Contemporary British Drama

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.

Ce travail s’intéresse à la poétique de la dissociation mise en œuvre par Helen Cooper dans sa pièce Three Women and a Piano Tuner (2004). Réunies pour mettre en commun leurs talents respectifs de compositrice, pianiste et productrice autour d’un projet de concert, les trois femmes de la pièce font émerger à la surface un trauma enfoui : en constant désaccord, Ella (figure de la mère), Liz (figure de l’amazone), et Beth (figure de la prostituée) matérialisent en réalité trois versions possibles du personnage unique mais intimement divisé d’Elisabeth, dont le fils possible est accordeur de piano. Dans cette pièce marquée par la prolifération du même – non pas idem, mais ipse – comme figure du clivage, où la métaphore musicale sert à évoquer le phénomène de dissonance cognitive, chacune incarne un mécanisme de défense spécifique en réaction à l’inceste subi à l’adolescence par la protagoniste. A la minimisation (Ella), au refoulement (Beth) et à l’exagération (Liz), s’articulent ainsi trois chemins de vie éventuels ou fantasmés mis en dialogue. Cette concurrence permet de dramatiser un conflit intérieur en quête de résolution, en mettant en scène les forces psychiques contradictoires, conscientes et inconscientes, qui animent ce personnage féminin, dont le choix ultime entre plusieurs options – garder l’enfant de l’inceste, le donner à adopter ou bien avorter – semble simultanément avoir déjà été fait et se reporter à l’infini. C’est autour de cette décision laissée hors du temps, qui se cristallise en creux sur la figure du fils reléguée en arrière-plan, dans l’espace du hors-scène, alors qu’il travaille sur l’instrument désaccordé, que s’élaborent les versions multiples du drame originel et d’un personnage féminin dissocié qui vise sa propre réconciliation. Redonnant symboliquement voix à un drame passé sous silence, le seul personnage masculin de la pièce illustre, par son travail, le patient processus de réparation du trauma, alors même que son existence à lui se révèle incertaine, terriblement « optionnelle ». Figure de hantise, l’accordeur de piano apparaît donc comme le maillon central qui à la fois œuvre à cette intime harmonie et l’empêche, invitant par ailleurs à réfléchir sur le processus d’écriture dramatique et le statut du personnage de théâtre, toujours en attente d’incarnation, jamais pleinement actualisé, suspendu entre la page et la scène. La métaphore musicale qui parcourt la pièce, depuis la présence en filigrane de l’accordeur jusqu’à la scène finale du concert, permet ainsi de travailler la figure du rhapsode conceptualisée par Jean-Pierre Sarrazac, qui traduit ici le travail de réintégration psychologique du Réel dans l’ordre Symbolique (Lacan). À la fin de la pièce, l’apparition de Harold, qui répète les gestes d’un père incestueux qu’il n’a pas connu, offre la vision d’un mimétisme impossible : cette coïncidence signifiante, ou « synchronicité » (Jung), évoque la dimension transgénérationnelle du trauma et laisse présager le retour du même. Elle renouvelle ainsi le sens du tragique sur la scène contemporaine en ouvrant l’espace du doute, des probabilités et du malaise. Dès lors, l’incertitude se donne comme la modalité ultime d’un réalisme traumatique de la scène qui, en interrogeant la vérité impossible du sujet, relocalise le drame de l’humain dans l’indéterminé, ce dont l’accordeur de piano, œuvrant dans l’ombre des dissonances, se fait l’image.

British political drama in the 1990s was observed to be concerned not only with the state of the nation but also with the global issues. The repercussions of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet states, the rise of the United States as the ultimate world power as well as the prevalence of the rightist politics at home were widely handled in the political plays of this period. In this decade, the boundaries between the Right and the Left appeared to be indistinct; therefore, British political drama, which was originally leftist, was assumed to be superannuated. Yet, the established political dramatists together with the new generation of playwrights continued writing politically, though in a different manner, and contributed a lot to the development of political drama. David Hare, one of the leading political playwrights, wrote The Absence of War in 1993 and questioned the very institution of leftist ideology in Britain, Labour Party. However, what Hare critically approached in the play was not leftism itself but the Labour's politics tainted by rightist values. Hence, though criticising the Labour and though writing in an age when ideologies were becoming steadily less effective, Hare preserved his leftist stance. Within this context, this study aims to display how Hare in The Absence of War queries and asks for the reformation of the conservative traces in Labour Party.

There is some hesitation in theatre scholarship to confront and engage with the resurgence of political theatre in the 21st century, despite the vast numbers of political plays that have been performed in a variety of genres on the British stage in the last decade. This article considers the rejuvenation of political theatre in the 21st century and focuses in particular on Caryl Churchill’s Far Away (2000), Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (2006) and Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza (2009). I argue that these plays rehabilitate explicit political comment for the stage as well as discover fresh theatrical languages to represent what are often familiar political narratives. The discussion borrows from the writings of Jacques Rancière to help identify strategies Churchill’s plays use to find innovative ways of producing new forms of political subjectivity in audiences.

Simon Stephens is one of the most important contemporary playwrights whose popularity spreads out both Britain and continental Europe. His Motortown (2006) consists of eight scenes. Having structural order and correlations with each other, these scenes depict notions of fear, violence, anxiety and traumatic experiences. The play's protagonist, Danny, is a British soldier who is sent to Iraq for his military service and comes back home with his traumatic memories. Simon Stephens portrays a political play which discloses the tormenting process of Danny's unsuccessful treatment back home. Stephens also depicts traumatic patterns and major trauma factors observed as the lack of family support and psychological disorders of contemporary British society, which are the disappointing results of war in Iraq. Applying the trauma theory and taking into consideration the effects of war, this study will illustrate Danny's personal background and his traumatic experiences which become central among other characters in contemporary British culture.

