British theatre

La première pièce de Joanna Laurens, The Three Birds, (2000) propose une révision dramatique du mythe grec de Philomèle qui s’inscrit en contrepoint de la fable telle qu’elle est relatée dans les Métamorphoses d’Ovide. Le rapport à la langue et à la figure du barbare, paradigme de l’Autre, engage une réflexion sur la question des minorités, la voix de l’étranger et l’idée d’une réversibilité des postures. Barbarismes, irrégularités syntaxiques, « babélisation » font ici violence au langage ainsi qu’aux différentes langues parlées dans la pièce qui s’altèrent et se barbarisent à l’image des personnages, incarnant ainsi dans la chair du verbe la mutilation de la langue qui fait la matière cruelle du mythe. Au cœur de la pièce, elle-même réécriture d’une autre pièce – celle, perdue, du Térée de Sophocle – on retrouve en effet l’écriture d’une autre scène – celle, tabou, du viol et de l’amputation de la langue de Philomèle – qui, à défaut de pouvoir se dire, vient s’écrire sur la tapisserie que brode la jeune fille à l’attention de sa sœur pour révéler le crime étouffé par les mensonges en cascades de Térée en même temps qu’elle se reflète dans la trituration du langage. Cet article s’intéressera donc aux enjeux de la réécriture en tant que mise en place d’une alternative fondamentale à partir d’une perspective neuve – celle du barbare amoureux, ou plutôt de la barbarie de l’amour impossible – qui se reflète dans le motif intradiégétique de l’activité de tissage en tant qu’écriture de « l’Autre » (réécriture par l’Autre, la femme, de l’autre scène ou de l’autre pièce, qui ne peut être dite). Avec la duplicité intrinsèque du langage et l’exploration de son potentiel de transformation, nous verrons dès lors comment l’altérité se donne plutôt à voir comme altération, voire aliénation, jusqu’au creux de la langue où elle prend naissance pour la faire délirer (Deleuze). Le langage de la pièce reflète ainsi la façon dont l’humain vient faire trace dans la langue du barbare et montre comment, par-delà l’humanisation du Thrace, la barbarie vient à son tour réinvestir l’humain et marquer de son empreinte l’acte et le langage d’amour devenus viols. En déroulant à l’extrême le fil ténu qui sépare humanité et barbarie, les expérimentations poétiques de Laurens, où le langage et « l’autre » du langage se rencontrent dans leurs contradictions-mêmes, permettent ainsi de renouveler le sens du mythe grec autant que le langage dramatique sur la scène théâtrale à l’aube du vingt-et-unième siècle.

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Joanna Laurens’ first play The Three Birds (2000) is a retelling of the Greek myth of Philomela in which language undergoes a poetic treatment unprecedented on the contemporary British stage. Mirroring and enacting the characters’ evolution from innocence to barbarism, language is distorted and altered to an extreme through a creative process involving word coinage (i.e. barbarisms), syntactic irregularities, and ‘babelisation,’ thus bringing out and performing the violence of the myth. Departing from Ovid’s poem which is itself a reworking of the original fable, as well as from the feminist takes on the story during the second half of the twentieth century, Laurens’ dramatic writing offers a new approach to the language and figure of the Barbarian, a traditional paradigm of the Other. She addresses such issues as the oppression of minorities, the voice of the stranger, and the reversibility of ethical positions by providing a reflection on the intrinsic duplicity of language itself and by exploring its potential for ‘metamorphosis’ and manipulation, thus presenting otherness as alienation. At the core of the play, which is a rewriting of another (lost) tragedy – that of Sophocles’ Tereus –, are Tereus’ lies, which are a rewriting of another (taboo) story – that of Philomela’s rape and amputated tongue. Although it can’t be verbally expressed by the young woman, this traumatic episode is nonetheless revealed through a tapestry she weaves for her sister Procné to denounce the crime of the lying husband, the needlework compensating her lost voice. This article thus looks at the issues at stake in Laurens’ rewriting, which can be read as the Other of the Greek myth and its famous feminist interpretations. Not only does her play propose an alternative which stems from an unusual, profoundly humane perspective – the suffering of a man whose love is thwarted – but this reversal is also mirrored in the intradiegetic motif of the tapestry as a writing of the Other (the scene behind the scenes, unheard of) by the Other (the abused, silenced woman). I propose to study how the Other comes to be inscribed at the core of language where it takes shape, rendering it delirious (Deleuze), as humanity can be traced in the Barbarian and barbarism can in turn affect humanity beyond the figure of the Thracian. As the act and language of love are turned into linguistic abuse and physical rape, Laurens’ formal experimentations, where language and the Other of language meet at the crossroad of their own contradictions, allow for a renewal in the meaning of the Greek myth as well as in the dramatic language on the British stage at the start of the twenty-first century.

