Academic literature on the topic 'Contemporary English theatre'
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Journal articles on the topic "Contemporary English theatre"
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King, Barnaby. "The African-Caribbean Identity and the English Stage." New Theatre Quarterly 16, no. 2 (May 2000): 131–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00013646.
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In the first of two essays employing academic discourses of cultural exchange to examine the intra-cultural situation in contemporary British society, published in NTQ 61, Barnaby King analyzed the relationship between Asian arts and mainstream arts in Britain on both a professional and a community level. In this second essay he takes a similar approach towards African–Caribbean theatre in Britain, comparing the Black theatre initiatives of the regional theatres with the experiences of theatre workers themselves based in Black communities. He shows how work which relates to a specific ‘other’ culture has to struggle to get funding, while work which brings Black Arts into a mainstream ‘multicultural’ programme has fewer problems. In the process, he specifically qualifies the claim that the West Yorkshire Playhouse provides for Black communities as well as many others, while exploring the alternative, community-based projects of ‘Culturebox’, based in the deprived Chapeltown district of Leeds. Barnaby King is a theatre practitioner based in Leeds, who completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Leeds Workshop Theatre in 1998. He is now working with theatre companies and small-scale venues – currently the Blah Blah Blah company and the Studio Theatre at Leeds Metropolitan University – to develop community participation in
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Milhous, Judith. "Lighting at the King's Theatre, Haymarket, 1780–82." Theatre Research International 16, no. 3 (1991): 215–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0307883300014991.
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For late eighteenth-century London theatres, lighting is the facet of production about which we have least information. In his authoritative Lighting in the Theatre, Gösta Bergman describes Garrick's reforms of the 1760s with reference to contemporary French practice and then speculates on what de Loutherbourg's advances in scene design imply about lighting. However, no detailed lighting accounts like those for the Comédie-Française have hitherto been known for any English theatre of this period. This gap can now be partly filled: a ‘Schedule’ attached to the answer in a 1787 Chancery lawsuit gives two seasons' worth of the daily accounts of Joseph Hayling, a tinman and purveyor of lamps, who provided light at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket from about 1768 to 1782. His schedule can be compared with contemporary French and English records to clarify our picture of lighting practices in London in the late eighteenth century.
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Duchesne, Scott. ""A Golf Club for the Golden Age": English Canadian Theatre Historiography and the Strange Case of Roy Mitchell." Theatre Research in Canada 18, no. 2 (January 1997): 131–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/tric.18.2.131.
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This article contends that through the work of academics committed to recording and discussing the efforts of the alternate theatre movement, the narrative of English Canadian theatre history was subsequently revised. As a result, two suppositions were established which form the implicit basis of much research into contemporary English Canadian theatre history. They are: (1) the significant development of an English Canadian dramatic literature by a movement of professional and postcolonial theatre-makers signaled the theatre's "coming of age", and therefore (2) a specific set of events from 1968 to 1975 constitute the "golden age" of English Canadian theatre history. The narrative as it stands, therefore, clearly and unfairly privileges the achievements of the alternate movement at the expense of numerous other, equally vital historical voices. This article will focus on a particular individual who serves as a prime example of this exclusion; the director and theorist Roy Mitchell (1884-1944).
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Kim, Yoo. "Crossing Borders: Korean Nationalism and Contemporary Theatre." New Theatre Quarterly 25, no. 4 (November 2009): 363–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x09000657.
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In October 2007 South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun walked across the inter-Korean border for a summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. Although adhering to the primordialist view of nationhood, this state-led border-crossing also indicates the effects of globalization. As the heavily militarized inter-Korean border is permeated by interaction between ethnic nationalism, the nation's anti-colonialist history, and the transnational forces, the image of border-crossing becomes a metaphor for a contested space of national unification. This article examines a selection of works by three contemporary South Korean playwrights who, from a post-nationalist perspective, have emerged to contest the contradictory aspects and trajectories of the past ten years of populist nationalism. Yoo Kim focuses on the ways these post-nationalist plays employ the motifs of border-crossing and borderland encounter to challenge the romantic and exclusionary narratives of the conventional nationalist theatre. Yoo Kim is an Associate Professor in English at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea. His recent article, ‘Mapping Utopia in the Post-Ideological Era: Lee Yun-taek's The Dummy Bride’, was published in Theatre Research International in 2007.