This article examines the dynamics of “shapeshifting” in Caryl Churchill’s notoriously evasive play, The Skriker. The play focuses on the mischief and mutations of its eponymous shape-shifting character, an enigmatic and often malevolent creature that insinuates itself into the lives of two young London women, assuming endless guises in order to ensnare their desire and lure them to its Underworld. Defying conventions of space and time, mixing the naturalistic with ever-proliferating dimensions of fantasy, the play has often met with significant resistance, leaving audiences baffled and critics mystified. My analysis draws on the recent work of Slavoj Žižek, and the Lacanian psychoanalysis that inspires it, in order to re-conceive both the play’s formal dynamic and its engagement with the “decentring” impact of late-capitalism.

The aim of this study is to examine to what extent the struggle and interaction between the colonizer and the colonized contribute to response to British colonial domination, othering and oppression in Tom Stoppard's Indian Ink (1994). This will be carried out by means of a Bakhtinian polyphonic and dialogic analysis that aims to ascertain the relationship between the colonial and postcolonial time and setting. It will be concluded that the colonial and postcolonial India and Indians are under the west hegemony although the postcolonial Indians are more educated. But since the education system is established by the colonizer, subjection is felt at every step of life for an Indian. Through a dialogic reading, it will be deduced that the struggle and interaction of the characters through dialogues bring to light the cultural representation and diversity and establish a response to colonial discourse both in the past and present. As Stoppard reveals, the colonized replies to the prejudices and stereotyping of the colonizer. The voices of the colonized Indians are heard since the play has a postcolonial and polyphonic structure; that is, the voiceless inferior Indian is voiced by the playwright.

Ensuing John Osborne's Look Back in Anger in 1956, a new angry young generation has appeared with more provocative and shocking works which have later been called 'in-yer-face' theatre by critic Aleks Sierz. It would not be wrong to say that Sarah Kane with her first play Blasted is the key figure of 'in-yer-face' theatre. Presenting dirty language, sex, nudity, violence on stage are shocking techniques that leave an indelible impression. In Blasted, Kane connects the interpersonal violence with the forgone conclusions of the war which is dirty, and she depicts this idea in a harsh way in which audiences may feel that as if Kane throws up on them while telling her story.The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the characteristics of in-yer-face theatre in Sarah Kane's Blasted.

During the twentieth century, women poets who were immensely influenced by the most revolutionary aspects of modernism, gave rise to what French feminists called 'écriture feminine' as a desired way of writing differently. In feminist writings emphasis seems to be more on how women are oppressed in the society as well as their anxieties about their bodies. Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) the Canadian nationalist poetess is a prominent figure concerned with the need for a new language to explore relations between subjects and society, the power relations that define one's identity as well as the inadequacy of phallocentric discourse. What is also noteworthy in Atwood's writings is the rewriting of images and myths born by the patriarchal society and Western civilization. This study is an attempt to shed light on the ways Atwood pursues French feminists with emphasis on female body and language to show the poetess's exploration of female identity in her less-referred-to poem "This is a Photograph of Me." The writers have tried to show Atwood's tackling identity and restriction through the act of rewriting such established images as light and water.

Women playwrights have always struggled to redefine femininity in their works by primarily reflecting the unequal treatment of women in society. To this end, some of the contemporary women dramatists make use of canonical texts and rewrite them in order to challenge the accepted notion of patriarchal dominance presented earlier by prominent male writers. Shakespeare’s plays have also been appropriated for contemporary theatre by women playwrights opposing the mainstream ideas initiated by his seminal works. One of the contemporary revisionist women playwrights is Elaine Feinstein (1930-) who attempts to subvert both gender and political aspects of Shakespeare’s King Lear in her version of the play, Lear’s Daughters (1987) written cooperatively with Women’s Theatre Group.

Lear’s Daughters marginalises the former protagonist King Lear by presenting him offstage and prioritises his imaginary wife instead who is absent in the original play. As the title also suggests, in this rewriting, the emphasis is not on Lear who is just a lecherous imperfect father, but on his three daughters who suffer from parental neglect. The male protagonist of the original work is reduced to a lesser degree, and his daughters are not responsible for his tragedy any more. Feinstein reinforces her feminist stance by eliminating the male characters, making the Fool an androgynous character, and making the daughters and Lear’s wife the new protagonists. Lear’s Daughters deals with the problem of gender inequality as well as protesting the social and economic deterioration during the Thatcher period. Accordingly, this paper argues that Elaine Feinstein, as a feminist playwright, brings together both social and political critique concerning women by implicitly criticising Thatcher’s policies; hence contemporising the issue of women’s subordination in Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Keywords: Elaine Feinstein, Women's Theatre Group, Lear’s Daughters, Shakespeare, King Lear, Feminism, Patriarchy, Rewriting, Thatcher.

Despite their different time periods and social, economic and political changes in the society, these three plays have anger, violence and alienation in common and so, the desire to convey these feelings to their audience yet in different forms.

