The Contemporary History Play
The Contemporary History Play

Author: Benjamin Poore

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-05-30

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 135016965X

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Something exciting is happening with the contemporary history play. New writing by playwrights such as Jackie Sibblies Drury, Samuel Adamson, Hannah Khalil, Cordelia Lynn, and Lucy Kirkwood, makes powerful theatrical use of the past, but does not fit into critics' familiar categories of historical drama. In this book, Benjamin Poore provides readers with tools to name and critically analyse these changes. The Contemporary History Play contends that many history plays are becoming more complex and layered in their aesthetic approaches, as playwrights work through the experience of being surrounded by numerous and varied forms of historical representation in the twenty-first century. For theatre scholars, this book offers a means of interpreting how new writing relies on the past and notions of historicity to generate meaning and resonance in the present. For playwrights and students of playwriting, the book is a guide to the history play's recent past, and to the state of the art: what techniques and formulas have been popular, the tropes that are widely used, and how artists have found ways of renewing or overturning established conventions.

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's History Plays
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's History Plays

Author: Michael Hattaway

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-12-05

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780521775397

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Publisher Description (unedited publisher data) Shakespeare's history plays have been performed more in recent years than ever before, in Britain, North America, and in Europe. This volume provides an accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's history and Roman plays. It is attentive throughout to the plays as they have been performed over the centuries since they were written. The first part offers accounts of the genre of the history play, of Renaissance historiography, of pageants and masques, and of women's roles, as well as comparisons with history plays in Spain and the Netherlands. Chapters in the second part look at individual plays as well as other Shakespearean texts which are closely related to the histories. The Companion offers a full bibliography, genealogical tables, and a list of principal and recurrent characters. It is a comprehensive guide for students, researchers and theatre-goers alike.

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).

A History of Children's Play and Play Environments
A History of Children's Play and Play Environments

Author: Joe L. Frost

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-04-02

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 1135251665

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Children’s play throughout history has been free, spontaneous, and intertwined with work, set in the playgrounds of the fields, streams, and barnyards. Children in cities enjoyed similar forms of play but their playgrounds were the vacant lands and parks. Today, children have become increasingly inactive, abandoning traditional outdoor play for sedentary, indoor cyber play and poor diets. The consequences of play deprivation, the elimination and diminution of recess, and the abandonment of outdoor play are fundamental issues in a growing crisis that threatens the health, development, and welfare of children. This valuable book traces the history of children’s play and play environments from their roots in ancient Greece and Rome to the present time in the high stakes testing environment. Through this exploration, scholar Dr. Joe Frost shows how this history informs where we are today and why we need to re-establish play as a priority. Ultimately, the author proposes active solutions to play deprivation. This book is a must-read for scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of early childhood education and child development.

History Is a Contemporary Literature
History Is a Contemporary Literature

Author: Ivan Jablonka

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1501710761

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Ivan Jablonka’s History Is a Contemporary Literature offers highly innovative perspectives on the writing of history, the relationship between literature and the social sciences, and the way that both social-scientific inquiry and literary explorations contribute to our understanding of the world. Jablonka argues that the act and art of writing, far from being an afterthought in the social sciences, should play a vital role in the production of knowledge in all stages of the researcher’s work and embody or even constitute the understanding obtained. History (along with sociology and anthropology) can, he contends, achieve both greater rigor and wider audiences by creating a literary experience through a broad spectrum of narrative modes. Challenging scholars to adopt investigative, testimonial, and other experimental writing techniques as a way of creating and sharing knowledge, Jablonka envisions a social science literature that will inspire readers to become actively engaged in understanding their own pasts and to relate their histories to the present day. Lamenting the specialization that has isolated the academy from the rest of society, History Is a Contemporary Literature aims to bring imagination and audacity into the practice of scholarship, drawing on the techniques of literature to strengthen the methods of the social sciences.

A Contemporary History of Exclusion
A Contemporary History of Exclusion

Author: Balázs Majtényi

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2016-01-01

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 9633867274

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The volume presents the changing situation of the Roma in the second half of the 20th century and examines the politics of the Hungarian state regarding minorities by analyzing legal regulations, policy documents, archival sources and sociological surveys. In the first phase analyzed (1945-61), the authors show the efforts of forced assimilation by the communist state. The second phase (1961-89) began with the party resolution denying nationality status to the Roma. Gypsy culture was equivalent with culture of poverty that must be eliminated. Forced assimilation through labor activities continued. The Roma adapted to new conditions and yet kept their distinct identity. From the 1970s, Roma intellectuals began an emancipatory movement, and its legacy is felt until this day. Although the third phase (1989-2010) brought about freedoms and rights for the Roma, with large sums spent on various Roma-related programs, the situation on the ground nevertheless did not improve. Segregation and marginalization continues, and it is rampant. The authors powerfully conclude: while Roma became part of the political community, they are still not part of the national one. Subjects: Romanies—Hungary. Romanies—Hungary—Social conditions. Marginality, Social—Hungary. Romanies—Legal status, laws, etc.—Hungary. Minorities—Government policy—Hungary. Hungary—Ethnic relations. Hungary—Social policy.

The Latest Catastrophe
The Latest Catastrophe

Author: Henry Rousso

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-07-06

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 022616523X

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The writing of recent history tends to be deeply marked by conflict, by personal and collective struggles rooted in horrific traumas and bitter controversies. Frequently, today’s historians can find themselves researching the same events that they themselves lived through. This book reflects on the concept and practices of what is called “contemporary history,” a history of the present time, and identifies special tensions in the field between knowledge and experience, distance and proximity, and objectivity and subjectivity. Henry Rousso addresses the rise of contemporary history and the relations of present-day societies to their past, especially their legacies of political violence. Focusing on France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, he shows that for contemporary historians, the recent past has become a problem to be solved. No longer unfolding as a series of traditions to be respected or a set of knowledge to be transmitted and built upon, history today is treated as a constant act of mourning or memory, an attempt to atone. Historians must also negotiate with strife within this field, as older scholars who may have lived through events clash with younger historians who also claim to understand the experiences. Ultimately, The Latest Catastrophe shows how historians, at times against their will, have themselves become actors in a history still being made.