Why did marriage become central to the English novel in the eighteenth century? As clandestine weddings and the unruly culture that surrounded them began to threaten power and property, questions about where and how to marry became urgent matters of public debate. In 1753, in an unprecedented and controversial use of state power, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke mandated Anglican church weddings as marriage's only legal form. Resistance to his Marriage Act would fuel a new kind of realist marriage plot in England and help to produce political radicalism as we know it. Focussing on how major authors from Samuel Richardson to Jane Austen made church weddings a lynchpin of their fiction, The Origins of the English Marriage Plot offers a truly innovative account of the rise of the novel by telling the story of the English marriage plot's engagement with the most compelling political and social questions of its time.

This volume rests upon two premises: 1) That collective creation is pivotal to the evolution of the modern theatre; and 2) That women have been central to the emergence and development of collective creation.
    Though written to be read as a self-contained work, Women, Collective Creation, and Devised Performance is in fact the third volume in an ongoing body of research into collective creation and devising practices from 1900 to the present. Our two previous studies, A History of Collective Creation and Collective 
Creation in Contemporary Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), argued that modern collective theatre-making praxis may be best understood as an ongoing, resistant tradition emerging, in its European and North American contexts, circa 1900 and running throughout the twentieth century and on into present-day devising practices. Our goal at the inception of this body of work had been to contest the broadly accepted view of collective creation as a minor phenomenon peculiar to the New Left political theatre of the 1960s and ’70s, associated in the main with developments in the United States, Canada, Quebec, and England (and to a lesser extent, France).  Working in collaboration with an international team of scholars, we sought to elucidate the aesthetic, processual, and political links between theatrical devising in the contemporary period, collective creation practices of the ’60s and ’70s, and pre-war experiments in collaborative theatre-making—and to do so from an internationalist perspective.  In so doing, we worked to draw out both resemblances and divergences in collective practice, and in the aesthetic, social, and/or political impulses underpinning those practices, in their particular cultural and historical contexts.
    This new volume seeks to deepen that historicization, by investigating the centrality of women to the development of collective and devised theatre-making in the modern and contemporary period. Our project is two-fold: to historicize the enormous, ongoing contribution of women to collective creation; and to investigate questions about the relationship between gender and collaborative process, authority, authorship, and attribution.
    Women must be credited with a central, foundational, and continued role in the development and transmission of practices of collective and devised theatre-making since the start of the twentieth century.  A cursory scan of a few prominent names in North America and Europe hints at the consideration women demand in the history of collective performance praxis: directors such as Joan Littlewood, Judith Malina, Ariane Mnouchkine, Elizabeth LeComte, Tina Landau, Anne Bogart, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne Akalaitis, Lin Hixson, and Julia Varley; pioneering teachers such as Viola Spolin, Suzanne Bing, Rena Mirecka, and Roberta Carreri; companies and networks such as Lilith, WOW Cafe, At the Foot of the Mountain, Spiderwoman Theater, Guerilla Girls, Omaha Magic Theatre, Split Britches, SITI Company, Nightwood Theatre, Théâtre Expérimental des Femmes, The Magdalena Project, FEMEN, and Pussy Riot; choreographers such as Anna Halprin, Yvonne Rainer, Aileen Passloff, Trisha Brown, and Mary Overlie; playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Helene Cixous, Deb Margolin, Muriel Miguel, and Megan Terry.  And yet, the deep engagement of women in collectively generated performance has been grossly under-historicized.
    This volume traces a sprawling lineage, revealing a hitherto unacknowledged web of transmission—connecting, by way of example, the educational play movement spearheaded by such reformers as Dr. Maria Montessori in Italy, Margaret Naumberg in New York, and Neva Boyd of Chicago’s Hull-House, to the theatrical devising pedagogies of Suzanne Bing in 1920s’ France and Viola Spolin in 1930s’ Chicago, to the collective practices of (among others) Théâtre du Soleil and the Living Theatre in the 1960s, to the nomadic performances of the women of the Odin Teatret in 1980s’ Europe, to Pussy Riot’s recent protests in Russia.  In doing so, the book further elucidates a history of modern theatre begun in our previous volumes, in which the seemingly marginal and disparate practices of collective creation are revealed as central, and women practitioners further revealed as primary progenitors, renovators, stewards, and disseminators of these practices.  The history of the modern theatre is a history of collaborative methods and the history of collaborative methods is a women’s history.

An examination of the relationship between theatre and film that focuses on the work of figures associated with the postwar British theatre but whose film work was often understood in terms of horror. In particular, it examines the ways in which their work was understood as shocking audiences through a confrontation with repressed materials and as narratively staging conflicts between protagonists that represent conflicting ideas. In other words, these stories were often understood as staging battles between characters that sought to assert domination and control over their adversaries, battles that often featured psychological cruelty and destructiveness.