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Urban, Eva. "Multilingual Theatre in Brittany: Celtic Enlightenment and Cosmopolitanism." New Theatre Quarterly 34, no. 3 (July 13, 2018): 283–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x1800026x.
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In this article Eva Urban describes a historical tradition of Breton enlightenment theatre, and examines in detail two multilingual contemporary plays staged in Brittany: Merc’h an Eog / Merch yr Eog / La Fille du Saumon (2016), an international interceltic co-production by the Breton Teatr Piba and the Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru (the Welsh-language national theatre of Wales); and the Teatr Piba production Tiez Brav A Oa Ganeomp / On avait de jolies maisons (2017). She examines recurring themes about knowledge, enlightenment journeys, and refugees in Brittany in these plays and performances, and presents the argument that they stage cosmopolitan and intercultural philosophical ideas. Eva Urban is Senior Research Fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen's University Belfast. She has held a Région de Bretagne Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Centre for Breton and Celtic Studies, University of Rennes 2, a research lectureship in the English Department, University of Rennes 2, and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Community Politics and the Peace Process in Contemporary Northern Irish Drama (Peter Lang, 2011) and has published articles in New Theatre Quarterly, Etudes Irlandaises, Caleidoscopio, and chapters in book collections.
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Lal, Ananda. "Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance: Theater and Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial India. By Nandi Bhatia. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004; pp. vi + 206 pp. $49.50 cloth." Theatre Survey 46, no. 2 (October 25, 2005): 311–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040557405210207.
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There are few dependable books in English on political theatre in India. Professor Bhatia's collection of essays, therefore, fills a long-felt need. She introduces the subject contextually, followed by four chapters chronologically examining key areas (British censorship of nationalistic drama, Indianizations of Shakespeare as an anticolonial statement, the Indian People's Theatre Association as a mass phenomenon in the mid-twentieth century, and Utpal Dutt's reinterpretation of Raj history in his play The Great Rebellion 1857), and concludes with a short epilogue on contemporary activist theatre by women. Most valuably for theatre historians, she places in the public domain many primary sources previously untapped in English, and unearths much secondary material that has escaped academic attention. Not least of all, she writes articulately and readably.
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Diamond, Catherine. "Parallel Streams: Two Currents of Difference in Kuala Lumpur's Contemporary Theatre." TDR/The Drama Review 46, no. 2 (June 2002): 7–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/105420402320980497.
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The politically and artistically engaged theatres of Malaysia probe contradictory aspects of this predominantly Islamic Asian nation. While some works in Malay contribute toward constructing a national culture, other works, often in English, deconstruct the monocultural motif of official culture.
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Westgate, J. Chris. "David Hare's Stuff Happens in Seattle: Taking a Sober Account." New Theatre Quarterly 25, no. 4 (November 2009): 402–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x09000682.
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As The Power of Yes, the third play by David Hare to document recent history, opens at London's National Theatre, J. Chris Westgate examines in this article Hare's Stuff Happens in a regional production in the United States, at Seattle's A Contemporary Theater in 2007. He tracks the emphasis placed on controversy during the advertising and marketing of the play, which stands in direct contrast to the response to the play, which was received with self-satisfaction rather than increased insight in this highly liberal city. From this contrast, he discusses the way that this production of Hare's play – and the play itself – fails to produce controversy because it never holds those actually attending US productions as accountable for the Iraq War. Controversy, then, becomes a marketing device rather than a way of challenging the status quo. J. Chris Westgate is Assistant Professor in English and Comparative Literature at California State University, Fullerton. He has recently edited an anthology of essays entitled Brecht, Broadway, and United States Theatre and has published articles in Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, and The Eugene O'Neill Review.
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RAE, PAUL. "Editorial: Joining the Conversation." Theatre Research International 41, no. 3 (October 2016): 197–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0307883316000389.
