A Concise Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Drama

by Editor: Nadine Holdsworth (University of Warwick); Editor: Mary Luckhurst (University of York)

• ISBN13: 9780470766125
• ISBN10: 0470766123
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2008-04-01
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Focusing on major and emerging playwrights, institutions, and various theatre practices this Concise Companion examines the key issues in British and Irish theatre since 1979. Written by leading international scholars in the field, this collection offers new ways of thinking about the social, political, and cultural contexts within which specific aspects of British and Irish theatre have emerged and explores the relationship between these contexts and the works produced. The collection analyzes key issues such as globalization, genocide, migration, and national identity, forms such as verbatim theatre and site-specific performance, the use of new technologies, and the practice of physical theatre. It investigates why particular issues and practices have emerged as significant in the theatre of this period.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

National Politics and Identities

Europe in Flux: Exploring Revolution and Migration in British Plays of the 1990s

ÆIÆll See You YesterdayÆ Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and the Captivating Past

Black British Drama and the Politics of Identity

Northern Irish Drama: Speaking the Peace

Sites, Cities and Landscapes

The Production of æSiteÆ: Site-Specific Theatre

Staging an Urban Nation: Place and Identity in Contemporary Welsh Theatre

The Landscape of Contemporary Scottish Drama: Place, Politics and Identity

The Body, Text and the Real

The Body's Cruel Joke: The Comic Theatre of Sarah Kane

Physical Theatre: Complicite and the Question of Authority

Verbatim Theatre, Media Relations and Ethics

Science, Ethics and New Technologies

Theatre and Science

From the State of the Nation to Globalization: Shifting Political Agendas in Contemporary British Playwriting

Theatre for a Media-Saturated Age

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.