In this book, she deals with the violence types expressed in the British theatre in the second half of the twentieth century. The study contains nine plays by eight notable British playwrights. These plays are Look Back in Anger, The Birthday Party, Entertaining Mr Sloane, Saved, Vinegar Tom, Plenty, Blasted, Shopping and Fucking, and Cleansedin chronological order. Besides, some information about post-war British theatre and violence are presented in this work as well.

This article attempts to discuss the reflections of Shakespeare’s tragic world view which is present even in his most mirthful and funniest comedies, such as Much Ado About Nothing. This attitude of the playwright will be examined with regard to the structural codification, which is based on binary oppositions. The play seems to be constructed on a highly contrived sign system which operates on very different scales of comparisons including the settings, the pairs of characters and the two subplots. This system makes it easier for the reader to get the deep meaning lying beneath the surface structure: many idealized values prove to be shallow or replaced. In this respect, no matter how much the play conforms to the mechanism of a comedy in Shakespearean sense in terms of its technical applications; as the events develop, the play reaches the threshold of being a problem play with its ending that stands out as problematic. While offering temporary solutions to the matters, the playwright prompts the reader to ask: How can we reconcile with that ending? Is this a really happy end? Thus, this paper not only explores the ways in which this laughing comedy is becoming a problem play but it also argues that Shakespeare’s writings blend the public issues of his time with that of the private, highlighting the notions of degeneration, superficiality and humanism.

This paper figures the new principle for British modern theatre in particular, in the frame of ‘post-traumatic’ history which will free all repressed traumas of history and community that is neglected by them, and be taken back to them with inherent violence of their images. Last decade of 20th century began with the harsh and brutal performances of the group of opposing young directors whom had a problem with their generation. Categorizing them in the same group, Aleks Sierz named them ‘in-yer-face theatre’. This much of violence on the stage exemplified deep traumas which were buried in the traumatic history. Sarah Kane one of the main figures of this group fulfilled the aim of political theatre by the process I borrowed from recent psychoanalytic researches. She wrote her fifth and last play, ‘4.48 psychoses’, just before her suicide in 1999. Mentioning reinterpretation of traumas after the mid 20th century, I focus on Judith Herman and Cathy Caruth’s surveys, as the members of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) studies. This group has posed new definition for traumatic dreams and memories by devising the term ‘traumatic reenactment’. The victim who suffers from these kinds of dreams and memories is lack of drama. It seems part of him has died and everything has stood in that horrible moment which belongs to the past. In this sense, this singular possession by the past extends beyond the bounds of a marginal pathology and has become a central characteristic of the survivor experience of our time. Yet, what is particularly striking in this singular experience is that its insistent reenactments of the past do not simply serve as testimony to an event, but may also, paradoxically enough, bear witness to a past that was never fully experienced as it occurred. Curing these traumas, we both urgently demand historical experience. By reinterpretation of new tragedy in the frame of post-dramatic theatre we could access to a traumatic history. The relationship between community and individuals is inseparable and there will be the unity and tension simultaneously between them. By this relation the spectator acts as a witness and even victim since at the same time he was the observant of his own trauma and others too. So, the entire scene becomes traumatic reenactment of a singular traumatic event which has been fixed in the specific moment of past. By reenacting the past, each actor or spectator stays in the liminal state, as a ritual performance. This moment is the moment of pure consciousness. This will be happened by transgressing the boundaries between the Real and reality, as Jacque Lacan mentioned.  Thus, this will be the reborn of the new tragedy which is happened as a tension between two senses: terror/ need. As a result, in the explosion of the Real the missing memory is transformed to narrative language which moves both groups to the shared memory, and this is the aim of political theatre. ‘4.48 psychoses’ can be an appropriate scene for representing this kind of tragedy. 

Keywords: British theatre, tragedy, traumatic reenactment, Sarah Kane, 4.48 psychoses

published The Art of the Theatre in the summer of 1905. The book had been already published in Germany in June with the title Die Kunst des Theatres (edited and translated by Maurice Magnus, preface by Harry Kessler, Berlin and Leipzig, Seeman); the English edition (Edinburgh and London, Foulis) was published immediately after with an introduction by Craig himself and a preface by Graham Robertson. A Dutch edition followed in 1906, De kunst van het theatre (Amsterdam, S. L. Van Looy) with introductions by De Vos, Van Looy and Bauer, and then a non-authorized Russian edition. In 1911, the book became a section of the more extensive On the Art of the Theatre (London, Heinemann, 1911). First dialogue was added to the title of the section to distinguish it from another dialog found in the book, whose protagonists are the same, a director and a spectator, but whose subjects are different, resulting in a diptych of extraordinary importance. 1 The year of publication of The Art of the Theatre is significant, as we shall see, both for Craig's personal history and for the history of European theatre on which Craig's theories had an extraordinary impact, significantly shaping its future evolution. To cite only two events, 1905 was the year of Max Reinhardt's version of A Midsummer's Night Dream, and, in the same year, Stanislavski invited Meyerhold to direct the first of the studios that were to accompany the activity of the Moscow Art Theatre. Two very different events, but together they give a sense of the ferment that pervaded the European scene. Reinhardt's Dream sanctioned directing as an inventive and creative art and established the director's theatre as a feasible productive and artistic system while Meyerhold's workshop instead, was a sign of the need of the theatre to

The careers of Haddon Chambers and Gilbert Murray, two Australian playwrights who often obliquely meditated on Australia and Australianness in their plays, raise important questions about negotiating Australianness through both their playwriting and their performances in everyday life. Although Australia was only rarely their ostensible subject, it permeated much of their London based theatre work.