• comparing and contrasting the works
• focusing particularly on contextual/historical background and theatrical/aesthetic features

Within this landmark collection, original voices from the field of drama provide rich analysis of a selection of the most exciting and remarkable plays and productions of the twenty-first century. But what makes the drama of the new millenium so distinctive? Which events, themes, shifts, and paradigms are marking its stages? Kaleidoscopic in scope, Twenty-First Century Drama: What Happens Now creates a broad, rigorously critical framework for approaching the drama of this period, including its forms, playwrights, companies, institutions, collaborative projects, and directors. The collection has a deliberately British bent, examining established playwrights – such as Churchill, Brenton, and Hare – alongside a new generation of writers – including Stephens, Prebble, Kirkwood, Bartlett, and Kelly. Simultaneously international in scope, it engages with significant new work from the US, Japan, India, Australia, and the Netherlands, to reflect a twenty-first century context that is fundamentally globalized. The volume’s central themes – the financial crisis, austerity, climate change, new forms of human being, migration, class, race and gender, cultural politics and issues of nationhood – are mediated through fresh, cutting-edge perspectives.

Considering the utopian potential of the theatrical space, there has been surprisingly little attention spent on the exploration of the relationship between utopianism and theatre hermeneutics, with some notable exceptions including Klai? (1991) and Gray (1993). Bearing in mind theatre's tendency to make frequent use of forms of utopian expression, at least at the level of "pretending" and "playing," it is noticeable how infrequently the two fields are brought together in criticism. In one of the few engagements with this relationship, the stage is insightfully referred to by Diana Knight as "a sort of laboratory for constructing the liberated social space of utopia" (22). While the novel's form fits the traditional utopia, wherein the narrator is usually the guest who is guided around the utopian literary space, the exciting multi-dimensionality of the theatrical space--in relation to utopianism and the expression of the utopian impulse often present in drama--has been markedly neglected. Theatre in particular as an art form can be seen as embodying an intense contradiction of utopian and anti-utopian features. It is utopian, in the creativity of a shared performance between theatre practitioners and audience that takes place in a collective space (or "no-space"), but anti-utopian in the modes of hierarchy, exclusivity and discipline that are inscribed in the economics, cultural forms and institutions of bourgeois theatre.

Many of Caryl Churchill's plays display a preoccupation with political possibility and reveal traces of utopian desire. Her 1970s plays, in particular, intersect with and reflect a cultural context that produced rejuvenated engagements with utopia. The theatre groups Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment, who performed the original productions of her history plays Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976) and Vinegar Tom (1976), were additionally committed to utopian considerations of non-hierarchical collaborative working methods and participated in a system of pay parity. This essay seeks firstly to explore the ways in which theatre, utopia and space can be brought together theoretically, and secondly to read Churchill's history plays with reference to the utopian dimensions of their production contexts as well as with regard to the potentiality of utopian (historical) space--both literal (physical spaces) and metaphorical (spaces of possibility)--that can be traced in the plays.

Welcome to the new Bloomsbury Drama & Performance Studies catalogue, including Methuen Drama and The Arden Shakespeare.

Book Highlights
Among this year’s highlights are the Contemporary Dramatist titles Mamet Plays: 6 (p. 15) and Simon Stephens Plays: 4 (p. 15); as well as over fifty play texts. In his centenary year, we have The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller (p. 7), a new collection of some of his most seminal critical work. The Arden Shakespeare’s growing focus on performance includes Performing King Lear (p. 13), in which interviews with leading actors and directors illuminate the play.
Three titles publish in our new Performance and Science series (p. 6) providing insights into this dynamic area of research and practice while the paperback edition of the highly acclaimed Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (p. 7) is a treat for all theatre-lovers. Finally, highlights from among our performance books include Nancy Bishop’s Auditioning for Film and Television (p. 9), Ken Rea’s The Outstanding Actor (p. 9), an updated edition of the vital technical theatre manual Stage Lighting (p. 11), and an expert guide to stand-up comedy, Off the Mic (p. 10).

Digital Highlights
EBooks are now available direct for your e-reader: purchase from www.bloomsbury.com.
In addition to several thousand eBooks, we publish a range of digital subscription services, including Bloomsbury Collections, the Churchill Archive, Drama Online, and the Berg Fashion Library. Sign up on www.bloomsbury.com for news on these and the forthcoming Bloomsbury Food, Design and Architecture Libraries, Fairchild Books Library, and the Fashion Photography Archive.

Fighting Fire with Fire: Unavoidable Violence in John Arden’s
Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance
John Arden is one of the pioneers of epic theatre in England. Deriving his source from current events of violence, Arden depicts the futility and cruelty of war, and shows how war victimises everyone involved in it in his anti-militarist play, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance (1959). The play is set in a coal-mining town in northern England in 1880s. With the use of historicisation, Arden criticises the corruption in contemporary England. The strike of the unemployed workers in the town is paralleled with the war that takes place in a wider scale. The weakness of the soldiers against the system is very close to the subordination of the townspeople who can only riot against the closure of their workplace.
The protagonist of the play, Serjeant Musgrave undertakes a mission to stop wars through his “Logic” which requires the death of twenty five people in revenge for five soldiers killed in the war. Thus, in order to realise “the mechanism of God,” Musgrave arranges a recruiting meeting in the town where he shows the corpse of a former soldier, Billy Hicks while dancing at the same time, and uses violence on the townspeople along with the corrupt authorities. Evidently, Musgrave’s paradoxical act of initiating another type of anarchy while trying to stop anarchy is criticised by John Arden whose main aim is to stress the impossibility of destroying war by using violence with the use of epic elements.
Keywords: epic theatre, violence, futility of war, anti-militarist play, coal-mining town, historicisation, corruption, strike, “Logic”, “the mechanism of God”, anarchy.

