Brst 190: Contemporary British Theatre Prof

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Brst 190: Contemporary British Theatre Prof 1 BrSt 190: Contemporary British Theatre Prof. Marc Robinson Yale-in-London, Summer 2013 [email protected], 203-804-5040 (cell) Syllabus This seminar combines play-reading and theatre-going in order to map the landscape of British drama and performance of the last twenty years. The theatre in this period is often acerbic and sometimes brazen, passionately engaged with the politics of a changing Britain, and scornful of old pieties—including those of earlier radical playwrights. We begin with several writers who defined British theatre at the close of the last century— David Hare, Tom Stoppard, Caryl Churchill, and their iconoclastic successors, Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill. We then immerse ourselves in drama since 2000, including several plays that premiered this past season. Many of these writers find elegant theatrical forms for sprawling subjects—class and racial strife in the aftermath of Thatcherism, the 2005 terrorist bombings in London, the persistent ghosts of Britain’s imperialist past. We’ll also consider work created on a more intimate scale. Some of the most stirring contemporary British plays look inward—at the sexual gamesmanship between couples, for instance, or at the equivocal morality of writers and even spectators. We’ll also make quick detours to consider two prominent Irish writers (Conor McPherson and Martin McDonagh) and one American (Naomi Wallace) who are significant presences in the London theatre. Every week, we will supplement our readings with performances. Large-scale productions at the National Theatre and in the West End will be balanced by new works at important smaller theatres such as the Donmar Warehouse and the Tricycle Theatre. Productions by the Globe, Propeller, and the National will give us a chance to consider three different approaches to staging Shakespeare. We’ll end by looking at London’s burgeoning experimental theater scene, represented here on DVD by Forced Entertainment and Gob Squad. Theatre productions in bold Please read the plays for July 8 before class! July 8: David Hare: Skylight (1995) Tom Stoppard: The Invention of Love (1997) Caryl Churchill: Far Away (2000) July 9: Bracken Moor (Campbell) by Shared Experience at the Tricycle Theatre July 10: Sarah Kane: Blasted (1995) 4:48 Psychosis (1999) Mark Ravenhill: Shopping and Fucking (1996) July 10: Twelfth Night by Propeller at Hampstead Theatre 2 July 18: Martin Crimp: The City (2008) In the Republic of Happiness (2012) David Harrower: Blackbird (2005) July 18: Merrily We Roll Along (Sondheim/Furth) at the Harold Pinter Theatre July 19: Simon Stephens: Pornography (2007) Port (2002) Dennis Kelly: Orphans (2009) July 19: Strange Interlude (O’Neill) at the National Theatre July 22: Martin McDonagh: The Pillowman (2003) Conor McPherson: The Weir (1997) July 22: The Cripple of Inishmaan (McDonagh) by Michael Grandage Company at Noel Coward Theatre July 23: The Night Alive (McPherson) at the Donmar Warehouse July 24: E V. Crowe: Kin (2010) Naomi Wallace: And I and Silence (2011) July 26: Paper due July 29: Roy Williams: Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads (2002) David Eldridge: In Basildon (2012) Laura Wade: Posh (2010) July 30: Othello at the National Theatre July 31: Nick Payne: Constellations (2012) Caryl Churchill: Love and Information (2012) August 1: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Stephens) at Apollo Theatre August 5: Zinnie Harris: Further than the Furthest Thing (2000) Debbie Tucker Green: Born Bad (2003) August 7: Mike Bartlett: Cock (2009) Nina Raine: Tribes (2010) 3 August 8: Macbeth at Shakespeare’s Globe August 12: David Greig: Dunsinane (2010) Forced Entertainment: Viewing: Emanuelle Enchanted (1992) (server) Reading: Tim Etchells: “A Decade of Forced Entertainment” “On Performance Writing” (server) August 13: Liolà (Pirandello) at the National Theatre August 14: Tim Crouch: The Author (2009) Gob Squad: Viewing: Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had it So Good) (2010) (server) Reading: Gob Squad: “On Structure,” “On Performing,” “On Participation” (server) August 16: Paper due Requirements: Two papers (8-10 pages each), 6 blog-posts at http://brst19001su2013.commons.yale.edu/, attendance at all theater productions, lively participation in class. Texts available on Amazon, with some available only on the UK Amazon site (www.amazon.co.uk). Xeroxes available on Classesv2 server. DVDs available for screening on the server (under “Media Gallery”). I encourage you also to read the plays we’ll be seeing, when possible. .