Indian English Writing witnesses host of prolific writers who made efforts to emancipate and ameliorate the conditions of subalterns, particularly women. Several aspects of feminism can be seen in these plays with women as subalterns. Today subalterns acquired a new meaning. The subalterns have become the focus of various English plays written by Indian writers and Girish Karnad evolved as a major writer who emulsified various aspects of Subaltern Literature. This article magnifies contemporary society as displayed in the novels of Girish Karnad with special reference to Yayati,Tuglaq, Hayavadana and Naga-Mandal: A Play with a Cobra which deals with gender bias of women's subjection in an orthodox, male dominated Indian society.

This dissertation focuses on the case study of the Theatres Trust, the national public advisory body for theatres in the UK.
It is written in collaboration with the Theatres Trust.
Reflecting upon its 40th anniversary, this niche study aims to constitute a pioneering academic research on the role, work and influence of this non-departmental advisory body since its inception in 1976.
As a statutory consultee, the Theatres Trust acts as a bridge between theatre operators and the worlds of planning, architecture and design.
This research paper provides a starting point of discussion for further potential research regarding a discreet public organisation aiming to protect theatre buildings and help British theatre to live and thrive.

This book is a complete and comprehensive projection of John Whiting as an absurdist playwright. It is a round and unvarnished story of a prodigious playwright who within a short span of his life, did much to outshine his contemporaries. His journey was not limited to stage and theatre. He also wrote for the films, television and even radio. The journey began with The Conditions of Agreement in 1946 and ended with The Devils in 1961. In between he wrote many landmark plays through which one can trace the evolutionary trajectory of a legend in the making who was a confluence of mind and mystery, love and revenge, sentimentality and blood lust. His plays are replete with sin and sleaze, callousness and collusion. This was because in Whiting, one also comes across the diminution of norms owning to ethical elasticity and dispensability of principles. In his plays the pathology of power is matched by the ethos of human failings as is exemplified by the rise and fall of Grandier in The Devils. Here the banality of power fails to keep distance between pretense and principles. Bereft of the romance of renewal and predictability, many of his plays end up on disjointed note in the best tradition of the theatre of the absurd. The playwright's obsession with pre-mediated violence creates a disconnect between storyline and characterization. In practically every one of his plays, Whiting creates a heady cocktail of fear, violence, loathing and paranoia and yet they make for a compelling reading. This book is a summary of my findings regarding John Whiting with terse comments on his qualities as an absurdist playwright. It has been my endeavor to assess him both as a literary figure and a playwright, wedded to the absurdist tradition. Since he was an absurdist playwright, it was natural that his plays lacked a coherent storyline, ended in confusion and suspense continued even after the play was over. In his play diverse characters operate in a tense atmosphere, benumbed by unexplained intensification of a near crisis situation, followed by the rejection of narrative continuity. Whiting has a strange phantasmagoric quality which produces dread and deception and his narratives remained soaked in violence and destruction, making death as the motif. Death in Whiting is unforeseen but chilling. None visualized that Jacob in No Why would end his life by committing suicide, or Rupert Forster in The Marching Song would swallow poison to end his life after a lot of prevarication. The killing of Stella and Paul Southman was equally unexpected. The killing of Grandier on flimsy evidence is death by conspiracy. The guilt or taint of death is both involuntary and ubiquitous. Whiting infuses in his plays the disquieting awareness of life drenched in involuntary violence. In Whiting, one comes across the anguish of freedom. It is freedom not only from inner chains but also from external boundaries. His ideas are novel and original. For him existence preceded essence. Freedom itself is an existential issue. Whiting's play embodies the existential conundrum of its main characters such as Forster, Jacob and Grandier. Freedom is an unmixed phenomenon. One cannot be sometimes free and sometimes bound in chains. Freedom is a holistic concept and cannot be enjoyed in parts. One is either entirely or always free. Whitings dwells upon the essential meaningfulness of freedom in human society but rues that true freedom is enjoyed only by the atheists because they are free from the captivity of God. Whiting's characters face the anguish of freedom which is mired in guilt and self-destruction as in the case of Rupert Forster who in the Marching Song is released from imprisonment only to face fresh trial. Dark comedy has a visible effect on some of Whiting's plays such as the Marching Song, No Why and The Devils. In these plays one finds cruelty concealed in comedy. Whiting's dark comedy is a study of assimilation of both comedy and tragedy which is enough to showcase the absurdity of human existence through disjointed dialogues and purposeless sequences. It rests on a sense of incongruity resulting in an interrelationship between scenes of hilarity and agony. The important thing is that his comedies are inoffensive and yet they display the dark shadows of a harsh fate. The dialogues and other linguistic devices employed by Whiting create an abiding dramatic effect. His dialogues are simple and straightforward. Whiting's plays are truly absurdist in content and style. Whiting deviated from the style of traditional drama which was more stereotyped than original. His drama was heterogeneous, earthy and fanciful which displayed indeterminacy and uncertainty and ended abruptly. He avoided patterned presentation of the traditional school and adopted the absurdist line of abruptness and unpredictability. Whiting also employed the devices of signs and sound to prove his point that language was half way between gesture and thought. This has been called wordless drama by Andrew K. Kennedy. Coming to statecraft, Whiting creates poetic images to show his horror for the prevailing poor human conditions. He uses the language of signs, not words. Terror and cruelty lie at the root of every spectacular scene in the plays of Whiting. His characters are sensitive and easily change to suit the situation in which they are trapped. He draws his characters from life to make them look natural and real. He is down to earth in every sense of the term.
Dr. Apeksha

