By focusing on three central elements – Cybernetic Language, Prosthetic Subjects, and (Hyper)Object Agency – Posthuman Drama examines how nine English-language play-texts from the late 1990s to the late 2010s have interrogated the logic of the posthuman paradigm. To contextualise this phenomenon, the book also features a summarised re-appraisal of “proto-posthuman” texts, including post-Renaissance “monstrous” plays, modernist “robot” plays, and postmodern “system” plays. Rather than encountering each of these traditions as disparate examinations of Otherness, a posthuman lens reveals the humanist subject in these plays existing within a medianature continuum.

Richard Jordan is a playwright and Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of New England, Australia, where he teaches units on playwriting, dramaturgy, Australian theatre, and theatrical modernism. His research has appeared in Modern Drama, Australasian Drama Studies, and CounterText, and his plays have garnered several awards and honours, including the Australian Theatre Festival NYC Best New Play Award (The Tiniest Thing, 2020), the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award (25 Down, 2009), the Lord Mayor’s Award for Best New Australian Work (Machina, 2015), three Matilda awards (2009; 2015), and a Creative Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire (2013). He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia.