Arguments for a Theatre

by Barker, Howard

• ISBN13: 9780719052491
• ISBN10: 0719052491
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-11-15
• Publisher: Manchester Univ Pr

Summary

Howard Barker, author of over thirty plays, has long been an implacable foe of the liberal British establishment, and champion of radical theatre world-wide. His best-known plays include The Castle, Scenes from an Execution and The Possibilities. All of his plays are emotionally highly charged, intellectually stimulating and far removed from the theatrical conventions of what he terms 'the Establishment Theatre'. These fragments, essays, thoughts and poems on the nature of theatre likewise reject the constraints of 'objective' academic theatre criticism. They explore the collision (and collusion) of intellect and artistry in the creative act. This book is more than a collection of essays: it is a cultural manifesto for Barker's own 'Theatre of Catastrophe'.

Table of Contents

Preface	9	(2)
Plays	11	(2)
Howard Barker
Poetry	13	(4)
Howard Barker
I	17	(176)
Forty nine asides for a tragic theatre	17	(3)
Ye gotta laugh	20	(5)
Conversation with a dead poet	25	(4)
On language in drama	29	(3)
Radical elitism in the theatre	32	(6)
Notes to The Bite of the Night	38	(2)
Prologues to The Bite of the Night	40	(5)
Honouring the audience	45	(3)
The politics beyond the politics	48	(3)
The consolations of catastrophe	51	(4)
Beauty and terror in the Theatre of Catastrophe	55	(7)
Juha Malmivaara's Scenes from an Execution	61	(2)
On Nigel Terry's performance of Savage, in The Bite of the Night	63	(2)
On watching a performance by life prisoners	65	(2)
The offer, the reward, and the need to disappoint	67	(2)
The audience, the soul, and the stage	69	(2)
The humanist theatre/The catastrophic theatre	71	(1)
Theatre without a conscience	72	(7)
The deconsecration of meaning in the Theatre of Catastrophe	79	(6)
The cult of accessibility and the Theatre of Obscurity	85	(6)
A bargain with impossibility: the theatre of moral speculation in an age of accord	91	(18)
Recognition as aesthetic paralysis in theatre	109	(3)
The theatre lies under a shroud	112	(4)
The state of loss as the end of a dramatic performance	116	(1)
Two Bradshaws	117	(2)
The idea of promiscuity in the Theatre of Catastrophe	119	(5)
On the sickness of the audience	124	(2)
Eleven building bricks	126	(2)
Stages in the education of an audience	128	(1)
Relations between an affronted audience and the actor	129	(1)
The anatomy of a sob	130	(2)
The development of a theory of beauty for the stage	132	(1)
Towards a theory of production	133	(2)
Barely concealed irritation -- a critical encounter	135	(4)
On plethora	139	(2)
Goya's grin	141	(3)
Ignorance and instinct in the Theatre of Catastrophe	144	(5)
Why I am no playwright	149	(4)
Murders and conversations: the classic text and a contemporary writer	153	(5)
What's new...?	158	(2)
Dog on stage	160	(1)
The glass confessional: the theatre in hyper-democratic society	161	(7)
Disputing Vanya	168	(3)
Love in the museum: the modern author and the antique text	171	(8)
Creating a death	179	(3)
The house of infection: theatre in the age of social hygiene	182	(8)
The Play of Seven Days	190	(3)
II	193	(30)
A dialogue with David Ian Rabey	193	(14)
A Conversation with Charles Lamb	207	(16)
Afterword	223
David Ian Rabey