Yirminci yüzyılın ikinci yarısı Edward Bond, Mark Ravenhill ve Sarah Kane gibi oyun yazarlarının farklı ve şok edici trajedilerini
içeren Suratına Tiyatro döneminin etkisi altındadır. Çağdaş İngiliz oyun yazarlığı bağlamında Martin Crimp, Simon Stephens ve
Tim Crouch’un oyunlarıyla, sözsel ve politik tiyatro yirmi birinci yüzyılın ilk zamanlarında yerini almıştır. Ünü hem Britanya hem
de Avrupa’ya yayılan, en önemli çağdaş oyun yazarlarından biri olan Tim Crouch, deneysel ve postdramatik türdeki oyunları ile
birlikte çağdaş İngiliz tiyatrosuna çok büyük ölçüde katkı yapar. Bu çalışma, Tim Crouch’un şiddet içeren, şok ve rahatsız edici
The Author (Yazar) oyununu çağdaş tiyatroda aktif sorgulama, seyirci katılımı, tepkisi ve sorumluluğu bağlamında ele almaktadır.
Oyun, çağdaş performansta ses ve konuşmaların farklı kullanımlarını sorunsallaştırmak için seyirci deneyimi ile ilgili kritik bir
bağlantı sunmaktadır. Bu çağdaş performans Roland Barthes’ın terminolojisi ve ünlü nitelemesi “Yazarın Ölümü”ne gönderme
yaparak seyircinin aktif katılımını amaçlamakta ve sorumluluğunu anımsatmaktadır.

This thesis uses the semiotic perspective to deal with cruelty in Sarah Kane’s drama. Stage drama needs specific dramaturgy; it is different from other types of drama in that it is written to be performed and not to be merely read. Thus, it would usually include items that help to transform it from text into a live performance. In the semiotic analysis, these items are termed sign systems. The task of semiotic analysis is to break down the dramatic piece into its components of sign systems and analyze each of them in relation to the others. Semiotic analysis is not concerned merely with how many components are there or what they might be, rather it is concerned with how the general meaning is created and what each sign system signifies. Sarah Kane is a post-modern dramatist; she belongs to a dramatic movement known as in-yer-face that had appeared in the 1990s. Sarah Kane's drama is distinguished by its richness of multiple sign systems and their significant presence in all of her work. She uses drama to send strong messages about society and human nature and she does so by her heavy reliance on cruelty, physical or psychological. Thus, the researcher attempts to define how sign systems were used by Sarah Kane to present cruelty and to what ends.

Caryl Churchill is one of Britain’s most prominent and talented contemporary playwrights. Since the 1960s, the author has published thirty plays dealing with a wide variety of subjects from political matters to gender issues and ecological problems. Amongst the many issues and social problems of Churchill’s dramatic oeuvre, natural concerns and environmental catastrophes stand out as the dramatist displays significant awareness towards issues concerning the destruction of nature. To that end, particular themes related to the Anthropocene and Capitalocene come forward in Churchill’s ecological plays. Briefly defined as the era of observable human impact on Earth, the Anthropocene was coined in 2000 and reformulated by scholars various times. The most notable reinterpretation of the Anthropocene resulted in the coining of the Capitalocene which argues that this epoch was largely shaped by the detrimental effects of capitalism on the human society and naturally, on Earth as a whole. This article’s main purpose is to expose specific depictions of the Capitalocene in Churchill’s Not not not not not enough oxygen and Far Away to reveal why and how these depictions are presented in the author’s plays. Therefore, the study demonstrates Churchill’s theatre as a theatre of the Anthropocene and reveals the dramatist’s critique of capitalism in order to raise awareness towards environmental issues in the British society and public opinion.

This study discusses the ways in which an African American playwright -Katori Halland a Black British playwright -Bola Agbajerepresent the obstacles young people face as they strive to make "the right choice" and not be put down by the places in which they live: a housing project in Memphis, Tennessee, and a council estate in London. The demonstration shows that both female authors, born in 1981, create forms of protest theatre since they explore contemporary race and gender issues in the American and British communities they tackle, insightfully pointing to problematic aspects, but capitalizing on hope, the potential for self-fulfillment and confidence in the youth's future. In Hurt Village , Katori Hall's young protagonist is a thirteen-year-old girl, Cookie, who resists following the route of her predecessors and even her peers. In Gone Too Far! (2007), Bola Agbaje captures the troubles of two teenage brothers, Yemi and Ikudayisi, as they interact with each other and other people in their neighborhood.