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In my previous editorial, I made reference to what Theresa Lillis and Mary Jane Curry call ‘literacy brokering’ amongst non-native speakers of English who seek to publish in anglophone academic journals. The term ‘literacy’ makes sense in the context, and, as I noted, the practice is hardly exclusive to those whose first language is not English. However, as Aoife Monks of Contemporary Theatre Review and I planned a New Scholars session on academic publishing for this year's annual conference of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR, with which this journal is affiliated), a supplementary way of thinking about academic knowledge production came to mind: as conversation. And it is a conversational mode that wends its way through the articles presented in this issue of Theatre Research International.
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Wiszniowska, Marta. "Historical bridge or cultural divide—English drama and theatre against contemporary Polish background." History of European Ideas 20, no. 1-3 (January 1995): 53–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0191-6599(95)92924-j.
Full textDissertations / Theses on the topic "Contemporary English theatre"
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Chavda, Mrunal Prabhudas. "Bharata's Natyashastra-based theatre analysis model : an experiment on British South Asian and contemporary Indian theatre in English." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/17577.
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This thesis tests a newly developed model based on the Natyashastra, an Indian treatise on performing arts, and uses this for theatrical analysis in the contexts of British Asian theatre productions and contemporary Indian theatre in English. The study offers a tool that can provide an alternative model of analysis. By extending the existing analytical models, we can ask questions concerning the actors’ emotional manifestation and their mental state while acting. This thesis attempts to interpret the actors’ gestures and provides a structure to analyse them. In order to do that, this project uses the Natyashastra and rasa/bhava concepts as performance analysis tools, which might provide an alternate perspective to theatre analysis. The thesis reviews existing models of theatrical analysis and argues for an alternative model in Chapter One. It examines the analysis of theatre productions by scholars of British Asian theatre and contemporary Indian theatre in English in Chapter Two. Here, I review the ways in which scholars of British South Asian theatre have examined theatrical productions so far. Chapter Three tests the proposed model on four theatre productions, illustrating the ways in which theatre productions could be analysed, and identifies the model’s limitations and advantages. Chapter Four discusses findings in the light of the results analysed in Chapter Three; it also outlines some questions which needs further investigation. By doing so, this thesis contributes to the field of performance analysis and theatre studies by developing strong links between the manifestation of the actors’ bodymind, the directors' reception after their first reading of a play’s text, and playwrights’ initial emotions within the text, through production analysis.
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Shade, Ruth. "'Welsh assemblies' : the phenomenon of contemporary, professional, English language theatre practice in Wales." Thesis, University of Wolverhampton, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.299922.
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The academic study of English-language theatre in Wales as a discrete subject is a relatively small field. Indeed, only three books on Welsh theatre have been published during the 1990s. Moreover, there are those who would argue that the idea of a differentiated Welsh, English-language theatre is an oxymoron. English-language theatre in Wales shares a linguistic mode of communication with England's theatre and a problem is that it resembles the formal properties contained within its larger neighbour's theatre practices to the point where disaggregation might seem a forlorn objective. The stress on language, however, ignores the fundamental significance of issues of class, political orientation and socio-cultural complexion, which is where important definitions of the identity of Welsh theatre can be found. Wales is a different country and therefore we might expect it to manifest distinctive theatre practices. But the procedures employed by the Arts Council have the effect of standardising professional theatre and of discouraging the development of critical thinking, which disqualifies many of the distinguishing characteristics of English-language, Welsh theatre. This is particularly evident in those performance practices which emanate from a working-class lived experience. The Arts Council's method of organisation can be described as a process of incorporation. This thesis responds to the situation by investigating the relationship between the Arts Council's disciplinary procedures, which determine incorporation, the promotion of normalised English theatre and the marginalisation of Welsh, working-class theatre practices. The problem of Welsh theatre is depicted here as contingent on the dissemination of English concepts of high standards, which is central to the post-war Arts Council project. Thus, the main argument revolves around the idea that the notion of theatre in Wales is manipulated by an external agency. Part One of the thesis marshals concepts about power which can explain hegemonic, or dominant, cultural structures. It includes specific reference to theories advanced by Raymond Williams, Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said. In the second part, the argument progresses through the presentation of research about the disciplinary procedures of the Arts Council as they impact on theatre forms. It also examines the standardisation of theatre practices in the UK, as a whole, and the position of Welsh theatre in that context. Finally, it addresses the status of theatre practices in an archetypal area of the south Wales Valleys, through a micro-analysis of Aberdare and its immediate environs.
