David Edgar, in his book State of Play: Playwrights on Playwriting (1999), points out that in the mid-90s there seemed to be an "overarching theme" (Edgar, 1999, p27) in a contemporary British play which dealt with ideas about masculinity. “Gay plays like Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful Thing… boy plays like Jez Butterworth's Mojo… [and] girl gang plays like Irving Welsh's Trainspotting… address masculinity and its discontents” (ibid, p.27). In this essay I will examine what ideas about masculinity are, and how these discontents have been addressed in contemporary theater (and the idea of ​​the "decline of the dominant role of men" (Edgar, 1999, p. 28) ) and how the crisis of masculinity (ref) was staged. I will do this by watching the Black Watch performances of Ron Athey, Franko B and Gregory Burkes. But first, I will look at a definition of what masculinity is, in order to discuss the representations of this idea that are realized in the selected works. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why we think there is a “crisis”. " of masculinity is because the term itself is so difficult to define, in a sociological sense. Jack Kahn, in his book "An Introduction to Masculinities", states that "masculinity is a hypothetical construct because, in itself, it cannot be directly observed and measured” (2009, p. 3) Indeed, “masculinity and masculine behaviors are not the simple product of genetic coding or biological predispositions” (Whitehead and Barrett, 2001). , p. 16), it is rather a conceptual idea used to explain a set of behaviors, attitudes, thoughts and emotions that make up a specific identity masculinity is not just an idea, nor a thing. specifically masculine, it is a middle of paper......h it had a recognizable substantial basis” (Whitehead and Barrett, 2001, p. .53)Works citedBrittan, A. 1989. Masculinity and power Oxford, Kingdom. -United: Basil Blackwell, G. 2007. Black Watch London: Faber and Faber. Edgar, D. 1999. State of play. London: Faber and Faber.Kahn, JS 2009. An introduction to masculinities. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.Petersen, AR 1998. Unmasking the Masculine. London: Sage Publications. Phelan, P. 1993. Unmarked. London: Routledge.Reeser, TW 2010. Masculinities in Theory. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Richards, M. 2003. Ron Athey, AIDS and the Politics of Pain. Body, space and technology, 3 (2). Sierz, A. 2011. Rewriting the nation. London: Methuen Drama.Walsh, F. 2010. Men's Issues. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Whitehead, S. and Barrett, FJ 2001. The Masculinities Reader. Cambridge, United Kingdom: politics.