This study investigates the critique of neoliberalism in David Hare’s plays. The British playwright, Sir David Hare, is known for his long and distinguished writing career which consists of a remarkable number plays, television, and film radio scripts. David Hare gives a unique place to cultural and political criticism of the British Institutions in his plays. From his early career days which coincide with the emerge of “the angry young man movement” of post-war Britain, he depicts “the contradictory trends of the nation and shares with his predecessors the idea of social and usefulness drama” (Boireau 2003: p.27). As regards his personal and historical status as a dramatist, David Hare dramatizes the social disorders within the society and portrays them in a way that shows their dialectical bounds with culture, society, and ideology. In this context, it is not surprising that neoliberalism, dominating world politics for nearly forty years, has a literary presence in Hare’s drama.
This thesis focuses on specific plays written in the core period of the neoliberal era. The plays are selected from the ones that are written in 2000s and include strong criticism of neoliberal policies which are considered to lead to a decline of neoliberalism. The plays under consideration are as follows: The Permanent Way (2003), Stuff Happens (2004), The Vertical Hour (2008b), Gethsemane (2008a), The Power of Yes (2009) and Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2014a). Acknowledging that any literary production cannot be examined without considering a bigger and more complex social structure, the study attempts
to find out about the dialectical relationships among Hare’s
selected plays, the societies which they reflect and the neoliberal
policies which have been perceptibly dominant in the
world politics since 1970s. I therefore attempt to put David
Hare’s selected plays into their historical context and argue
that the plays have a dialectical relationship with the society
in which they were created. Using the dialectical method, I
offer an analysis of the interactive arrangements between the
plays and their socio-political context. In this sense, the impetus
behind this study is to offer a dialectical analysis of David
Hare’s selected plays in order to underline his unique language
and thematic choices to construct his literary argument.

A shift in the spotlight had occurred on the 1990's British stage. Within this new In-Yer-Face or New Brutalism-dubbed wave, playwrights—in writing and showcasing their plays—preferred a more explicit and uncensored language as a means of conveying what they saw, felt, and thought, as well as exhibiting the cutthroat events and cutthroat people of a modern society. Among the many writers of this wave is Martin Crimp, who openly and ruthlessly reflects the society and culture within which he lives in a rather blunt tone onto his works through his use of uncensored language and his realistic point of view. This paper has examined how the female characters of Crimp's In The Republic of Happiness have been reflected through the lens of Materialist Feminist Theory, which has become a popular feminist theory since 1990s. The female characters of Crimp's play have been unable to escape from being barred under the pressure of capitalism, from intervening in the needs of the members of the household within the home environment much akin to being a caretaker, from not receiving a single dime, and from society both turning towards them a blind eye and thus in turn rearing their children as slaves to the social order. Thus, Crimp represents 21 st century women as still continuing to being seen for their reproductive role and what is expected thereof. Furthermore, Crimp has moulded female characters that move forward with their lives and whose sense of what a beautiful and well-groomed woman fails to cease in spite of the traumas they have survived.

This article situates Harold Pinter’s radio play "A Slight Ache" alongside the radio-playwriting protocols of its first producer, the British Broadcasting Corporation. In guidebooks for radio playwrights, the BBC’s Drama Department promoted a clear and coherent on-air style. Pinter challenged this standard by building his play around a silent character and thus refusing to let his audience fall back on familiar methods of listening. Having written a radio play that gestured toward the theater, Pinter did the opposite in "A Slight Ache"’s stage adaptation, concealing visual elements as if glancing back at the airwaves. Both versions moved toward transcending the realism of "The Birthday Party," whose blackout scene had already experimented with restricting stage drama to sound alone. The influence on Pinter’s later stage style can be seen as early as Aston’s monologue in "The Caretaker," where complex lighting effects briefly transform a realistic setting into the “mindscape” of a radio play.

This chapter explores the role of Holocaust memory in Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children, a short play written in response to Israel’s 2008-2009 attack on Gaza. Controversially, the play invokes the memory of the Nazi genocide of the European Jews to criticize Israeli violence against the Palestinians. To accuse Seven Jewish Children of anti-Semitism for allegedly equating Jews with Nazis, though, is to ignore the play’s complexity, multivocality, and indeterminacy. Seven Jewish Children does not deny the narrative of Jewish victimization but undermines the assumption that Jews have a monopoly on victimhood. The memory of Jewish suffering is mobilized in the service of a politics that seeks to diminish suffering universally.

The article examines the relationship between philosophy and drama, focusing for that purpose on the works of British playwright Mark Ravenhill. The fact that the author’s plays, while being part of postmodern culture, argue against the philosophical ideas and the general mood of the contemporary epoch, provides the perspective of this examination. The connection of Ravenhill’s dramas with the tradition of British political drama in the second half of the 20th century is pointed out as the cause of negative attitude to postmodern condition and criticism of its postmodern philosophy from a politically engaged angle.

Keywords: postmodernism, in-yer-face theatre, state-of-the-nation play, political drama.

Şenlen Güvenç, Sıla. Çağdaş İskoç Tiyatrosu (Contemporary Scottish Drama). İstanbul: TEM Yapım Yayıncılık Ltd., 2020.

Author : Sıla Şenlen Güvenç
Publication Year: 2020
Publisher : Mitos-Boyut
Language : Turkish
Pages : 312
ISBN : 9786057904522


Synopsis:

Contemporary Scottish drama is becoming increasingly popular on the Turkish stage. Since 2006, the works of many Scottish playwrights such as  Anthony Neilson, David Greig, Zinnie Harris, Linda McLean, David Harrower,  Davey Anderson, Stefan Smith, Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair have been staged in Turkey. Furthermore, many of them have participated in academic panels, conferences and workshops organized in Turkey as well as collaborating with Turkish theatre groups such as DOT and GalataPerform. This work, which is also the first book on Scottish drama published in Turkish, analyzes the plays of three leading contemporary Scottish playwrights staged in Turkey, namely Anthony Neilson, David Greig and Zinnie Harris.