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Ingham, Michael Anthony. "Theatre of storytelling : the prose fiction stage adaptation as social allegory in contemporary British drama /." Thesis, Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1998. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B20275961.
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Breedlove, Allegra B. "Hamlet #PRINCEOFDENMARK: Exploring Gender and Technology through a Contemporary Feminist Re-Interpretation Of Hamlet." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/667.
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Idrissi, Nizar. "Stephen Poliakoff: another icon of contemporary British drama." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210559.
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This thesis is an attempt to portray the birth of British modern drama and the most important figures breaking its new ground; more to the point, to shed light on the second generation of British dramatists breaking what G.B. Shaw used to call ‘middle-class morality’. The focal point here is fixed on Stephen Poliakoff, one of the distinctive dramatists in contemporary British theatre, his work and the dramatic tinge he adds to the new drama.Doctorat en Langues et lettres
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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Haxton, Robert Peter. "Refusal and rupture as a postdramatic revolt : an analysis of selected South African contemporary devised performances with particular focus on works by First Physical Theatre Company and the Rhodes University Drama Department." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015671.
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This mini-thesis investigates the concepts of refusal and rupture as a postdramatic revolt and how these terms can be applied and read within the context of analysing contemporary devised performance in South Africa. The argument focuses on the efficacy of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s postdramatic terminology and the potential of its use in an appreciation of contemporary performance analysis. I investigate the potential in South African contemporary devised performance practice to challenge prevailing modes of traditional dramatic expectation in order to restore the experience of discovery and questioning in the spectator. This research is approached through a qualitative process which entails a reading and application of selected critical texts to the analysis with an application of Lehmann’s terminology. This reading/application is engaged in a dialogue with the interpretative and experiential aspects of selected South African devised performances with particular focus on four cross-disciplinary works selected for analysis. Chapter One functions as an introduction to the concept of postdramatic theatre and the application of the terms refusal and rupture as deconstructive keywords in the process of a devised performance. Chapter Two is an analysis of several South African contemporary performances with particular focus on Body of Evidence (2009) by Siwela Sonke Dance Company, Wreckage (2011) a collaboration by Ubom! Eastern Cape Drama Company and First Physical Theatre Company, Discharge (2012) by First Physical Theatre Company, and Drifting (2013) by The Rhodes University Drama Department. This mini-thesis concludes with the idea that with an understanding of refusal and rupture in a postdramatic revolt, contemporary devised performance achieves an awakening in its spectators by deconstructing the expectation of understanding and the need for resolve; the assumption and need for traditional dramatic structures and rules are challenged. Instead, it awakes an experience of discovery and questioning.
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Pasquet, Laetitia. "Le rire de l’horreur sur la scène anglaise contemporaine : vers une nouvelle poétique de la comédie ?" Thesis, Paris 4, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013PA040087.
