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Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven (2014) weaves together multiple timelines to show life before and after a super-virus causes the cataclysmic collapse of twenty-first century society. One of these timelines imagines the explorations of the Travelling Symphony, a group of Shakespearean actors and musicians moving between small settlements some 'twenty years after the end of air travel' (Mandel 2014: 35), one of the many technologies that the super-virus brought to an end. The narrative follows Kirsten, a young actress who travels and performs with the troupe. The Travelling Symphony's motto and rationale is a repurposed Star Trek quotation, emblazoned on the side of a horse-drawn caravan: 'Because survival is insufficient' (58). Their artistic productions and their very existence are acts of defiance in the face of the world's seeming destruction.
Both the Travelling Symphony and the narration of Station Eleven assert Shakespeare's exceptionalism and relevance in a post-apocalyptic world. The repeated parallels drawn between Elizabethan theatre and the Travelling Symphony's artistic pursuits emphasize a new-found appreciation for Shakespeare that is only possible in a return to the darkness of a world without electricity, coupled with the tantalizing possibility of the dawn of a new modernity. Through their supposed lineage to Shakespeare, the Travelling Symphony believes that they are preserving a culturally significant part of the pre-plague world.
However, while the Travelling Symphony imagines themselves as a troupe of Elizabethan actors, they have more in common with a Starfleet crew. Although the Travelling Symphony's narrative ties them to the past, framing them in terms of Star Trek illustrates how their artistic endeavours are not a reconstruction of that past but an exploration of a better future. Further, Star Trek's own use of Shakespeare provides a model for understanding how Shakespeare's works function within Station Eleven as a forward-looking vehicle that can be imbued with new meaning. While the Travelling Symphony's artistic project is complicated by the long and complex cultural history that surrounds Shakespeare and Shakespearean exceptionalism, Star Trek offers an opportunity to imagine Shakespeare as a pathway to a new world.
In order to demonstrate this central argument, I will first consider how the Travelling Symphony define themselves as the artistic descendants of Shakespeare, and as a result, how they align themselves and their...