Özet:
Ankara Üniversitesi, Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi öğretim üyesi olan Sıla Şenlen Güvenç’in kitabı, çağdaş tiyatro üzerine verdiği dersler, Edinburgh Üniversitesi’nde yaptığı araştırmalar, David Greig, Zinnie Harris, Linda Mclean gibi yazarlarla yaptığı görüşmeler ve eleştirmen olarak yıllar içinde takip ettiği prodüksiyonlar sonucunda ortaya çıkmıştır. 
Son dönemde İskoçya’nın siyasi konumu, Bağımsızlık Referandumu ve Brexit ile ilgili duruşu ve dünyaya kazandırdığı çağdaş tiyatro yazarlarından dolayı, çok gündemde olan bir konu haline gelmiştir. Aynı şekilde, Türkiye’de de giderek daha fazla çağdaş İskoç tiyatrosuna ait eserlerin sahneye taşındığı görülmektedir. Bu doğrultuda, özellikle 2006 yılından bu yana Anthony Neilson, David Greig, Zinnie Harris, Linda McLean, David Harrower, Davey Anderson, Stef Smith, Kieran Hurley ve Gary Mcnair gibi yazarların oyunları sahnelenmiştir.
Bu çalışma, önde gelen üç çağdaş İskoç tiyatro yazarı Anthony Neilson, David Greig ve Zinnie Harris’in Türkiye’de sahnelenen oyunlarına odaklanmaktadır. Bu doğrultuda, Anthony Neilson’un dört oyunu Normal, Penetratör, Sansürcü ve Disosya, David Greig’in dört oyunu Avrupa, Uzak Adalar, İki Kişilik Yaz ile Prudencia Hart ve Bir Tuhaf Dibe Vurma Öyküsü, son olarak da Zinnie Harris’in üç oyunu Kış Dönümü, Nefesinizi Nasıl Tutarsınız? ve Şafakta Buluş Benimle farklı açılardan incelenmektedir.

Link:
https://www.mitosboyut.com.tr/yazar-445-sila-senlen-guvenc-kitaplari.aspx

Ez a cikk a Párbeszédben Ruttkay Kálmánnal. Egy rejtőzködő életmű újraolvasása c. kötetbe készült. Ruttkay Kálmánnak a 18. századi drámatermésről írt cikkeit hívja segítségül, hogy választ kapjon: miért idézik a kortárs angol drámák ezeket a közönség által alig ismert szövegeket. Konklúzióm szerint a drámába ágyazott vendégszöveg lényege a közönség számára a játék, felfedezés, átélés, és az interakció öröme.
A teljes könyv a kiadó oldaláról letölthető: http://reciti.hu/2015/2941

As a much-discussed part of the human mind, memory today is an interdisciplinary subject studied by a variety of academic fields such as psychology, sociology, psychiatry, cultural studies, and literature. In British drama, it finds a reflection with the term "memory plays" whose representative playwright in the twentieth century is Harold Pinter. On the other hand, it can be observed that Anthony Neilson, emerging as a voice of the British In-Yer-Face drama of the 1990s, makes an emphatic use of memory in his plays like his predecessor. In this sense, this paper argues that Anthony Neilson's playwriting shows resemblances to Harold Pinter's, which is acknowledged as the Pinteresque, that, more specifically, Pinter's Old Times (1971) and Neilson's Penetrator (1993) share much in their use of memory, and analyses the particularities each playwright employs in their utilisation of this concept within their plays.

This full-length study investigates a range of formal strategies deployed by theatre-makers in Britain in response to the new wars of the global age. By almost general consensus, the final years of the 20th century mark a watershed between ‘old’ and ‘new’ wars, that is to say between traditional, Clausewitzean patterns of conflict and the hybrid forms of belligerence that have come to characterize the new world order. Establishing a connection between modes of warfare and modes of representation, this study tries to assess the impact of this full-fledged paradigm shift on contemporary dramaturgy. While mainly focusing on work produced around or after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, a time when the inadequacy of traditional strategic and cultural models became all too palpable, it also examines plays that have prefigured these developments by providing aesthetic answers to dilemmas of representation that were only just beginning to come into focus. In many respects, the sense of urgency with which the British stage has committed to the task of providing new interpretive tools for understanding this changed landscape has acted as a powerful motor for formal innovation. Faced with the challenge of registering the novelty and the complexity of the current model of warfare, dramatists and theatre-makers have directed their inquisitive gaze inwards as well as outwards, reflecting critically and creatively on the limits and the possibilities of the medium they work with and in this way contributing to its continued cultural and political relevance.

During the late twentieth century, crisis of masculinity appears in all societal settings; at work, at school, on the street and in the family. The crisis of fatherhood, anxiety, power, and abuse create the crisis of masculinity. As a concrete example of the masculinity crisis Jez Butterworth's most discussed stage play Mojo was first performed at London's Royal Court in 1995. This paper takes Mojo under observation as a frontier play depicting a male identity that portrays rock and roll culture, gangland violence, and male Soho gangsters of the 1950s. With these concepts in mind, this paper analyses the contemporary anxieties related to masculinity through witty, absurd dialogues and homoerotic relationships of this striking play.