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Paradoxal, le rire de l’horreur constitue cependant une donnée majeure de l’expérience théâtrale contemporaine. Il procède d’une mutation du comique qui en vient à exprimer la violence au lieu de l’édulcorer. Sur la scène anglaise d’après l’abolition de la censure (1968), le comique se fait miroir des angoisses de la société et l’horreur, mise en scène de façon de plus en plus naturaliste, fait rire le public tout en suscitant un profond malaise qui interroge la position du spectateur. Mais, dans un mouvement inverse et encore plus dérangeant parce qu’insidieux, l’humour se fait aussi vecteur d’effroi quand l’horreur est tue ou euphémisée, renvoyant alors au public une interrogation profondément éthique sur l’humanité de son rire. Ces mutations esthétiques s’insèrent dans une profonde déstabilisation de la nature même de la comédie et de son idéologie optimiste et humaniste : si certains sous-genres (la farce, la comedy of manners, la city comedy, la parodie) représentent volontiers des situations horribles, la comédie est structurellement défigurée quand elle incorpore une ontologie horrible, quand sa forme n’implique plus le progrès mais l’arbitraire et quand son dénouement se fait explicitement dissonant. L’horreur, défigurant de manière ludique la forme de la comédie, devient un principe poétique qui renouvelle le genre, et en particulier les archétypes comiques inoffensifs pour les rendre terribles. Car c’est à l’aune de la tragédie défaillante que se refonde la comédie et le rire s’y étouffe, lesté d’une conscience du tragique soulignée par la culpabilité inhérente à de nombreux éclats de rire, mais surtout par la dérision des valeurs tragiques et la relativisation de l’absolu dans l’humour. Dans ces conditions, le rire devient un moyen d’accéder à la puissance des émotions tragiques, et la catharsis se redéfinit, s’éloignant de la traditionnelle purification des passions pour devenir une réintensification de leur pouvoir humanisantParadoxical as it may be, laughing at horror is a major feature of the contemporary theatrical experience. It emerges from a shift in the comic mode which now expresses violence instead of muffling it. In the aftermath of the abolition of censorship in the United Kingdom (1968), this comic mode has held a mirror up to society’s fears and horror has been staged in a more and more naturalistic way, so as to make the audience laugh while unsettling them, questioning the very position of the spectators. However, in a converse and even more disturbing way, humour has become a way to appal them, subduing horror instead of underlining it and thereby deeply questioning them on the humanity of laughter. Those aesthetic shifts take part in a general process of undermining comedy’s humanistic optimistic ideology; even though some subgenres (namely farce, city comedy, comedy of manners or parody) easily stage horrible scenes, comedy is structurally defaced when it includes an ontology of horror, when its shape does not express progress but arbitrariness and when its ending is explicitly unhappy. Playing on the structure of comedy to the point of defacing it, horror becomes a poetic principle that renews the genre and especially the comic archetypes, making them dreadful instead of harmless. It is indeed tragedy’s failure that becomes the measure of this renewal of comedy, as laughter gets stifled by the tragic consciousness that tinges many laughs with guilt, caused by the way tragic values are ridiculed and tragic absoluteness belittled by humour. In those conditions, laughing turns into a means for the spectator to surreptitiously feel the power of tragic emotions; the experience redefines catharsis, no longer a purification of emotions but a new way to reach their humanising power
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Prudhon, Déborah. "Entre réel et fiction : les nouveaux théâtres anglais contemporains." Thesis, Sorbonne université, 2020. http://accesdistant.sorbonne-universite.fr/login?url=http://theses.paris-sorbonne.fr/2020SORUL093.pdf.
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Notre société contemporaine est à la fois qualifiée de « nouvel âge de la fiction » (Anne Besson) et caractérisée par une « faim de réalité » (David Shields). En quoi cette tension contradictoire se reflète-t-elle sur la scène théâtrale, lieu par excellence de cohabitation féconde du réel et du fictionnel ? L’analyse s’articule autour de trois « nouveaux » théâtres de la scène contemporaine anglaise qui permettent, à travers des formes et modalités qui leur sont propres, de repenser le lien entre l’univers de fiction et la réalité extrathéâtrale. Le théâtre verbatim importe sur sa scène les paroles de personnes « réelles ». Le théâtre performatif de Tim Crouch joue avec les cadres réels et fictionnels pour venir troubler la distinction entre l’« ici et maintenant » partagé par les acteurs et les spectateurs, et les différents lieux et temporalités de la fiction qui s’y superposent. Quant aux spectacles de la compagnie Punchdrunk, figure de proue du théâtre immersif, ils débordent du cadre de la scène pour investir un espace immense – une véritable « fiction-monde » que le public est invité à explorer à sa guise. Cette thèse vise ainsi à montrer en quoi la tension fondamentale entre réalité et fiction qu’explorent ces divers dispositifs théâtraux refonde les codes esthétiques et dramaturgiques de la scène contemporaine anglaise et vient bousculer les paradigmes de réception conventionnelsThe society we live in is both described as a “new age of fiction” (Anne Besson) and