Zinnie Harris’ play, How to Hold Your Breath, predominantly involves Dana’s journey to Alexandria for a job interview. During her journey, Europe goes into financial collapse, and Dana and her sister Jasmine’s pride and sense of security, only because they are Europeans, are recurrently tested and gradually shatter due to a series of nightmarish experiences and encounters. The play deals, in particular, with the current discussions of the refugee crisis and the concept of Europe as the gist of civilization, yet it satirizes the latter by reducing it to an illusion that easily dissolves. Hence, even though the play is concerned with contemporary politics, it is curiously categorized, referring to the medieval genre, as a modern morality play. In this respect, this article analyses the concepts of being European as a sin – specifically pride, one of the seven deadly sins – in How to Hold Your Breath, and of Europe as a system that provides shelter to individuals in times of economic hardships. Accordingly, it explores Harris’ fusion of the medieval and the contemporary in Dana’s story, including the appalling conditions she has to endure as a refugee, so as to offer a novel perspective on the debates regarding Europe, Brexit, and the refugee crisis.

津妮·哈里斯 (Zinnie Harris) 的戏剧《如何屏住呼吸》主要讲述达纳 (Dana) 前往亚历山大参加工作面试的故事。旅途中，欧洲陷入金融崩溃，达娜和妹妹茉莉只因为是欧洲人而拥有的自豪感和安全感，却因一系列噩梦般的经历和遭遇而一次次经受考验，逐渐破碎。该剧特别涉及当前关于难民危机和欧洲作为文明要点的概念的讨论，但它通过将后者简化为容易消散的幻想来讽刺后者。因此，尽管该剧关注当代政治，但它却被奇怪地归类为中世纪类型的现代道德剧。在这方面，本文在《如何屏住呼吸》中分析了作为欧洲人是一种罪孽的概念——特别是七宗罪之一的骄傲——以及欧洲作为一个在经济困难时期为个人提供庇护的体系的概念。据此，它探讨了哈里斯在达纳的故事中中世纪与当代的融合，包括她作为难民所必须忍受的骇人听闻的条件，从而为有关欧洲、英国脱欧和难民危机的辩论提供了新颖的视角。