Feminism, Dramaturgy, and the Contemporary British History Play

Feminism, Dramaturgy, and the Contemporary British History Play

Author: Rebecca Benzie

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-08-22

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1350191280

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When we think of the contemporary British history play, why might we automatically think of playwrights such as David Hare, Howard Brenton, Peter Gill and Edward Bond? Because for decades the writing of the history play has been the preserve of the white male. This book provides a vital feminist intervention into the dramaturgy of history plays, investigating work produced at major British theatres from 2000 to the present, written by a generation of innovative women playwrights. This much-needed study explores the use of history – specifically Elizabethan, Restoration, Victorian and early 20th century – in contemporary playwriting in order to interrogate the gender politics of this work. Within the framework of contemporary feminism – including the pivotal #MeToo movement – the book looks at post-2000s feminist drama that somehow represents the past. Through delving into the recurring tropes and their politics in the light of current feminist debate, the author helps us grasp how these plays essentially re-imagine gender politics. Plays that are considered include Emilia (Morgan Lloyd Malcolm), Swive [Elizabeth] (Ella Hickson), An August Bank Holiday Lark (Deborah McAndrew), The Empress (Tanika Gupta), Red Velvet (Lolita Chakrabarti), Scuttlers (Rona Munro), I, Joan (Charlie Josephine), Blue Stockings and Nell Gwynn (Jessica Swale), and the musical Six (Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss).


Feminism, Dramaturgy, and the Contemporary British History Play

Feminism, Dramaturgy, and the Contemporary British History Play

Author: Rebecca Benzie

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-08-22

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1350191272

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When we think of the contemporary British history play, why might we automatically think of playwrights such as David Hare, Howard Brenton, Peter Gill and Edward Bond? Because for decades the writing of the history play has been the preserve of the white male. This book provides a vital feminist intervention into the dramaturgy of history plays, investigating work produced at major British theatres from 2000 to the present, written by a generation of innovative women playwrights. This much-needed study explores the use of history – specifically Elizabethan, Restoration, Victorian and early 20th century – in contemporary playwriting in order to interrogate the gender politics of this work. Within the framework of contemporary feminism – including the pivotal #MeToo movement – the book looks at post-2000s feminist drama that somehow represents the past. Through delving into the recurring tropes and their politics in the light of current feminist debate, the author helps us grasp how these plays essentially re-imagine gender politics. Plays that are considered include Emilia (Morgan Lloyd Malcolm), Swive [Elizabeth] (Ella Hickson), An August Bank Holiday Lark (Deborah McAndrew), The Empress (Tanika Gupta), Red Velvet (Lolita Chakrabarti), Scuttlers (Rona Munro), I, Joan (Charlie Josephine), Blue Stockings and Nell Gwynn (Jessica Swale), and the musical Six (Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss).


Dramaturgy

Dramaturgy

Author: Mary Luckhurst

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-01-19

Total Pages: 19

ISBN-13: 1139448188

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Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre is a substantial history of the origins of dramaturgs and literary managers. It frames the explosion of professional appointments in England within a wider continental map reaching back to the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century Germany, examining the work of the major theorists and practitioners of dramaturgy, from Granville Barker and Gotthold Lessing to Brecht and Tynan. This study positions Brecht's model of dramaturgy as central to the worldwide revolution in theatre-making practices, and it also makes a substantial argument for Granville Barker's and Tynan's contributions to the development of literary management. With the territories of play and performance-making being increasingly hotly contested, and the public's appetite for new plays showing no sign of diminishing, Mary Luckhurst investigates the dramaturg as a cultural and political phenomenon.


Indian Modern Dance, Feminism and Transnationalism

Indian Modern Dance, Feminism and Transnationalism

Author: Prarthana Purkayastha

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-10-29

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1137375175

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This book examines modern dance as a form of embodied resistance to political and cultural nationalism in India through the works of five selected modern dance makers: Rabindranath Tagore, Uday Shankar, Shanti Bardhan, Manjusri Chaki Sircar and Ranjabati Sircar.


