Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on major and emerging playwrights, institutions, and various theatre practices this Concise Companion examines the key issues in British and Irish theatre since 1979.
Trade Review“This volume provides valuable insight into the issues and practices of contemporary theater. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.” (Choice, 1 January 2014)
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix
Notes on Contributors x
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
Nadine Holdsworth and Mary Luckhurst
Part I National Politics and Identities 5
1 Europe in Flux: Exploring Revolution and Migration in British Plays of the 1990s 7
Geoff Willcocks
2 ‘I’ll See You Yesterday’: Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and the Captivating Past 26
Claire Gleitman
3 Black British Drama and the Politics of Identity 48
D. Keith Peacock
4 Northern Irish Drama: Speaking the Peace 66
Tom Maguire
Part II Sites, Cities and Landscapes 85
5 The Production of ‘Site’: Site-Specific Theatre 87
Fiona Wilkie
6 Staging an Urban Nation: Place and Identity in Contemporary Welsh Theatre 107
Heike Roms
7 The Landscape of Contemporary Scottish Drama: Place, Politics and Identity 125
Nadine Holdsworth
Part III The Body, Text and the Real 147
8 The Body’s Cruel Joke: The Comic Theatre of Sarah Kane 149
Ken Urban
9 Physical Theatre: Complicite and the Question of Authority 171
Helen Freshwater
10 Verbatim Theatre, Media Relations and Ethics 200
Mary Luckhurst
Part IV Science, Ethics and New Technologies 223
11 Theatre and Science 225
David Higgins
12 From the State of the Nation to Globalization: Shifting Political Agendas in Contemporary British Playwriting 245
Dan Rebellato
13 Theatre for a Media-Saturated Age 263
Sarah Gorman
Index 283