Recommended publications
  • Teacher Resource Pack I, Malvolio
    TEACHER RESOURCE PACK I, MALVOLIO WRITTEN & PERFORMED BY TIM CROUCH RESOURCES WRITTEN BY TIM CROUCH unicorntheatre.com timcrouchtheatre.co.uk I, MALVOLIO TEACHER RESOURCES INTRODUCTION Introduction by Tim Crouch I played the part of Malvolio in a production of Twelfth Night many years ago. Even though the audience laughed, for me, it didn’t feel like a comedy. He is a desperately unhappy man – a fortune spent on therapy would only scratch the surface of his troubles. He can’t smile, he can’t express his feelings; he is angry and repressed and deluded and intolerant, driven by hate and a warped sense of self-importance. His psychiatric problems seem curiously modern. Freud would have had a field day with him. So this troubled man is placed in a comedy of love and mistaken identity. Of course, his role in Twelfth Night would have meant something very different to an Elizabethan audience, but this is now – and his meaning has become complicated by our modern understanding of mental illness and madness. On stage in Twelfth Night, I found the audience’s laughter difficult to take. Malvolio suffers the thing we most dread – to be ridiculed when he is at his most vulnerable. He has no resolution, no happy ending, no sense of justice. His last words are about revenge and then he is gone. This, then, felt like the perfect place to start with his story. My play begins where Shakespeare’s play ends. We see Malvolio how he is at the end of Twelfth Night and, in the course of I, Malvolio, he repairs himself to the state we might have seen him in at the beginning.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of the Royal Court Young Peoples’ Theatre and Its Development Into the Young Writers’ Programme
    Building the Engine Room: A Study of the Royal Court Young Peoples’ Theatre and its Development into the Young Writers’ Programme N O Holden Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Building the Engine Room: A Study of the Royal Court’s Young Peoples’ Theatre and its Development into the Young Writers’ Programme Nicholas Oliver Holden, MA, AKC A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Lincoln for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Fine and Performing Arts College of Arts March 2018 2 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted in substantially the same form for a higher degree elsewhere. 3 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors: Dr Jacqueline Bolton and Dr James Hudson, who have been there with advice even before this PhD began. I am forever grateful for your support, feedback, knowledge and guidance not just as my PhD supervisors, but as colleagues and, now, friends. Heartfelt thanks to my Director of Studies, Professor Mark O’Thomas, who has been a constant source of support and encouragement from my years as an undergraduate student to now as an early career academic. To Professor Dominic Symonds, who took on the role of my Director of Studies in the final year; thank you for being so generous with your thoughts and extensive knowledge, and for helping to bring new perspectives to my work. My gratitude also to the University of Lincoln and the School of Fine and Performing Arts for their generous studentship, without which this PhD would not have been possible.
    [Show full text]
  • Encountering Shakespeare with Tim Crouch
    “This is you”: Encountering Shakespeare with Tim Crouch by Sara Soncini By general consensus, Tim Crouch is one of the most innovative theatre-makers to have emerged on the UK scene during the last decade or so. His work has attracted considerable critical attention both nationally and internationally, giving rise to a sizeable and ever expanding body of academic analysis. Starting with his multi-award- winning production of An Oak Tree (2005), Crouch’s plays have toured extensively and they are regularly performed in translation in a wide range of European countries, where they have been invariably hailed as a token of the vigour and vibrancy of British new writing. The fact that roughly one half of Tim Crouch’s dramatic output to date is a reworking of Shakespearean sources is a telling indication of the continued centrality of his theatrical voice on the 21st-century stage. Yet while critics usually remark upon the continuities – in terms of objectives, methods and techniques – between Crouch’s Shakespeare project and the rest