characterised by a “reality hunger” (David Shields). How is this conflicting tension reflected on the theatre stage, the place par excellence where reality and fiction coexist? This analysis focuses on three “new” theatres of the contemporary English stage which allow us, through their own forms and modalities, to consider anew the relationship between the fictional world and the extratheatrical reality. Verbatim theatre imports the words of “real” people onto its stage. Tim Crouch’s performative theatre plays with real and fictional frameworks in order to blur the distinction between the “here and now” that actors and spectators share, and the fictional “there and then” that is superimposed onto it. As for the shows by Punchdrunk, the figurehead company of immersive theatre, they go beyond the limits of the stage and spread out into huge spaces – a world-fiction that the audience is invited to inhabit and explore as they please. This thesis seeks to show how the fundamental tension between reality and fiction explored by these various theatres takes the aesthetic and dramaturgical codes of the contemporary English stage in a new direction and disrupts the traditional paradigms of spectatorship
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Kingston, Talya Anne. "The dramaturgy of dialect an examination of the sociolinguistic problems faced when producing contemporary British plays in the United States /." Connect to this title online, 2008. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/105/.
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Midhin, Majeed Mohammed. "The artist as a dramatic character in contemporary British drama : a critical study of Stoppard, Barker and Wertenbaker." Thesis, University of Essex, 2017. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/20011/.
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The focus of this dissertation is the representation of the artist as a character in British theatre. In this study, which includes three chapters and one introductory chapter, I attempt to show that British playwrights, whether male or female, use their main fictional characters as artists either for self-reflexivity or to comment on the situation of being an artist. In accordance with the above premise, the responsibility of the artist and the function of art is investigated with due reference to radical thinkers, philosophers and writers such as, among others, Immanuel Kant, Oscar Wilde, Georg Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Viktor Shklovsky, Bertolt Brecht and Jean-Paul Sartre. This investigation concentrates on the conceptualization and contribution of those intellectuals to the definition of the role of the artist. Though I focus mainly on the period from the 1970s to the 2000s onwards, by analysing the dramatic texts of three British playwrights: Tom Stoppard, Howard Barker, and Timberlake Wertenbaker, I also discuss the decade following John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956). In this manner, I trace the key changes that have taken place in British theatre during the second half of the 20th century. Though there is an abundance of critical material on the subject which focuses on the figure of the artist to show self-referral for the dramatist, the present thesis goes beyond that to highlight the role and responsibility of the artist in British theatre, the function of art, the potential dilemmas he or she may confront and the economic and political circumstances surrounding them. The plays examined in this thesis range from those depicting the problematic role of the artist as an intellectual, who is torn between morality and immorality, as in Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase (1972) and Travesties (1974), to those which reject the utilitarian function of art, for example Barker’s No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming (1981) and Scenes from an Execution (1984). In the case of Wertenbaker, I highlight the role and dilemmas of female artists as they use theatre as a means to show the hegemonic political and economic constraints imposed on their artistic creativity. By analysing several of Wertenbaker’s plays which centre on the use of the artist as a character, her Three Birds Alighting on a Field (1991) and The Line (2009), reflect the relationship between male and female artists and the dilemmas they faced. This thesis poses the following questions: as a fictional character, how can the artist function as a member of a certain community whilst at the same time retain the distinctiveness of his or her role as an outsider? Is he or she committed to the creative work or to the social usefulness of society? If so, can we expect art or the artist to have the answer to society’s problems? Or is that an overly high expectation to place on the artist? How did artists feel living in a society under censorship? How can they avoid being censored? And if they failed, what is the price of free expression? Springing from the discussion about the dilemmas of the artist in British theatre, it will become apparent how these dilemmas, represented by fictional characters, bring forth the dominant plays about artists. Within the framework of the above mentioned playwrights, it is demonstrated that the pressing dilemma which radical artists are faced with nowadays are multiple: social, commercial and political.
Books on the topic "Contemporary English theatre"
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Jordan, Eamonn. Dissident dramaturgies: Contemporary Irish theatre. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010.