Collective Creation in Contemporary Performance examines collective and devised theatre practices internationally--with emphasis on Russia, Europe, and North America--from the late 20th century, into the present. Building upon the authors’ previous work, A History of Collective Creation, this volume situates contemporary collective creation in a tradition which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and traces the aesthetic, social and political shifts that have marked this mode of theatre making, from mid-century manifestations as a theatrical expression of the New Left, to present-day devising practices.

Abstract
Thomas William Robertson (1829-1871), who is a Victorian playwright, made use of melodramatic techniques in his plays just like his contemporaries. The basic aim in melodramatic plays, which are marked by a tight plot structure, exaggerated characters and sensational events, is undoubtedly to move audience members emotionally. As an inevitable result of this aim, most playwrights attempted to make audiences be affected by the events in the play rather than showing an effort to reflect the realities of their time. Although in his plays Robertson embraced most of the techniques mentioned, he possessed a significant characteristic which differentiated him from most of his contemporaries; Robertson went beyond his time’s dramatic conventions and added realist and naturalist elements in his plays. In this respect, it can be said that Robertson’s plays carried the quality of being a bridge between Victorian theatre and realist theatre. The aim of this study is to investigate Robertson’s theatre career and the novelties he brought to Victorian theatre and to show how and to what extent he succeeded in being a precursor of British Realist Theatre in his play Caste written by the playwright in 1861.
Keywords: T. W. Robertson, Caste, Victorian theatre, melodramatic plays, British realist theatre

The aim of this study is to examine the theme lack of belongingness in Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Died. The couple, who are deprived of even the core knowledge like their own identity, cannot find a reason to hold on to life. Because they do not live in a world they have sense of belongingness. They are constantly struggle to understand what happens around them. In everything they are told, they try to find other meanings than what is said. Since the truth is not true for them. Eventually, it is determined that in the deficiency of such a vital need the characters have no chance to escape apart from the idealization of death.

The paper revolves around Anders Lustgaren’s play Lampedusa, performed at
Soho Theatre, London, in March 2015 and later on the Aldeburgh beach at High Tide
Festival in September 2015, when the migration crisis was at its peak together with the rise
of xenophobia and populism in Western countries. The play tackles issues such as mass
migration and financial crisis in Europe through the interwoven monologues of two
characters both representative of local and global contradictions: Stefano, a Sicilian
fisherman who lives in Lampedusa, and Denise, a white East Asian woman who collects
debts for a payday loan company. The paper offers a close reading of the ‘places’ and
‘spaces’ mentioned in the play suggesting how they contribute to map the ‘routes’ of global
crisis provoked by the politics of austerity and financial capitalism. It analyses the structure
of the play and the characterization of the two protagonists in order to unveil provocative
juxtapositions and frame the political engagement underlying Lustgarten’s new millennium
theatre. It contextualizes the play within the debates on global inequality and refers to
Ashcroft’s concept of ‘transnation’ as an interpretative key to the world of Lampedusa.

