Duncan Macmillan's People, Places & Things (2015) presents a theatrical interpretation of the treatment of alcoholism and addiction. Through the medium of therapy and recovery, the play explores the re-construction of the self, to consider how personal and social identity have become fluid because of the unreliability of language. The article explores the consequences of the breakdown of the grand narratives of religion and therapy, and considers what could replace them as a substitute structure for the self. Examining the representation of Emma, a character who is an actress as well as an addict, the article considers how theatre presents a real self and real life experience through the use of dramatic forms such as naturalism and Brechtian theatre. Such forms are found to be unsatisfactory because they cannot convey an authentic sense of the self on stage. But this failure of representation stems also from the inadequacy of language to encompass a definition of self. Emma tries to redefine herself by using different narratives about herself, whether or not they are true. The problems of the indeterminacy of language are seen to interfere with the therapeutic approach to the healing of illness. With the decline of the religious and the therapeutic narrative to help explain ourselves and our actions, the article considers whether the language of commercialism is now the defining narrative of self, and considers whether a secure personal identity is in itself any longer necessary in the twenty-first century.
