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English Drama Since 1940
English Drama Since 1940 considers the bids of successive post-war dramatists to find language and images of remorseless disclosure, appropriate to the public manifestation of sensed crisis and the interrogation of the ideal of renewal. This book introduces the period and its discourse whilst redefining them, to give proper consideration to developments of themes, styles, concerns and contexts from the 80s to the present. The book offers succinct and analytical introductions to the work of 60 dramatists, whilst arguing for (re)appraisal of many dates critical perspectives, in order to stimulate further argument in the field.
King Lear 'After' Auschwitz
Analyses appropriations of King Lear in post-war British dramaProvides the first dedicated study on appropriations of King Lear in British playwriting of the post-war, developing valuable new perspectives on the legacy of Shakespeare in post-war drama and culture.Features original case studies on Edward Bond, David Rudkin, Howard Barker, Sarah Kane, Forced Entertainment and Dennis Kelly. Situates appropriations of King Lear in a wider literary, theatrical and philosophical discourse around the play and the Holocaust. Brings Shakespeare and post-war British drama into conversation with Continental philosophy and theory.Since the events of the Holocaust, playwrights have variously appropriated...
The Scenography of Howard Barker
Influential contemporary British playwright and director Howard Barker has been engaging with the scenography of the Wrestling School’s productions since 1998. Despite this active involvement in the design of set, costume, lighting, and sound, no in-depth published study on this aspect of his work exists to date. This monograph therefore offers the first comprehensive and detailed analysis of Barker’s scenographic practice. Combining aesthetic analysis of play texts and production records with original interview materials, this book presents the first full-length foray into Barker’s scenography. It features extracts from conversations with designers working with Barker, and with Barker himself. In addition, it presents the first printed versions of select set and costume designs by Barker. With the first fully detailed analysis of Barker’s scenographic work, this book will be a vital read for scholars and postgraduates of Barker Studies, contemporary British and European drama, theatre, and scenography.
The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy
The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy is a detailed study of the idea of the tragic in the political plays of David Hare, Howard Barker, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, and Jez Butterworth. Through an in-depth analysis of over sixty of their works, Sean Carney argues that their dramatic exploration of tragic experience is an integral part of their ongoing politics. This approach allows for a comprehensive rather than selective study of both the politics and poetics of their work. Carney’s attention to the tragic enables him to find a common discourse among the canonical English playwrights of an older generation and representatives of the nineties generation, challenging the idea that there is a sharp generational break between these groups. Finally, Carney demonstrates that tragic experience is often denied by the social discourse of Englishness, and that these playwrights make a crucial critical intervention by dramatizing the tragic.
The Theatre and Films of Jez Butterworth
Jez Butterworth is the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful new British dramatist of the 21st century: his acclaimed play Jerusalem has had extended runs in the West End and on Broadway. This book is the first to examine Butterworth's writings for stage and film and to identify how and why his work appeals so widely and profoundly. It examines the way that he weaves suspenseful stories of eccentric outsiders, whose adventures echo widespread contemporary social anxieties, and involve surprising expressions of both violence and generosity. This book reveals how Butterworth unearths the strange forms of wildness and defiance lurking in the depths and at the edges of England: where unpredictable outbursts of humour highlight the intensity of life, and characters discover links between their haunting past and the uncertainties of the present, to create a meaningful future. Supplemented by essays from James D. Balestrieri and Elisabeth Angel-Perez, this is a clear and detailed source of reference for a new generation of theatre audiences, practitioners and directors who wish to explore the work of this seminal dramatist.
Alistair McDowall's Pomona
‘It’s all real. All of it. Everything bad is real’ - Moe Alistair McDowall’s Pomona was first staged in 2014 and won properly startling, and startled, acclaim. Its edgeland setting permits a surrealistic disengagement of linear forms of time, which is both dreamlike and wildly funny; nightmarish and ominously enveloping. The play has as its imaginative springboard a landscape which is both real and surreal. It offers an unforgettable journey into radical uncertainty, alongside unpredictable action that presents and questions the forms by which all too much of British life is lived. Rabey offers us a wild plunge into this modern English urban rabbit hole, a haunting and bewildering high-stakes hunt for meaning and value, set in a gothic noir Manchester, possibly dystopian (or possibly not).
Lear’s Other Shadow
Lear’s Other Shadow: A Cultural History of Queen Lear offers a deep cultural analysis of the figure of Queen Lear, who shadows and eventually sometimes overshadows her royal husband across the nearly one-thousand-year life of this archetypal tale. What appears to be a deliberate strategy of suppression, even erasure in Shakespeare’s King Lear later inspired dozens of stage, page, and cinematic remakes and adaptations in which this figure is revived or remembered, often pointedly so. From Jacob Gordin’s Yiddish-language Miriele Efros (1898), through edgy stage remakes such as Gordon Bottomley’s King Lear’s Wife (1915) and the Women’s Theatre Group’s Lear’s Daughters (1987), to...