Full version of the review of the Sarah Kane Season at Sheffield Theatres written for Litro Magazine including reviews of Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis and Blasted. See in the post below for the shortened and edited version that appeared in their online magazine, 19th April 2015. The full version here was published on the 21st July 2015. Please click on the link to download it. http://www.litro.co.uk/2015/07/breath-and-light-new-directions-in-the-staging-of-sarah-kane/

Trilby (1895, Her Majesty's Theatre) is undoubtedly the most widely researched production by actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree in the academic world. Covered in depth by subjects as wide-ranging as English literature/language, history, religious studies, music, performance studies, linguistics and even medicine, the play and the novel offer no scant opportunities to academics of all disciplines. In this context it defines the existing status of work on Tree, fulfilling, in many respects, the function of a traditional literary review. Less explored, however, is the relevance of the play's costumes to contemporary dress for women, and the many and varied artistic and social points of reference from which inspiration arose. Trilby's attraction to modern scholars is probably largely due to its status as a cultural phenomenon. As Mary Titus puts it, the book raised "a chorus of national enthusiasm" with "living pictures" and recitals and, according to a certain Mr Mott, "A new town in Florida was named Trilby ... A new three dollar shoe was named the Trilby, and there were Trilby hams, Trilby sausages, and a Trilby hearth brush" (28). The play and novel also indirectly influenced the development of the "Trilby" hat, which appeared in the illustrations, and on stage, several times. Similar in shape to the fedora (also derived from a play - Victorien Sardou's 1882 Fédora), the trilby was made from felt and featured a narrow brim, often upturned at the front. It became widely available following Trilby's debut in April 1895 (Garden Theatre, New York), but despite its name had less influence on mainstream women's fashions than the fedora had a decade previously.

Teatr Complicite powstał trzydzieści lat temu w Londynie. Od tamtego czasu innowacyjne podejście jego twórców i członków do sztuki scenicznej pozwoliło mu zdobyć uznanie zarówno publiczności, jak i krytyków, często umieszczających Complicite w kategorii naczelnych przedstawicieli teatru fi zycznego. Aleks Sierz pisze o nich jako o "weteranach" tej odmiany teatru 1 , natomiast w oczach Murraya i Keefego stanowią oni "najznakomitszy i najbardziej oczywisty przykład teatru fi zycznego" nawiązującego do tradycji francuskiego mimu 2 . W czym tkwi tajemnica sukcesu Complicite? Wydaje się, że w tym, iż jego rozwój opiera się nie tylko na dynamicznym zespole, którego skład stale się zmienia, lecz także na całej koncepcji teatru głęboko zakorzenionego w ekspresji cielesnej. Jak często podkreślają sami jego twórcy, Complicite to jednak więcej niż teatr czysto fi zyczny. To wielość, interdyscyplinarność i różnorodność. To również kooperacja, współtwórstwo i współudział, jak sugeruje sama nazwa pochodząca od francuskiego słowa complicité i oznaczająca 'współsprawstwo, współuczestnictwo'.

This essay carries out a brief and yet thorough analysis on the relationship between Epic Theatre (Piscator and Brecht, with references to Szondi's work) and British Drama (with particular reference to Shelagh Delaney, Edward Bond and Sarah Kane). It is possible to see an evolution in this relationship: from a complete adhesion to Brecht's principles to the creation of a very large gap with the German author. This study is in Italian but can be translated, if asked.

An examination of the relationship between theatre and film that focuses on the work of figures associated with the post-war British theatre but whose film work was often understood in terms of horror. In particular, it examines the ways in which their work was understood as shocking audiences through a confrontation with repressed materials and as narratively staging conflicts between protagonists that represent conflicting ideas. In other words, these stories were often understood as staging battles between characters that sought to assert domination and control over their adversaries, battles that often featured psychological cruelty and destructiveness.

Sarah Kane: Queer Desires and Feminist Continuums contextualises the playwright's work in an explicitly feminist and queer theatre arena and extends it to an interdisciplinary arts context exploring dramaturgy and recent productions and also how her plays link to performance art, film and manga. Due 2025. Routledge Publishers.

These graceful fashions of early Georgian days are far removed from the most elegantly draped dresses of the twentieth century…[therefore] it is... almost impossible... that any serious attempt can be made to revive dresses of the early Georgian period without at the ...

T his article explor es r elations among three different eighteenth-century domains. The first I will call "the audible"; the second covers government censorship and the political structure underpinning it; and the third is literary culture. More specifically, I will examine the final phase of Henry Fielding's theatrical career as a key moment for literary culture's response to new governmental attempts to control audibility. My analysis will place Fielding's 1736-37 Haymarket stage sensation Pasquin: A Dramatick Satire on the Times alongside his little-known "Mum Budget" letter, an anonymous and ironical celebration of silence, published in the wake of the Walpole government's stage Licensing Act of 1737, which effectively closed down the Haymarket and other illegitimate theaters. Pasquin and "Mum Budget" belong to a short era of irregular eighteenth-century stage comedy in which irreverent humor and formal experiment were bound not just to cultural critique and political satire but also, and self-consciously, to audibility. Finally, so as to set my argument about literature, politics, and a regime of the audible into a context broad enough fully to suggest its possibilities, I will conclude by gesturing to William Wordsworth's innovative concept of sound, a concept that was also, arguably, a poetic practice. But why "the audible" precisely? The answer is because it is a very general notion that covers a set of subcategories whose relations are not fixed but, rather, are continually readjusted historically in response to shifting social forces. In fact, these subcategories are not distinct from one another, even if they do not neatly fold into one another either. For my interests, the most important such categories are sound, noise, music, voice, and speech. Of course, it might be said that all noise and all music are sounds. But not all sounds are noises or music, just as, for instance, all that is voiced is not spoken. This is particularly worth bearing in mind since one category of the

