. The article contends that Zinnie Harris in her play critically revisits the refugee problem in order to unsettle Europeans and European politics and to demonstrate how refugees are made the victims of personal/political expediency by ironically putting the audience/readers in a liminal situation.