Abstract
J. T. Rogers’ Oslo has had an extraordinary run for new ‘straight’ drama: sell-out performances both in New York and London, and 7 Tony nominations. But what is it? On the face of it, Oslo is a history play – a carefully imagined reconstruction of secret talks that became the precursor to the Clinton/Arafat/Rabin Camp David meetings that resulted in the 1993 Oslo Accords. The subject and the players have been thoroughly researched by J. T. Rogers, and the play’s reception has been largely celebratory. This perhaps is the result of a play-going public’s appreciation of some intelligence in political debate and no doubt an appreciation of the play’s optimism, despite the ultimate failure of the Accords. This paper looks closely at three questions posed by Rogers’ play: 1) IS it a history play, and if so, how does it apprehend/narrate history? 2) Murray Krieger once said that history is the child of myth that never altogether escapes its parentage – is Oslo, in this sense, an unruly child of myth – not so much a history play, as it is a trans-historical political lesson? 3) If Oslo is NOT a history play, to what end does it employ its very specifically researched context?
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