ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 focuses on the Bush Theatre’s epic production Sixty-Six Books: 21st-Century Writers Speak to the King James Bible (2011), which marks the 400th anniversary of the authorized version of the Bible. I analyse a selection of plays that best exemplify how the production adapts the Bible in tune with a multi-cultural vision of Britain. I explore how Neil Bartlett’s “The Opening of the Mouth,” Jackie Kay’s “Hadassah,” and Suhayla El Bushra’s “False Teachers” challenge the Anglicization of the Bible, and how it has been used in the process of ‘othering’ people whose identity does not fit the normative idea of Britishness, whether because of sexual, race-gender, or religious difference, or place of origin.