of his production (see e.g. Rebellato 2016), the specific cultural meaning of his adaptations as a form of creative engagement with Shakespeare has only been cursorily addressed in the available scholarship. This is arguably a consequence of the particular slant of the project and its perceived specialized nature. Now a cycle of five solo plays, Tim Crouch’s I, Shakespeare was initially instigated by a commission from the Brighton Festival to introduce Shakespeare to a young audience. The brief resulted in I, Caliban (2003), a retelling of Saggi/Ensayos/Essais/Essays Will forever young! Shakespeare & Contemporary Culture – 11/2017 22 The Tempest from the point of view of Shakespeare’s outcast for children aged 8+.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study Guide
    A Study Guide Written by Sophie Watkiss Edited by Rosie Dalling Rehearsal photography by Marc Brenner Production photography by Johan Persson This programme has been made possible by the generous support of The Bay Foundation, Noel Coward Foundation and Universal Consolidated Group 1 Contents Section 1: Cast and Creative Team Section 2: A new version of a classic text The social and cultural positioning of Henrik Ibsen’s original play A DOLL’S HOUSE transposed in time Synopsis, Act 1 Section 3: Inside the rehearsal room The rehearsal process Rehearsing the final scene of Act One Stage 1: contextualising the scene and investigating the text Stage 2: playing the scene Conversations inside the rehearsal room, week 3. Toby Stephens – Thomas Maggie Wells – Annie Anton Lesser – Dr Rank Christopher Eccleston – Neil Kelman Tara Fitzgerald – Christine Lyle Section 4: Endnotes and bibliography 2 section 1 Cast and Creative Team Cast GILLIAN ANDERSON. NORA Trained: Goodman Theatre School. Theatre: includes The Sweetest Swing in Baseball (Royal Court), What the Night is For (Comedy), The Philanthropist (Connecticut), Absent Friends (New York). Film: includes X-Files: I Want to Believe, Boogie Woogie, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, Straightheads, The Last King of Scotland, A Cock and Bull Story, The Mighty Celt, House of Mirth – BAFTA Award, Playing by Heart, The X-Files Movie, The Mighty. Television: includes Bleak House, X-Files – Emmy Award. CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON. NEIL KELMAN Trained: Central School of Speech and Drama. Theatre: includes Electricity, Hamlet (WYP), Miss Julie (Haymarket), Waiting at the Water’s Edge (Bush), Encounters (NT Studio), Aide-Memoire (Royal Court), Abingdon Square (NT/Shared Experience), Bent (NT), Dona Rosita the Spinster, A Streetcar Named Desire (Bristol Old Vic), The Wonder (Gate).
    [Show full text]
  • Book of Abstracts
    ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES Thursday, October 11, 2018 9.45 PANEL: Across Languages Chair: Claire Hélie (Lille University) 1. Maggie Rose (Milan University) Importing new British plays to Italy. Rethinking the role of the theatre translator Over the last three decades I have worked as a co-translator and a cultural mediator between the UK and Italy, bringing plays by Alan Bennett, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Claire Dowie, David Greig, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Hanif Kureishi, Liz Lochhead, Sabrina Mahfouz, Rani Moorthy, among others,to the Italian stage. Bearing in mind a complex web of Italo-British relations, I will discuss how my strategies of cultural mediation have evolved over the years as a response to significant changes in the two theatre systems. I will explore why the task of finding a publisher and a producer\director for some British authors has been more difficult than for others, the stage and critical success of certain dramatists in Italy more limited. I will look specifically at the Italian ‘journeys’ of the following writers: Caryl Churchill and my co-translation of Top Girls (1986) and A Mouthful of Birds, Edward Bond and my co-translation of The War Plays for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin and Alan Bennett and my co-translation of The History Boys at Teatro Elfo Pucini from 2011-3013, at Teatro Elfo Puccini and national tours. Maggie Rose teaches British Theatre Studies and Performance at the University of Milan and spends part of the year in the UK for her writing and research. She is a member of the Scottish Society of Playwrights and her plays have been performed in the UK and in Italy.
