Context: Verne in 1872, Eason in 2013
Two Worlds, One Journey
Around the World in 80 Days exists in two historical moments simultaneously. Jules Verne’s story first appeared in 1872, feeding a Victorian appetite for global adventure at the precise moment when industrial technology had made such adventure feasible. The New Vic staged Eason’s adaptation in 2013 in the north of England, for a 21st-century audience well aware of what empire had meant and where the “adventure” of Victorian global reach had led. Understanding both contexts is essential not because you will be asked to reproduce biographical facts, but because context shapes every staging choice a modern production might make — from the style of the physical theatre to the way the ensemble performs the non-European characters. Both Verne’s world and Eason’s inform what happens on stage.
Jules Verne and the Victorian Moment
Jules Verne (1828–1905) was a French novelist and one of the founders of adventure fiction as a genre. He was fascinated by science and technology, and his novels are populated by engineers, explorers, submarines and balloons — the machines of a world in which human ingenuity was transforming the possible. Around the World in 80 Days first appeared serially in a French newspaper in 1872, before being published as a book in 1873. It arrived at a specific historical junction: the Suez Canal had opened in 1869, dramatically shortening the sea journey between Europe and India; the American transcontinental railroad, also completed in 1869, had linked the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Together these two engineering achievements made Verne’s premise credible — a journey that would have taken six months was now theoretically achievable in eighty days.
The novel’s popularity was also driven by a specifically Victorian cultural obsession with time. The Great Exhibition of 1851 had celebrated industrial progress and the mastery of nature through technology; by the 1870s, standardised railway time was replacing local time across Britain, the telegraph was sending messages faster than any human traveller, and the world was being divided into predictable time zones. Fogg’s devotion to his schedule is not a character quirk — it is a satirical portrait of Victorian industrial modernity, where the precision of the timetable had become a cultural value.
Verne wrote his novel in 1872, shortly after the Suez Canal (1869) and the transcontinental railroad (1869) made circumnavigation in 80 days theoretically possible. The Victorian obsession with time, schedules and industrial progress gave Fogg’s character its cultural meaning.
The Novel's Colonial Assumptions
Verne’s novel is a product of French and European imperial culture. The world outside Europe functions as spectacular terrain for Fogg’s determination. India, China, Japan and America appear as a series of exotic episodes, each offering a different flavour of drama or comedy. Verne writes with genuine curiosity about these places, but his gaze is consistently that of the European traveller: the cultures he describes are observed from the outside. This is not a unique failing of Verne — it was the dominant mode of 19th-century travel writing, in which the world was divided into the civilised (European) traveller and the colourful (non-European) spectacle. A modern student reading the novel will notice this immediately; a modern director staging the play must decide how to handle it.
Victorian adventure fiction as a genre typically features: a Western (usually British or French) protagonist whose ingenuity and stoicism are tested by the world; a loyal, comic companion who provides the audience’s emotional reaction; a series of exotic locations each with its own distinctive “character”; and a resolution that confirms the protagonist’s superiority through success. Verne’s novel fits this template closely, which is why Eason’s adaptation can engage with both the pleasure of the genre and the questions a modern audience brings to it. The physical-theatre form Eason writes for — eight actors explicitly constructing the world — is itself a kind of comment on the genre: by making the construction visible, the production invites the audience to watch the storytelling as storytelling, rather than being absorbed unquestioningly into the colonial adventure. This is the same principle as alienation effect in epic theatre: the ensemble’s visible transformations remind the audience that they are watching a story, not experiencing reality.
Laura Eason and the 2013 New Vic Production
Laura Eason is an American playwright. Her adaptation had its world premiere at Lookingglass Theater in Chicago in 2008; Theresa Heskins directed the New Vic production in 2013. This matters for staging: an in-the-round space requires a very different approach from a proscenium arch. There is no “upstage” as a place of exit or hiding; there is no wing space for surprise entrances; every costume change, every physical transformation, every blocking choice must work from every angle. The 2013 New Vic production used the space’s demands: the episodic multi-roling structure, physical-theatre vocabulary, minimal set and performer ingenuity made the world visible from all sides.
Eason’s adaptation is firmly in the tradition of physical theatre. The influence of companies like Complicite (founded 1983) and Frantic Assembly (founded 1994) is visible in the script’s demands: performers are asked to become not just multiple characters but multiple objects and environments. This ensemble physical-theatre tradition sits comfortably alongside the Brechtian concept of the visible storyteller — the performer who steps out to narrate, to comment, to address the audience directly, making the theatrical fiction visible rather than concealing it behind a naturalistic fourth wall.
Eason’s script draws on the physical-theatre traditions of Complicite (founded 1983) and Frantic Assembly (founded 1994), whose ensemble work — object transformation, bodies-as-environments, ensemble storytelling — underpins the play’s staging demands.
A student who understands both historical contexts can answer a context question with precision. For example: a 12-mark practice question asking how historical context shapes a director’s choices for the India scenes might draw on three facts — (1) Verne wrote these scenes from a colonial gaze; (2) Eason adapted the play for a post-colonial 21st-century audience; (3) the physical-theatre form (visible transformation, ensemble storytelling) allows a modern production to handle this material critically without pausing the adventure. The directorial choice that follows from this context might be: the ensemble perform Indian characters with specific, researched gestus — a particular posture, a specific movement quality — that communicates genuine cultural specificity, not a tourist’s impression. This is a contextually informed staging choice.