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Dissident dramaturgies: Contemporary Irish theatre. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010.
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Bradbury, Jim. Shakespeare and his theatre: Illustrated from contemporary sources. 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman, 1990.
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Olu, Obafemi. Contemporary Nigerian theatre: Cultural heritage and social vision. Lagos: Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), 2001.
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Contemporary Nigerian theatre: Cultural heritage and social vision. Bayreuth, Germany: Bayreuth University, 1996.
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Stage right: Crisis and recovery in British contemporary mainstream theatre. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
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Bull, John. Stage right: Crisis and recovery in British contemporary mainstream theatre. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1994.
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Sacred play: Soul-journeys in contemporary Irish theatre. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2004.
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The girls in the big picture: Gender in contemporary Ulster theatre. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2003.
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Immigration and contemporary theatre in Britain: Finding a home on the stage. New York: Peter Lang, 2012.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Contemporary English theatre"
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Saunders, Graham. "Kicking Tots and Revolutionary Trots: The English Stage Company Young People’s Theatre Scheme 1969–70." In Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre, 190–206. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137297570_11.
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"REPERFORMED TRADITIONS: INDIAN THEATRE AND ITS CONTEMPORARY AVATARS." In Performance and Performativity in Contemporary Indian Fiction in English, 105–22. Brill | Rodopi, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004292604_006.
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Starks, Lisa S. "Introduction: Representing “Ovids” on the Early Modern English Stage." In Ovid and Adaptation in Early Modern English Theatre, 1–18. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430067.003.0001.
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This introduction explains the overall critical framework of the collection and provides a brief overview of the book’s topics and goals. In so doing, it explores Ovid on the early modern stage; the interconnections between Ovid, the classical concept of imitatio, and contemporary adaptation theory; the relationship between classical reception studies and adaptation theory; the interplay between Ovid and Shakespeare adaptation/appropriation studies. Following this discussion, the introduction describes the organizational structure and rationale of the book and previews the chapters, noting how sections and chapters relate to each other.
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Marlowe, Zoe, and Abdullah Coşkun. "A Professional Development Program Proposal for English Language Teachers." In Enriching Teaching and Learning Environments With Contemporary Technologies, 85–101. IGI Global, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-3383-3.ch005.
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As there is a need to enable English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers to use technology in their classes, this study aims to propose an online in-service teacher training program aiming to prepare EFL teachers in Turkey to use Google Classroom and Piktochart. The planned training module is provided on a virtual online platform known as Second Life (SL). Included in the technology training, there would be an introductory session in which the instructor could ‘walk' the participants through the particulars of operating their virtual selves, as in their ‘avatars'. The course itself could commence with a short tour of the virtual sim being used for the training sessions. Immediately following the introduction, attending avatars and the instructor would congregate in the theatre area sim of the VSTE Island conference venue in-world at SL. The instructor, addressing the participants from the virtual stage, would present according to the agenda of showcasing the possible uses of the online software packages followed by step-by-step procedural instructions for the attendees to follow.
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Oppitz-Trotman, George. "Epilogue." In Stages of Loss, 242–62. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198858805.003.0007.
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The reception of the English Comedians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is connected to their representation in modern theatre histories by ideations of travelling theatre in Enlightenment theatre projects. Theatre-historical chronicles began to be written in the second half of the eighteenth century, by which time there was already a vocabulary for itinerant theatre ready to be applied to the English Comedians in order to understand their effect on national dramatic culture. Setting these relations next to the development of Theaterwissenschaft out of philology in early twentieth-century German universities, this concluding chapter reflects on the influence of disciplinary structure upon the investigation of controversial historical phenomena. Various sorts of patriotism and methodologism have distorted the comprehension of the itinerant theatre and concealed its involvement in the generation of dramatic art. The contemporary crisis within the discipline of theatre history is explained with reference to the underestimation of theatre professionalization, which was a profound discontinuity in the history of Western culture.
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Starks, Lisa S. "Ovid’s Ghosts: Lovesickness, Theatricality, and Ovidian Spectrality on the Early Modern English Stage." In Ovid and Adaptation in Early Modern English Theatre, 95–112. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430067.003.0006.