Le travail sur la voix dans le théâtre de Martin Crimp (Attempts on Her Life, 1997 ; Fewer Emergencies, 2005) et celui de Sarah Kane (Crave, 1998 ; 4.48 Psychosis, 2000) s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une écriture expérimentale, post-beckettienne, à la recherche de nouvelles contraintes formelles pour le texte et la scène à même de refléter la crise identitaire d’un sujet inscrit dans l’après-coup de l’indicible. Si l’espace dramatique, dans un mouvement convergent chez Crimp et Kane, est de moins en moins un espace physique mais devient, selon l’expression de Crimp, "un espace mental", l’espace scénique se transforme parallèlement en un espace essentiellement vocal où le sujet se donne à entendre, ou se donne à dire, comme une ombre ou un vestige de lui-même. Le présent article propose de considérer ensemble l’importance de la voix dans les textes des deux auteurs en s’intéressant à l’espace intervocal, transdramatique, qui s’est tissé entre les pièces de Crimp et celles de Kane autour d’une voix de femme à la fois centrale et spectrale. Polyonyme dans Attempts on Her Life, anonyme dans 4.48 Psychosis, « Anne » est d’abord éclipsée dans un silence post-traumatique chez Crimp avant d’être restituée sur le devant de la scène sacrificielle chez Kane dans une prise de parole absolue ; sa voix, à la fois pleine, riche et percée de silences, devient le théâtre même du drame : elle se donne comme performance et événement dramatique ultime. Dans ces deux pièces, de même que dans Crave de Kane et Fewer Emergencies de Crimp, la voix fonde ainsi ce que l’on pourrait appeler une psychopoétique de la scène : une écriture qui vise à brouiller les limites entre théâtre et poésie, afin de rendre compte des dynamiques les plus intimes qui se jouent sur la scène de l’inconscient.

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Dramatic experiments with the voice in the theatres of Martin Crimp (Attempts on Her Life", 1997; Fewer Emergencies, 2005) and Sarah Kane (Crave, 1998; 4.48 Psychosis, 2000) fall within the scope of a post-Beckettian quest for new formal constraints for the text and the stage. While the dramatic space, for both Crimp and Kane, is no longer a physical space but has become “a mental space”, to use Crimp’s words, it appears that the scenic space has transformed into a sheer vocal space. This article looks at the importance of the voice in Crimp’s and Kane’s texts, focusing on the intervocal and transdramatic space created between their plays around the voice of a woman both central and spectral. No longer a conventional character, the female subject, whose voice is either heard as a broken embodied token of a disturbed mind, or is silenced and replaced by the alienating narratives of others, is but a mere shadow, vestige or vocal image of herself. Polyonymous in Attempts on Her Life, anonymous in 4.48 Psychosis, “Anne”, as I will argue, is eclipsed in a post-traumatic silence in Crimp’s play, then restored on a sacrificial stage in Kane’s where she retrieves her own power of speech through poetic language and echolalia. Her voice, fully expanding in the space although pierced with blanks and holes, is the ultimate dramatic event. In these two plays as well as in Kane’s Crave and Crimp’s Fewer Emergencies, the voice thus appears at the core of what could be called a "psychopoetics" of the stage.

From Tom Stoppard's play "After Magritte" of the early 1970s to the current "England: A Play for Galleries" by Tim Crouch, British playwrights of the last thirty years have often turned their attention to existing collections, museal
spaces or curatorship. This paper analyses several plays which explore the world of contemporary British art galleries after the sudden success of the Young British Artists and will reflect on the cultural and political role of galleries in contemporary culture and in British drama in particular. On the one hand, the playwrights put on stage galleries, such as in Jay Jopling's "White
Cube"; on the other hand, the drama moves directly into the gallery. This is the case of "England: A Play for Galleries", a piece of site-specific theatre which opened in 2007 at Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery and moved to London's Whitechapel Gallery. In the work, the author, Tim Crouch, places the dynamics
of visual art and theatre against each other, questions the spatial position and perspective of audience members and performers, offering dialogues with elements of the past, present and future, and thus contributing to a fresh
understanding of the nature and role of the gallery.

Ecodramaturgy" interrogates the extent to which the overall values in relation to nature and culture binary can be reconsidered and conveyed to the public through theatre and performance arts. Placing ecological reciprocity at the center of its dramatic and thematic content, ecodramaturgy places great hope in theatrical performances, which have the potential to alter mindsets of nature-culture interactions and transform audience perceptions of ecological issues. These interactions have been remarkably evident in climate change theatre that emerges as the sub-genre of ecodramaturgy and employs climate change science on the stage. Drawing on the connection between climate change theatre and climate change science, this paper examines Mike Bartlett's Earthquakes in London (2010), in which the playwright provides an opportunity for the audience to interact with the climate crisis beyond a scientific approach. In this regard, this paper indicates that climate change theatre, which appeals to the feelings through story and performance, can enable the audience to interact with ecological thinking in unique ways and encourage them to take action against the climate change crisis.

This paper tackles the issue of using drama as a method of teaching whether in schools or universities with reference to Shakespeare's drama. Drama is both an art form as well as a highly effective teaching and learning methodology. Using drama techniques in education has great impact on grasping the scientific and literary materials to students. Based on role play, dramatization and structured play, students will enact their senses to grab the idea, which makes it easy to remember it when it is needed. The paper also examines these dramatic techniques in literature, particularly Shakespearean drama. Shakespeare had manipulated the idea of using drama techniques to teach his characters certain ideas mainly when using 'play within play' style of writing. Hence, this style added much to Shakespeare's plays enhancing their tragic and comic content along with giving a sense of enthusiasm over the audience. This paper will conduct the meaning of drama, drama/theatre in education, drama techniques in education and in Shakespeare's Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a conclusion. It is related to axes of literature, theatre, and students. Significantly, This research highlights the fact that drama in education can be very pleasant and encouraging to students and is widely accepted by the public through referring to Shakespeare's drama. Through drama, people of all ages could gain a sense of responsibility greater than oneself.

