Affects in 21st-Century British Theatre

Affects in 21st-Century British Theatre PDF Author: Mireia Aragay
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030584860
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This book explores the various manifestations of affects in British theatre of the 21st century. The introduction gives a concise survey of existing and emerging theoretical and research trends and argues in favour of a capacious understanding of affects that mediates between more autonomous and more social approaches. The twelve chapters in the collection investigate major works in Britain by playwrights and theatre makers including Mojisola Adebayo, Mike Bartlett, Alice Birch, Caryl Churchill, Tim Crouch and Andy Smith, Rachel De-lahay, Reginald Edmund, James Fritz, David Greig, Idris Goodwin, Zinnie Harris, Kieran Hurley, Lucy Kirkwood, Anders Lustgarten, Yolanda Mercy, Anthony Neilson, Lucy Prebble, Sh!t Theatre, Penelope Skinner, Stef Smith, Kae Tempest and debbie tucker green. The interpretations identify significant areas of tension as they relate affects to the fields of cognition, politics and hope. In this, the chapters uncover interrelations of thought, intention and empathy; they reveal the nexus between identities, institutions and ideology; and, finally, they explore how theatre can accomplish the transition from a sense of crisis to utopian visions.

Affects in 21st-Century British Theatre

Affects in 21st-Century British Theatre PDF Author: Mireia Aragay
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030584860
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book

Book Description
This book explores the various manifestations of affects in British theatre of the 21st century. The introduction gives a concise survey of existing and emerging theoretical and research trends and argues in favour of a capacious understanding of affects that mediates between more autonomous and more social approaches. The twelve chapters in the collection investigate major works in Britain by playwrights and theatre makers including Mojisola Adebayo, Mike Bartlett, Alice Birch, Caryl Churchill, Tim Crouch and Andy Smith, Rachel De-lahay, Reginald Edmund, James Fritz, David Greig, Idris Goodwin, Zinnie Harris, Kieran Hurley, Lucy Kirkwood, Anders Lustgarten, Yolanda Mercy, Anthony Neilson, Lucy Prebble, Sh!t Theatre, Penelope Skinner, Stef Smith, Kae Tempest and debbie tucker green. The interpretations identify significant areas of tension as they relate affects to the fields of cognition, politics and hope. In this, the chapters uncover interrelations of thought, intention and empathy; they reveal the nexus between identities, institutions and ideology; and, finally, they explore how theatre can accomplish the transition from a sense of crisis to utopian visions.

Twenty-First Century Anxieties

Twenty-First Century Anxieties PDF Author: Merle Tönnies
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110758253
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The volume uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine how 21st-century British theatre increasingly intercuts dystopian and utopian elements to create innovative strategies for addressing current social and political concerns. In the case studies, a key role is given to the ways in which the selected plays use real and fictional spaces on stage and thereby manage to construct interactional spaces which the spectators are invited to share.

Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain

Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain PDF Author: Vicky Angelaki
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474213197
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
In a context of financial crisis that has often produced a feeling of identity crisis for the individual, the theatre has provided a unifying forum, treating spectators as citizens. This book critically deals with representative plays and playwrights who have stood out in the UK and internationally in the post-recession era, delivering theatre that in the process of being truthful to the contemporary experience has also redefined theatrical form and content. Built around a series of case-studies of seminal contemporary plays exploring issues of social and political crisis, the volume is augmented by interviews with UK and international directors, artistic directors and the playwrights whose work is examined. As well as considering UK stage productions, Angelaki analyses European, North American and Australian productions, of post-2000 plays by writers including: Caryl Churchill, Mike Bartlett, Dennis Kelly, Simon Stephens, Martin Crimp, debbie tucker green, Duncan Macmillan, Nick Payne and Lucy Prebble. At the heart of the analysis and of the plays discussed is an appreciation of what interconnects artists and audiences, enabling the kind of mutual recognition that fosters the feeling of collectivity. As the book argues, this is the state whereby the theatre meets its social imperative by eradicating the distance between stage and spectator and creating a genuinely shared space of ideas and dialogue, taking on topics including the economy, materialism, debt culture, the environment, urban protest, social media and mental health. Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain demonstrates that such contemporary playwriting invests in and engenders moments of performative reciprocity and spirituality so as to present the audience with a cohesive collective experience.

The Theatre of Simon Stephens

The Theatre of Simon Stephens PDF Author: Jacqueline Bolton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474238661
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Simon Stephens is one of Europe's pre-eminent living playwrights. Since the beginning of his career in 1998, Stephens's award-winning plays have been translated into over twenty languages, been produced on four continents, and continue to feature prominently in the repertoires of European theatre. His original works have garnered numerous awards, with his stage adaptation of Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time winning seven Olivier Awards and enjoying acclaim on Broadway. In the first book to provide a critical account of Stephens's work, Jacqueline Bolton draws upon the playwright's unpublished personal archives, as well as original interviews with directors and actors, to advance detailed analyses of his original plays and their productions, examine contemporary approaches to playwriting, and deliver insights into broader debates regarding text, performance and authorship. Caridad Svich addresses Stephens's theatrical output between 2014 and 2019, and essays from Mireia Aragay and James Hudson provide additional perspectives on international productions and the playwright's adaptive practices. Andrew Haydon's edited interviews with six of Stephens's key collaborators – Marianne Elliott, Sarah Frankcom, Sean Holmes, Ramin Gray, Katie Mitchell and Carrie Cracknell – further illuminate the work from a director's viewpoint. The Theatre of Simon Stephens situates the playwright's oeuvre within his embrace of aesthetics and working relations encountered in European theatre cultures, focusing in particular upon shifting attitudes towards the function of the playwright, the relationship between playwrights and directors, and the role of the audience in live performance. The Companion serves as a lively and engaging study of one of the most restlessly creative and important dramatists of our generation.