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This chapter applies Maurizio Calbi’s concept of Shakespeare’s contemporary spectrality, based on Derridean “hauntology,” to Ovid in the early modern era. It explores Ovid as an icon of lovesickness and theatricality, with interconnections between these terms, in early modern representations of and debates on the theatrical experience itself. The chapter moves from the height of Ovidian theatre to its shadowy afterlife – focusing primarily on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Jonson’s Poetaster, and the obscure interregnum closet drama Ovids Ghost – to explore the uncanny returns of spectral Ovids in related discourses concerning metamorphic illusion and the “self-shattering effects of painful love.”
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Oppitz-Trotman, George. "Bare Facts, Endless Tragedies." In The Origins of English Revenge Tragedy, 204–20. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474441711.003.0007.
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Turning first to the classic revenge play sansrevenger, Arden of Faversham, this concluding chapter considers how this book’s findings bear on strongly held assumptions concerning the way concepts and categories relate to tragic works and their literary or theatrical afterlives.It is uncertain whether or not such works attain to ‘tragedy’ itself, or whether they prove incapable of it – but ‘metatheatre’ is a troublesome substitute. ‘Metatheatre’ is one of the most ubiquitous and influential concepts in contemporary study of (early modern) drama, yet the term’s origins and implications are very poorly understood. It conceals a host of naïve assumptions about the history and purpose of theatre, but survives precisely because its inadequacy reflects the confusion provoked by the figurative experiments identified for the first time by this book.
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Oppitz-Trotman, George. "Servants." In The Origins of English Revenge Tragedy, 126–63. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474441711.003.0005.
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Servants in early modern drama have increasingly been investigated less as objects of domination than as subjects capable of affective and ethical relations with their masters. Both sorts of interpretation depend upon the assumption that actual early modern servants are straightforwardly represented in drama of the time. Observing that common players were themselves patronised and liveried servants, and that the theatre itself appeared as a form of mercenary service, this chapter shows how procedures of dramatic figuration implicate identification of the servant in a complex dialectic of discernment. With roots in various sorts of contemporary social anxiety, such difficulties are at their most intense in revenge tragedy. In many places reading revenge plays involves confronting their ability to undo the social concepts used to grasp their historical content.
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Anno, Mariko. "The Continuity of Tradition Today." In Piercing the Structure of Tradition, 147–90. Cornell University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781939161079.003.0006.
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This chapter assesses the degree of continuity of the nohkan that is illustrated in three contemporary Noh play adaptations of William Butler Yeats's At the Hawk's Well by nohkan performers of the Issō School. It looks at interviews conducted with nohkan performers and a composer. It also highlights the nohkan's traditional role in contemporary and English-language Noh that allows variations and embellishments by performers, which demonstrate musical continuity in the context of experimentation. The chapter discusses a number of shinsaku Noh that have been successful and performed more frequently. It describes the performance of Yokomichi Mario's Taka no Izumi and Takahime, including the English-language Noh production of At the Hawk's Well by Theatre Nohgaku.
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Hutson, Lorna. "The Play in the Mind’s Eye." In The Places of Early Modern Criticism, 97–111. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198834687.003.0007.
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Anglophone criticism of English Renaissance drama largely assumes the irrelevance of sixteenth-century continental critical debates on how to achieve verisimilitude. This chapter argues that English dramatists’ rejection of the Aristotelian unities was not in itself a solution to the problems of making theatre imaginatively compelling: all the challenges discussed by Italian critics were also challenges for English dramatists. Their plays manipulate what we might call the ‘unscene’, whereby the audience infers and imagines characters’ past histories, motives, offstage locations, and inner lives. Shakespeare and other dramatists invite us to supplement and make sense of what we actually see onstage by their use of the topics of ‘circumstance’: topics of time, place, cause, and manner which, in the period’s rhetorical and dialectical traditions, were used to give narratives and descriptions an imaginative liveliness known as enargeia or evidentia. This account is supported by the contemporary critical witness of William Scott.