In the winter of 1903, actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree staged David Belasco and John Luther Long’s Japanese-themed melodrama The Darling of the Gods. Based on an original Japanese folk tale and set in the period of the samurai downfall, it told a story of the forbidden love between outlawed samurai, Kara, and naïve young princess, Yo-San. The plot seemed to contain all the elements necessary for an opulent melodrama but, as so often with Tree’s endeavours, its success was largely down to its stunning sets and costumes rather than great narrative finesse. Belasco and Long’s 1902 debut on Broadway secured the play’s popularity in New York, and was probably a useful tool for Tree and his team when constructing their version. However, the playwright’s opening run had the significant benefit of employing a Japanese designer on staff, illustrator Genjiro Yeto. His drawings and ideas were interpreted by artist Madame. E. S Freisinger into costume designs, and were declared “rich and gorgeous in colour” by The New York Times (21 November 1902). The credit for costume designs used in Tree’s production can be less confidently attributed, and the mystery surrounding their authorship is the focus of this article. It will also explore the corresponding aesthetic trends and cultural shifts connected to the artistic movement of Japonism, and the implications and complications that influence our reading of theatre design during this era.

The Three Birds, la première pièce de Joanna Laurens, propose une réécriture dramatique du mythe grec de Philomèle qui s’inscrit à certains égards en contrepoint de la fable telle qu’elle est relatée dans les Métamorphoses d’Ovide. En point de départ de la pièce comme du récit originel cependant, se trouve une traversée fondamentale : celle de la mer Égée, qui donne lieu à plusieurs va-et-vient entre Athènes, la polis normalement civilisée, et Thrace, la contrée barbare, en passant éventuellement par Aulis en Béotie. Si ce mouvement signe d’abord l’alliance des deux rois autrefois rivaux, Térée et Pandion, il marque bientôt le déracinement et finit par entraîner la perte de tous les personnages. D’une contrée à l’autre, d’un voyage à l’autre, les protagonistes et les objets circulent, les identités se troublent et se défont, les liens se brouillent et s’entachent. Une frontière de trop est franchie lorsque Térée commet l’irréparable en abusant de sa belle-sœur et en lui coupant la langue afin qu’elle ne révèle pas le viol, mais l’originalité de Laurens est d’avoir fait de Térée un homme transi d’amour pour Philomèle et mu par sa passion, et non un Thrace agi par ses origines barbares. C’est là que prend naissance la véritable traversée : celle d’une violence qui parcourt la pièce, initiatrice d’une barbarie qui passe entre les protagonistes, les imprègne tour à tour et décloisonne ainsi les catégories de genre, de race et de génération. Entre effets d’échos et jeux de miroir, elle transpire à travers les paroles et les actes des personnages, faisant se croiser les modalités de l’inhumain et du subhumain jusqu’à la transformation finale en oiseaux qui abolit ainsi une dernière frontière, celle qui sépare l’humanité barbare de la bestialité, l’exil donnant lieu à une « déterritorialisation absolue ». Cet article étudie la façon dont l’effondrement des repères enclenche ainsi un devenir-barbare contagieux qui se mue en « devenir-animal » (Deleuze). En prenant appui sur la citation d’Héraclite que Laurens place en épigraphe de sa pièce, « Panta rhei » (« Everything flows »), nous étudions comment la barbarie traverse les personnages, qu’elle emporte sur son passage comme un fleuve tumultueux le long duquel les postures éthiques se croisent, se renversent ou se superposent. De transferts en transformations, d’altérations en aliénations, il s’agira enfin de montrer comment cette porosité des frontières, voire leur abolition, affecte le langage dramatique et résulte en un croisement des genres.

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The Three Birds, Joanna Laurens’ debut play, is a retelling of the Greek myth of Philomela which departs, in some respects, from the ancient story as it is related in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. A dramatic starting point of the play as well as of the fable is the crossing of the Aegean sea, which remains a central dynamic as the characters come and go between Athens, the civilized polis, and Thrace, the barbarian country, passing by Aulis in Boeotia. Although it marks at first the alliance between the two formerly rival kings, Tereus and Pandion, it then reveals and accompanies the literal and figurative uprooting of all the characters, each of them becoming marginalized and being thrown into some form of exile. The protagonists and the objects of the play thus navigate from one place to another, and, from one journey to the other, identities become blurred and perspectives intersect. A line is crossed when Tereus rapes his sister-in-law and cuts her tongue to keep her from telling the truth, but Lauren’s original twist is to make Tereus deep in love with Philomela and driven by his passion, not a Thracian acting under the influence of his barbarian origins. This is where violence starts permeating the play, causing barbarism to cross over all the boundaries, passing through and impacting each character regardless of their race, sex and age. Echoes and mirror effects show how it pervades the words and actions of each protagonist until the categories of the inhuman and the subhuman meet into their final transformation into birds, breaking down the last boundary between human barbarity, the most extreme form of exile, and literal bestiality, the ultimate deterritorialization. This article looks at how the collapse of certain principles triggers a contagious becoming-barbarian which evolves into a ‘becoming-animal’ (Deleuze). Following the quote from Heraclitus ‘Panta rhei’ (‘Everything flows’) used by Laurens as epigraph to her play, I propose to see how barbarism goes from one character to another, making ethical postures interchangeable. From transfers to transformations and from alterations to alienation, I try to show how the permeability and vanishing of boundaries is expressed through the poetry of the dramatic language coined by Laurens, resulting in a crossing of genres.