    [Show full text]
  • ZINNIE HARRIS Playwright / Screenwriter/ Theatre Director
    ZINNIE HARRIS Playwright / Screenwriter/ Theatre Director In summer 2017, her new play MEET ME AT DAWN premieres at the Traverse Theatre, while her new adaptation of Ionesco’s RHINOCEROS and a revival of her trilogy THIS RESTLESS HOUSE open as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. THEATRE: 2016 THIS RESTLESS HOUSE Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Best New Play at the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland 2016 Shortlisted for Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2017 2015 HOW TO HOLD YOUR BREATH Royal Court Theatre Winner of the Berwin Lee Award, 2015 2012 THE MESSAGE ON THE WATCH Tricycle Theatre, London (as part of The Bomb season) 2011 THE WHEEL National Theatre of Scotland Winner of a Fringe First Award, Joint Winner of 2012 Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Theatre Award, and short-listed for Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. 2010 THE PANEL Tricycle Theatre, London (as part of the Women, Power and Politics season) 2009 A DOLL’S HOUSE (adapt.) Donmar Warehouse, London 2009 THE GARDEN Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 2008 FALL Traverse Theatre Edinburgh / RSC co-production 2006 MISS JULIE (adapt.) National Theatre of Scotland, Scottish Tour 2005 SOLSTICE RSC 2004 MIDWINTER RSC and Tour Winner of An Arts Foundation Fellowship Prize for Playwriting, short-listed for Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. 2001 NIGHTINGALE AND CHASE Royal Court Theatre 2000 /1 FURTHER THAN THE Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh; Tron Theatre, FURTHEST THING Glasgow; Royal National Theatre, London and Tricycle Theatre, London and British Council tour. Winner of the Peggy Ramsay Foundation Award 1999; Fringe First, 2000 and John Whiting Award 2000. Short-listed for Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright, and specially commended by Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
    [Show full text]
  • David Greig's Theatre
    THE “POLETHICS” OF THE MEDIATED/TIZED SPECTATOR IN THE GLOBAL-TECHNOLOGIZED AGE: DAVID GREIG’S THEATRE Verónica Rodríguez Universidad de Barcelona Abstract: Contemporary Scottish playwright David Greig’s dramaturgy has been concerned with the massive changes wrought across the world by neoliberal globalization in the last two decades. A political triple turn comprising ethics, the media and the spectator, and a shift between the notion “‘mediatized’ reiterative ‘expectator’” to “mediated performing spectator” within the “polethic” frame of ‘relationality’ in Greig’s works are argued in this article. It is further argued that the plays examined (Damascus, The American Pilot, Brewers Fayre and Fragile) use productive strategies like diffusion, reversibility and interchangeability, which foreground the asymmetries of the global/technologized age “polethically” mediating the global performing spectator. Key Words: Globalization, David Greig, Media, Spectator, Ethics, Politics. Recibido: 18/07/2012 Aceptado: 05/09/2012 TRIPLE TURN: ETHICS, MEDIA & SPECTATORSHIP IN THE GLOBAL-TECHNOLOGIZED AGE In his short review of Michael Kustov’s Theatre@risk, David Greig states that “[t]he thrust of Kustow’s argument is that in a corporate, mediated, screened world the last public space – public in the true sense – is the theatre” (Glasgow Sunday Herald)1 adding that he shares “his passion and confidence that theatre is the necessary art form of the century” (ibid.). Greig’s theatre emerges as a creative response in this milieu by raising questions around the role of ethics, the media and spectators in the context of the global-technologized age when the idea of the nation is being 1 This review appears at the beginning of the 2000’s Methuen edition of Kustov’s Theare@risk.
    [Show full text]
  • Laughing out Young: Laughter in Evan Placey's Girls Like That And
    Miranda Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone / Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English- speaking world 19 | 2019 Rethinking Laughter in Contemporary Anglophone Theatre Laughing Out Young: Laughter in Evan Placey’s Girls Like That and Other Plays for Teenagers (2016) Claire Hélie Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/20064 DOI: 10.4000/miranda.20064 ISSN: 2108-6559 Publisher Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès Printed version Date of publication: 7 October 2019 Electronic reference Claire Hélie, “Laughing Out Young: Laughter in Evan Placey’s Girls Like That and Other Plays for Teenagers (2016)”, Miranda [Online], 19 | 2019, Online since 09 October 2019, connection on 16 February 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/20064 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ miranda.20064 This text was automatically generated on 16 February 2021. Miranda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Laughing Out Young: Laughter in Evan Placey’s Girls Like That and Other Plays... 1 Laughing Out Young: Laughter in Evan Placey’s Girls Like That and Other Plays for Teenagers (2016) Claire Hélie 1 Evan Placey1 is a Canadian-British playwright who writes for young audiences; but unlike playwrights such as Edward Bond, Dennis Kelly or Tim Crouch, he writes for young audiences only. Some of his plays target young children, like WiLd! (2016), the monologue of an 8-year-old boy with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), other young adults, like Consensual (2015), which explores the grey area between rape and consent. His favourite audience remain teenagers and four of the plays he wrote for them were collected in Girls Like That and Other Plays for Teenagers in 2016.