Crisis, Representation and Resilience

Crisis, Representation and Resilience PDF Author: Clare Wallace
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350180866
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A collection of incisive investigations into the ways that 21st-century British theatre works with - and through - crisis. It pays particular attention to the way in which writers and practitioners consider the ethical and social challenges of crisis. Anchored in an interdisciplinary approach that draws from sociology, cultural theory, feminism, performance and philosophy, the book brings multi-faceted ideas into dialogue with the diverse aesthetics, practices and themes of a range of theatrical work produced in Britain since 2005. Topics discussed include: Ageing Austerity Gender Migrancy Multiculturalism Aesthetics Companies discussed include: Theatre Uncut Lost Dog Camden People's People Lung Brighton People's Theatre Phosphoros Theatre Playwrights discussed include: Jez Butterworth Caryl Churchill Tim Crouch Vivienne Franzmann James Graham debbie tucker green Ella Hickson Charlene James Lucy Kirkwood Simon Longman Cordelia Lynn Simon Stephens Jack Thorne Chris Thorpe Gloria Williams Building on recent publications in the area and engaging in dialogue with them, Crisis, Representation and Resilience considers how crisis is being re-thought and re-orientated through theatrical performance and the ways theatre invites us to respond to the many challenges of the contemporary times.

Livecasting in Twenty-First-Century British Theatre

Livecasting in Twenty-First-Century British Theatre PDF Author: Heidi Lucja Liedke
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350340987
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This significant contribution to the study of the live and recorded broadcasting of stage plays focuses on National Theatre Live a decade after its launch in 2009. Assessing livecasting through the concepts of spectacle, materiality and engagement, it examines the role played by audiences in livecasting. Illustrated by in-depth analyses of recent NT Live shows, including A Midsummer Night's Dream (2019), Antony and Cleopatra (2018) and Small Island (2019), the book is complemented by insights from practitioners involved in the making of the livecasts. Finally, livecasting is contextualized within recently emerged forms of Covidian (virtual) theatre during the pandemic in order to offer some thoughts on the future of the genre of theatrical performance. Combining lively analyses of recent theatre performances with auto-ethnographic accounts, Heidi Lucja Liedke turns to 20th-century thinkers such as Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht in order to understand livecasting's place in a continuum of developments taking place on the borders of media, film and performance for the past 100 years. As well as embedding livecasting in its historical context of 19th-century electrophone technology, Liedke assesses its position in contemporary discourses on the meaning of theatre for spectators in the pre- and post-pandemic moment, and points towards the form's future.

Twenty-First Century Drama

Twenty-First Century Drama PDF Author: Siân Adiseshiah
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137484039
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
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.

Black Women Centre Stage

Black Women Centre Stage PDF Author: Paola Prieto López
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003824927
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
This book examines the political alliances that are built across the diaspora in contemporary plays written by Black women playwrights in the UK. Through the concept of creative diasporic solidarity, it offers an innovative theoretical approach to examine the ways in which the playwrights respond creatively to the violence and marginalisation of Black communities, especially Black women. This study demonstrates that theatre can act as a productive space for the ethical encounter with the Other (understood in terms of alterity, as someone different from the self) by examining the possibilities of these plays to activate the spectators’ responsibility and solidarity towards different types of violence experienced by Black women, offering alternative modes of relationality. The book engages with a range of contemporary works written by Black women playwrights in the UK, including Mojisola Adebayo, Theresa Ikoko, Diana Nneka Atuona, Gloria Williams, Charlene James, or Yusra Warsama, bringing to the fore a gendered and intersectional approach to the analysis of the texts. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in contemporary theatre, gender studies and diaspora studies.

Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre

Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre PDF Author: Catherine Love
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000839788
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre interrogates the paradoxical nature of theatre texts, which have been understood both as separate literary objects in their own right and as material for performance. Drawing on analysis of contemporary practitioners who are working creatively with text, the book re-examines the relationship between text and performance within the specific context of British theatre. The chapters discuss a wide range of theatre-makers creating work in the UK from the 1990s onwards, from playwrights like Tim Crouch and Jasmine Lee-Jones to companies including Action Hero and RashDash. In doing so, the book addresses issues such as theatrical authorship, artistic intention, and the apparent incompleteness of plays as both written and performed phenomena. Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre also explores the implications of changing technologies of page and stage, analysing the impact of recent developments in theatre-making, editing, and publishing on the status of the theatre text. Written for scholars, students, and practitioners alike, Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre provides an original perspective on one of the most enduring problems to occupy theatre practice and scholarship.

Finance, Terror, and Science on Stage

Finance, Terror, and Science on Stage PDF Author: Kerstin Frank
Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
ISBN: 3823391429
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This collection of essays examines the contribution of British plays to key social, political, and intellectual debates since 2000. It explores some of the most pressing concerns that have dominated the public discourse in Britain in the last decade, focusing on their representation in dramatic texts. Each essay provides an in-depth analysis of one play, assessing its particular contribution to the debate in question. The book aims to show how contemporary drama has developed unique ways to present the complexities and ambiguities of certain issues with aesthetic as well as emotional appeal.