“Mark Ravenhill’in Shopping and Fucking İsimli Oyununda Argo Kullanımının Önemi.” “Significance of the Use of Slang in Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking” published in a monthly literature journal in Turkish, HECE. Hece: Lisan-ı Erazil II, 14 (166). Ankara, October 2010. 113-16. Print.

Michel-Jean Sedaine fait partie des connaisseurs de Shakespeare, autant qu'on peut l'être au 18e siècle, et animé d'un véritable désir de renouvèlement et d'hybridation des genres. Mais son influence narrative esthétique et poétique reste discrète. Nous tenterons de circonscrire, d'analyser, voire de définir la nature véritable de ce shakespearianisme.

In  a career lasting over fifty years, director Michael Blakemore has enjoyed box office success, critical acclaim and long term, and fruitful, relationships with leading playwrights of the English speaking world. His approach to direction, which is grounded in self-effacement, means that his work is often under appreciated, but his dedication to nurturing new writing has had a very significant impact on the repertoire of the English speaking theatre.

This work closely analyses one in-yer-face play of each of the three most important British playwrights of the 1990s and 2000s under the light of trauma theory: Sarah Kane’s Blasted, Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and F***ing, and Philip Ridley’s Mercury Fur. These plays engage with the themes of trauma and social breakdown in catastrophic times. This study explores the cultural and personal trauma of the characters in a dystopian world in the context of the historical and cultural background of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century and in-yer-face theatre’s connection with the past dramatic forms. Under the guidance of Trauma theory and taking into consideration the effects of the historical and cultural background of Britain after World War II, this work attempts to show that in the plays under discussion dystopian and traumatic elements become more and more central.

Pain and Violence in Three Contemporary English Plays

Özlem Karadağ


ABSTRACT


This study purports to trace the use of violence and pain in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Edward Bond’s Lear, and Anthony Neilson’s Penetrator which are the important examples of the movements that arose in the second half of the twentieth century; the Theatre of the Absurd, Political Theatre and “in-yer-face” which is also called post-political theatre. With the application of theories on violence and pain, and under the light of the thoughts of nineteenth and twentieth century thinkers it is revealed that violence, contrary to older movements in drama, with the contribution of the historical background of the twentieth century, gets gradually visible on the stage, the relationships between characters are tense and full of frustration, and as well as making others suffer, the characters themselves are also the ones who suffer.

In May 1732, Handel’s Acis and Galatea was performed at London’s Little
Theater in the Haymarket. The 1718 masque was newly dubbed “An
English Pastoral Opera,” and newspapers touted that this first major
public performance was also “the first time it ever was performed in
a Theatrical Way.” There has been considerable scholarly discussion
about the “pirated” nature of this production and the mystery of its
genesis, but little attention has been paid to the aesthetic relationship
between Acis and the other English-language operas of this season.
Doing so provides not only a glimpse of Acis’s earliest public context,
but also hints why the backers of this production, whoever they may
have been, chose to turn Acis into the first Handelian “English Opera.”

Acis was one of six English operas in 1732-33. Four of them featured
the young Susanna Arne, called “Mrs. Cibber” after marriage. Cibber
is known to music historians as one of Handel’s oratorio singers, but
during her lifetime she was principally a celebrated actor. Like almost
all thespians of her day, Cibber specialized in a particular “line of
business.” After her death, an admirer would recall her greatest talent:
“Cibber, Sir, seemed to need and dispose of your tears from the delicacy
of her frame.” In the earliest phase of her career, Cibber specialized in
the damsel in distress. Winton Dean once dismissively referred to the
eighteenth century’s “morbid obsession with virginity,” and, indeed,
Cibber’s early roles almost always hinged upon the maintenance or
violation of this status.

Before she spoke a word in the theater, Cibber cultivated her theatrical
“line” in opera. The libretti of Cibber’s English-language operas of
the early 1730s present her characters in the same ways that spoken
plays later did. They allowed Cibber to cultivate a legible character
type that served her throughout her acting career, as well as a musical
specialization that Handel drew upon in later oratorios, and they
provide an interesting point of contact between spoken and musical
theatrical milieus.