Martin Crimp, a British playwright, writer, librettist, and translator, asserted himself in the 1990s, during the last boom of British drama. With his innovative dramatic writing and peculiar theatrical poetics, he inspired the numerous younger European playwrights who followed him.
His play In the Republic of Happiness (2012) consists of three acts, each of which follows its own special principle of dramatic form: the first one is a black comedy, modelled upon pièce bien faite; in the second one we witness a complete dissolution of dramatic form, while the third one is some kind of a distant echo of Beckett. The thematic starting point is situated in modern times, when in the (Western) world one can no longer talk about society, but merely about post-society, a cluster of individuals striving to exercise only “their own” rights and freedoms, as well as to pursue happiness, which is considered to be just another human right.

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