Harold Pinter is inarguably one of the most influential modern British dramatists. The horizon of his literary, cultural and political activity stretches far beyond the borders of his homeland, as well as beyond the theatrical and literary world. The essays in this volume deal with the reception of his literary (and political) heritage in several European and non-European Countries, offering previously unpublished research. They bring
together a variety of aspects focusing on Pinter in the former region of Eastern Europe like Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia, where his literary ideas as well as political activism seem fully applicable. They are balanced by selected Western perspectives, including Italian, British and American ones.

In Philip Riddley’s Mercury Fur, a dystopian world where violence has permeated and chaos prevails is portrayed. This paper aims to argue that in this dystopia with the Law appearing in the form of violence and the burst of the Real as its main feature - in Jacques Lacan’s terms - and the play ending in the military attack that would terminate the existing system, the need for a regulatory Law is subtly depicted as necessary. This chaotic atmosphere that calls for the governmental intervention in the end is established through the burst of the Real, abjection and shift in subject positions. In order to scrutinise the construction of this dystopian fictional world in the manner mentioned, the theories of Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva will de deployed.

David Hare’s play Fanshen (1975) traces the improving social conditions of the peasants following land reform introduced during the Chinese Revolution. This event was a significant landmark in the history of China and socialism. David Hare, as a socialist writer, presents the positive aspects of this case of remaking society in Chinese history with an aim to provide an example for European societies. In the play, socialist revolution is represented as the source of improvement for the lives of the peasants, which are, in Hare’s conception, similar to the working class in modern society that needs to be educated about its potential to bring about positive change in society. This paper argues that Fanshen offers socialism as a better system towards the formation of an improved state, and criticises the failed systems in England and Europe resulting from the unsuccessful practices of the leaders and politics of the period.

Keywords: David Hare, Fanshen, land reform, Chinese Revolution, socialism, working class

Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest, written and performed very soon after the Romanian revolution in 1990 and performed both in London and Bucharest, is a dynamic, inter-cultural play that represents a variety of perspectives on the revolutionary events, as well as oscillating between English and Romanian cultural and language coordinates. It has a peculiar topicality in its detailed and specific usages of different aspects of the revolutionary narrative, its sketches of family life before and after the revolution, and the inclusion of the revolution as reported in quasi-documentary-style testimony.

The perspective in this article is one that places the play within a framework that thinks through Mad Forest’s relationship to the triumphant, neoliberalist heralding of “the end of history,” most famously argued by Francis Fukuyama in his 1989 article of that name. This discourse gained further confidence from the collapse of Eastern Europe, a collapse that was viewed by proponents of the end-of-history argument as signalling the permanent disintegration of communism and a victory for capitalism. However, Mad Forest is considered here as a play that reflects multiple perspectives on the revolutionary period and, while declining to provide political solutions as such, simultaneously refuses to accede to the implications of the end-of-history argument.

In a January 1992 interview with Douglas Kennedy of the Sunday Telegraph, Trevor Griffiths lamented the current state of British political theater: ''The social function of theater is dead-someone should call the priest and say last rites over the British theater," 1 He has not been alone in his anger and concern. In a May 1988 symposium on the state of the theater in Thatcher's Britain, John McGrath observed, ''The number of new plays being done now is a third of what it was ten years ago. There's a real chance that within the next five years they will disappear completely.'" This symposium was followed (in December (988) by a conferimce of British theater professionals and academics entitled "Theater in Crisis."3 The 1980s were clearly a decade of attrition for the British theater, particularly on the Left, and the early years of the [990S have offered little change in the underlying policies and trends that brought about this attrition. Yet Griffiths's career in the early nineties-like those of Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill, David Hare, and others in the theater-suggests that British social and politiCal theater is still alive, if diminished from its flourishing in the sixties and seventies. During the [980S, of course, Griffiths paid comparatively little attention to the stage. After Occupatio;lS, The Party, Absolute Beginners, Comedians, Through the Night, and the other theater and television plays of the 1970S that established his reputation as one of the Left's most politically articulate dramatic voices, Griffiths directed his writing energies almost exclusively toward television and film. With the exception of Oi for England in 1982 (first shown on television) and Real Dreams in 1984 (based on Jeremy Pikser's story "Revolution in Cleveland"), Griffiths's literary output in the 1980s lay outside the theater: the 1981 television play Country: "A TO/y Story," the 1985 television serial The Last Place on Earth, and the films Reds (co-written with Warren Beatty, 1981) and Fatherland (1986), based on two of seven screenplays (the rest unproduced) that he wrote during this time.

The focus of this paper is Caryl Churchill’s political engagement, especially her first experiments with the ecological implications of capitalism. It examines Churchill’s ecological dramaturgy and imagination before the ‘anthropocentric turn’ of the new millennium. My aim is to explore how she represents environmental issues in three plays written between the 1970s and the 1990s, works that belong to three different genres: Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen (1971), a dystopia set in an apocalyptic 2010; Lives of Great Poisoners (1991), which is modeled on Greek tragedy and bourgeois drama, but, significantly, uses ‘poison’ as an allegory of pollution; and, finally, The Skriker (1994), which relies on some features of the fairy tale to investigate the catastrophic long-term effects of natural disruption. Churchill’s plays do not discuss scientific notions or map disasters taking place around the world; more importantly, they seek to offer powerful and disturbing dramatic experiences that subvert our established thoughts and encourage us to imagine a world based on entirely different values. Moreover, they advocate for dialogue between generations and call on everyone to take responsibility to ensure a decent future for the earth and its inhabitants.