Search results for ""Author Aleks Sierz""

The most controversial and newsworthy plays of British theatre are a rash of rude, vicious and provocative pieces by a brat pack of twentysomethings whose debuts startled critics and audiences with their heady mix of sex, violence and street-poetry.In-Yer-Face Theatre is the first book to study this exciting outburst of creative self-expression by what in other contexts has been called Generation X, or Thatcher's Children, the 'yoof' who grew up during the last Conservative Government. The book argues that, for example, Trainspotting, Blasted, Mojo and Shopping and F**king are much more than a collection of shock tactics - taken together, they represent a consistent critique of modern life, one which focuses on the problem of violence, the crisis of masculinity and the futility of consumerism. The book contains extensive interviews with playwrights, including Sarah Kane (Blasted), Mark Ravenhill (Shopping and F**king), Philip Ridley (The Pitchfork Disney), Patrick Marber (Closer) and Martin McDonagh (The Beauty Queen of Leenane).

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First published in 2006, Alek's Sierz's The Theatre of Martin Crimp provided a groundbreaking study of one of British theatre's leading contemporary playwrights. Combining Sierz's lucid prose and sharp analysis together with interviews with Martin Crimp and a host of directors and actors who have produced the work, it offered a richly rewarding and engaging assessment of this acutely satirical playwright. The second edition additionally explores the work produced between 2006 and 2013, both the major new plays and the translations and other work. The second edition considers The City, the 2008 companion play to The Country, Play House from 2012 and the new work for the Royal Court in late 2012. The two works that have brought Crimp considerable international acclaim in recent years, the updated rewrite of The Misanthrope which in 2009 played for several months in the West End starring Keira Knightley, and Crimp's translation of Botho Strauss's Big and Small (Barbican, 2012), together with Crimp's other work in translation are all covered. The Theatre of Martin Crimp remains the fullest, most readable account of Crimps's work for the stage.

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British theatre is booming. But where do these beautiful buildings and exciting plays come from? And when did the story start? To find out we time travel back to the age of the first Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century, four hundred years ago when there was not a single theatre in the land. In the company of a series of well-characterized fictional guides, the eight chapters of the book explore how British theatre began, grew up and developed from the 1550s to the 1950s. The Time-Traveller's Guide to British Theatre tells the story of the movers and shakers, the buildings, the playwrights, the plays and the audiences that make British theatre what it is today. It covers all the great names — from Shakespeare to Terence Rattigan, by way of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw — and the classic plays, many of which are still revived today, visits the venues and tells their dramatic stories. It is an accessible, journalistic account of this subject which, while based firmly on extensive research and historical accuracy, describes five centuries of British creativity in an interesting and relevant way. It is celebratory in tone, journalistic in style and accurate in content.

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British theatre of the 1990s witnessed an explosion of new talent and presented a new sensibility that sent shockwaves through audiences and critics. What produced this change, the context from which the work emerged, the main playwrights and plays, and the influence they had on later work are freshly evaluated in this important new study in Methuen Drama's Decades of Modern British Playwriting series. The 1990s volume provides a detailed study by four scholars of the work of four of the major playwrights who emerged and had a significant impact on British theatre: Sarah Kane (by Catherine Rees), Anthony Neilson (Patricia Reid), Mark Ravenhill (Graham Saunders) and Philip Ridley (Aleks Sierz). Essential for students of Theatre Studies, the series of six decadal volumes provides a critical survey and study of the theatre produced from the 1950s to 2009. Each volume features a critical analysis of the work of four key playwrights besides other theatre work, together with an extensive commentary on the period. Readers will understand the works in their contexts and be presented with fresh research material and a reassessment from the perspective of the twenty-first century. This is an authoritative and stimulating reassessment of British playwriting in the 1990s.

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