    [Show full text]
  • Writing Figures of Political Resistance for the British Stage Vol1.Pdf
    Writing Figures of Political Resistance for the British Stage Volume One (of Two) Matthew John Midgley PhD University of York Theatre, Film and Television September 2015 Writing Figures of Resistance for the British Stage Abstract This thesis explores the process of writing figures of political resistance for the British stage prior to and during the neoliberal era (1980 to the present). The work of established political playwrights is examined in relation to the socio-political context in which it was produced, providing insights into the challenges playwrights have faced in creating characters who effectively resist the status quo. These challenges are contextualised by Britain’s imperial history and the UK’s ongoing participation in newer forms of imperialism, the pressures of neoliberalism on the arts, and widespread political disengagement. These insights inform reflexive analysis of my own playwriting. Chapter One provides an account of the changing strategies and dramaturgy of oppositional playwriting from 1956 to the present, considering the strengths of different approaches to creating figures of political resistance and my response to them. Three models of resistance are considered in Chapter Two: that of the individual, the collective, and documentary resistance. Each model provides a framework through which to analyse figures of resistance in plays and evaluate the strategies of established playwrights in negotiating creative challenges. These models are developed through subsequent chapters focussed upon the subjects tackled in my plays. Chapter Three looks at climate change and plays responding to it in reflecting upon my creative process in The Ends. Chapter Four explores resistance to the Iraq War, my own military experience and the challenge of writing autobiographically.
    [Show full text]
  • Rewriting Shakespeare's Plays for and by the Contemporary Stage 3 Becomes the Constant Object of Actors’ Investigation
    Rewriting Shakespeare’s Plays For and By the Contemporary Stage Rewriting Shakespeare’s Plays For and By the Contemporary Stage Edited by Michael Dobson and Estelle Rivier-Arnaud Rewriting Shakespeare’s Plays For and By the Contemporary Stage Edited by Michael Dobson and Estelle Rivier-Arnaud This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Michael Dobson, Estelle Rivier-Arnaud and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8280-1 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8280-4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Meaning and Motivations for a Contemporary Appropriation of Shakespeare’s Drama PART ONE: The Rewriting Process under Scrutiny and its Stakes Chapter One ............................................................................................... 11 Unlearning Tradition: William Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jane Smiley’s and Jocelyn Moorhouse’s A Thousand Acres Anne-Kathrin Marquardt Chapter Two .............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Les Auteurs Dramatiques Anglais Contemporains À L'épreuve Des Pratiques Collaboratives
    Document generated on 10/02/2021 2:33 a.m. Tangence Les auteurs dramatiques anglais contemporains à l’épreuve des pratiques collaboratives Contemporary English playwrights’ testing of collaborative practices Séverine Ruset Questions d’auctorialité sur les scènes contemporaines Article abstract Number 121, 2019 Although the figure of the author remains retains significant authority in contemporary English theatre, which traditionally accords a place of choice to URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1070453ar new dramatic writing, it has been undermined since the early 21st century by DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1070453ar a notable increase in collaborative practices. Founded on an analysis of playwrights’ discourses regarding their role (as it falls to them, but also as they See table of contents lay claim to it), this article examines how these evolutions affect the status of authors within the English theatre world or, more precisely, the recognition and valorization system they belong to and whose outlines they help reshape through their positions. It focuses, notably, on the development of a Publisher(s) collaborative stance that is particularly evident in the will expressed by a Tangence growing number of authors not to relinquish their authority, but to share it a bit more, at least, with both their artistic collaborators and the spectators. ISSN 1189-4563 (print) 1710-0305 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Ruset, S. (2019). Les auteurs dramatiques anglais contemporains à l’épreuve des pratiques collaboratives. Tangence, (121), 81–102. https://doi.org/10.7202/1070453ar Tous droits réservés © Tangence, 2019 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online.
    [Show full text]
  • Europe at the Crossroads
    Europe at the Crossroads Zinnie Harris’s How to Hold Your Breath Janine HAUTHAL Vrije Universiteit Brussel1 “Where Were All the Plays About Brexit?”2: Europe and/in British Theatre When, on the morning of the 24th of June 2016, it turned out that the majority of the British had voted for ‘Brexit’ in the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, theatre critic Dominic Cavendish wondered publicly on his twitter account why British theatre had failed to tackle this momentous decision proactively. However, as fellow critic Matt Trueman suggested in response: “We might not have seen Brexit: the Musical – and nor would we want to – but many playwrights have explored the social and political factors that fed into the result” (n. pag.). Indeed, since the 1990s, a number of British plays have been set in or concerned with Europe, and Eastern Europe in particular, as e.g. Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest (1990), Tariq Ali and Howard Brenton’s Moscow Gold (1990), David Greig’s Europe (1994), Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1995), Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Break of Day (1995) as well as David Edgar’s trilogy The Shape of the Table (1990), Pentecost (1994), and The Prisoner’s Dilemma (2001) demonstrate. The majority of these plays were premiered between 1990 and 1995, i.e. in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the ‘Eastern bloc’ and the collapse of communism. They are therefore frequently referred to as ‘post-wall plays’.3 Depicting 1 The research for this article was financed by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).
    [Show full text]