Theatre and Religion on Krishna’s Stage

Theatre and Religion on Krishna’s Stage

Author: D. Mason

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-05-25

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0230621589

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Theatre and Religion on Krishna s Stage examines the history and form of India's râs lila folk theatre, and discusses how this theatre functions as a mechanism of worship and spirituality among Krishna devotees in India. From analyses of performances and conversations with performers, audience, and local scholars, Mason argues that râs lila actors and audience alike actively assume roles that locate them together in the spiritual reality that the play represents. Correlating Krishna devotion and theories of religious experience, this book suggests that the emotional experience of theatrical fiction may arise from the propensity of audiences to play out roles of their own through which they share a performance's reality.


Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature

Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature

Author: Li-hua Ying

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 825

ISBN-13: 1538130068

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Modern Chinese literature has been flourishing for over a century, with varying degrees of intensity and energy at different junctures of history and points of locale. An integral part of world literature from the moment it was born, it has been in constant dialogue with its counterparts from the rest of the world. As it has been challenged and enriched by external influences, it has contributed to the wealth of literary culture of the entire world. In terms of themes and styles, modern Chinese literature is rich and varied; from the revolutionary to the pastoral, from romanticism to feminism, from modernism to post-modernism, critical realism, psychological realism, socialist realism, and magical realism. Indeed, it encompasses a full range of ideological and aesthetic concerns. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature presents a broad perspective on the development and history of literature in modern China. It offers a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, literary and historical developments, trends, genres, and concepts that played a central role in the evolution of modern Chinese literature.


Dramatherapy and Social Theatre

Dramatherapy and Social Theatre

Author: Sue Jennings

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-06-24

Total Pages: 519

ISBN-13: 1134101678

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Dramatherapy and Social Theatre: Necessary Dialogues considers the nature of drama, theatre and dramatherapy, examining how dramatherapy has evolved over the past decade and how the relationship between dramatherapy and social theatre has developed as a result. In this book Sue Jennings brings together international dramatherapists and theatre practitioners to challenge, clarify, describe and debate some of the theoretical and practical issues in dramatherapy and social theatre. Contributors cover topics including: dramatherapy in communities ground rules and definitions cross-cultural perspectives dramatherapy with adoptive and foster families research with professional actors. Dramatherapy and Social Theatre is illustrated throughout with case vignettes providing examples of how theatre and therapeutic processes can be brought together. It will be valuable reading for both professionals and students involved in dramatherapy and theatre studies.


Contemporary British Dramatists

Contemporary British Dramatists

Author: Kathryn Ann Berney

Publisher: Saint James Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 920

ISBN-13:

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Concise discussions of the lives and principal works of contemporary British playwrights, written by subject experts.


Performing the Unstageable

Performing the Unstageable

Author: Karen Quigley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-02-20

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 135005545X

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From the gouging out of eyes in Shakespeare's King Lear or Sarah Kane's Cleansed, to the adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, theatre has long been intrigued by the staging of challenging plays and impossible texts, images or ideas. Performing the Unstageable: Success, Imagination, Failure examines this phenomenon of what the theatre cannot do or has not been able to do at various points in its history. The book explores four principal areas to which unstageability most frequently pertains: stage directions, adaptations, violence and ghosts. Karen Quigley incorporates a wide range of case studies of both historical and contemporary theatrical productions including the Wooster Group's exploration of Hamlet via the structural frame of John Gielgud's 1964 filmed production, Elevator Repair Service's eight-hour staging of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and a selection of impossible stage directions drawn from works by such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, Philip Glass, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane and Alistair McDowall. Placing theatre history and performance analysis in such a context, Performing the Unstageable values what is not possible, and investigates the tricky underside of theatre's most fundamental function to bring things to the place of showing: the stage.


Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts

Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts

Author: Kiernan Ryan

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2001-03-07

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780312230364

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This volume focuses on both the texts of Shakespeare's plays, and the many contexts in which they have been produced, from their first performances to contemporary reproductions. This book introduces nine of Shakespeare's major plays and focuses on the critical practices of close reading, historical contextualisation, and a lively question-and-answer teaching style. There is also detailed attention to Shakespeare on stage, on film, and in the new communications technologies and to new theoretical approaches to Shakespeare's plays.