“Home Away from Home”: Diasporic Consciousness and Everyday Third Places in Tom Murphy’s Conversations on a Homecoming (1985) and Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop Chronicles (2017)

Abstract

or much of its history, the geography of modern drama has been that of “home.” 1 But the ideas of home and belonging have increasingly stirred political and cultural debate in the age of migration, globalization, and transnationalism. As the concept of home evolves and complexifies, so do dramatic expressions of it. Home is no longer the domestic interior of the bourgeoise, as popularized by the naturalist dramas of Ibsen and Chekhov. This article explores non-domestic dramatic spaces—the Irish pub and the African barbershop—as culturally specific “third places” in two plays: Tom Murphy’s Conversations on a Homecoming (1985) 2 and Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop Chronicles (2017). 3 In the context of diasporic studies, both spaces exemplify what Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur have described as the “nomadic turn in which the very parameters of specific historical movements are embodied and—as diaspora itself suggests—are scattered and regrouped into new points of becoming.” 4 Both plays deal with the experiences of their representative diasporic communities, revealing the complex connections between host-homelands and overseas communities. A comparative study of the two plays challenges conventional categories of nation and identity, and demonstrates how these everyday third spaces can become sites of contestation against the hegemonic and homogenizing forces of neo-colonialism and globalization. “Third Place” is