Description
Book SynopsisExploring a range of topics, including Greek tragedy, Shakespearean theater, contemporary British plays, opera, and the theatricality of Parisian culture, this compilation provides new perspectives on the relationship between Eros and Death in a series of dramatic texts, theatrical practices, and cultural performances. Detailed and analytical, these informative essays demonstrate how changing attitudes towards sexuality and death—opposed but entangled passions—were reflected in theater throughout the course of history. Psychoanalytical and philosophical models are also referenced in this work that features essays from dramatists Dic Edwards, David Ian Rabey, and David Rudkin.
Table of Contents1. Some Eros/Thanatos Interfaces in Attic Tragedy David Rudkin 2. Dying for Love: Reconsidering The Tragicomedy of Shakespeare's Dead Lovers from Juliet to Cleopatra Robert Wilcher 3. Woyzeck and After: from the Ecstasy of Romantic Death to the Politics of Irrational Love Karoline Gritzner 4. Labyrinths of the Taboo: Theatrical Journeys of Eroticism and Death in Romantic and Gothic Parisian Culture Richard J. Hand 5. The Kiss of Love and Death in Opera Dieter Borchmeyer 5a. Eroticism and death in the performance of Lorca's 'impossible surrealist theatre'A" Dr Patricia McDermott 6. Transgressive Eroticism: Brecht, Weimar and Beyond George Hunka 7. The Living Corpse: A Metaphysic for Theatre Dic Edwards 8. The Theatrical in the Sexual, the Sexual in the Theatrical: Some Parallels and Provocations David Ian Rabey 9. 'A Rebel from the Waist Downwards': Desire and Death in Howard Barker's Theatre of Catastrophe Graham Saunders 10. Welcome to the House of FunA": Eros, Thanatos and the Performance of Grand Illusions Mick Mangan 11. Visions of Xs: Experiencing La Fura's XXX and Ron Athey's Solar Anus Roberta Mock 12. Reinterpreting Hamlet's Hidden Desires Steven Barfield 13. La Petite Mort: Erotic Encounters in One to One Performance Rachel Zerihan 14. Saint Nick: A Parallax View of the Deadly Erotics of Nick Cave in Performance David Pattie Afterword: The Corpse and its Sexuality Howard Barker
