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This book gives an in-depth and invigorating analysis of reflexivity in recent British drama - the way drama comments on drama. The interplay of dramatic forms, the cross-fertilization of historical traditions are explored in relation to major contemporary authors and theatrical practices. When drama takes itself as its own object of study it paradoxically highlights the most vital issues of its time. Key questions are raised about the nature of theatricality in play-writing and performance in this the first full-length treatment of the subject.
List of contents
Notes on Contributors - Preface; N.Boireau - PART 1: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES - Greeks in Drama: Four Contemporary Issues; N.Vigouroux-Frey - The Revival of Medieval Forms in Recent Political Drama; E.Angel-Perez - Cultural Transformations of Subversive Jacobean Drama: Contemporary Sub-Versions of Tragedy, Comedy and Tragi-Comedy; K.P.Muller - Women Beware Women by Howard Barker (with Thomas Middleton), or: 'The Terrible Consistency'; M.Morel - Japanese Theatrical Forms in Edward Bond's The Bundle and Jackets; M.Prunet - PART 2: THE THEATRICAL IS THE REAL - Now Converging, Now Diverging: Beckett's Metatheatre; R.Cohn - Pinter and the Pinteresque: An Author Trapped by His Own Image?; M.Ghilardi-Santacatterina & A.Sierz - 'The Play's the Thing': the Metatheatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker; C.Dymkowski - Tom Stoppard's Metadrama: the Haunting Repetition; N.Boireau - Hauntings: Ghosts and the Limits of Realism in Cloud Nine and Fen by Caryl Churchill; A.Wilson - PART 3: ENLIGHTENING INTERPLAYS - Watching for Dolphins by John McGrath: the Single Voicing of a Multiple Voice Performance; J-P.Simard - Devising Drama on Drama: the Community and Theatre Traditions; A.Fuchs - Representing Gender/Representing Self: a Reflection on Role-Playing in Performance Theory and Practice; L.Goodman - Translating, Adapting, Re-writing: Three Facets of Christopher Hampton's Works as a Playwright; A-R.Glaap - Les Enfants de Parodie: the Enlightened Incest of Anglo-American Musicals; J.Elsom - General Bibliography - Index
Summary
This book gives an in-depth and invigorating analysis of reflexivity in recent British drama - the way drama comments on drama. The interplay of dramatic forms, the cross-fertilization of historical traditions are explored in relation to major contemporary authors and theatrical practices. When drama takes itself as its own object of study it paradoxically highlights the most vital issues of its time. Key questions are raised about the nature of theatricality in play-writing and performance in this the first full-length treatment of the subject.
