Brenton Plays: 2

Brenton Plays: 2 PDF Author: Howard Brenton
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408160994
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
Howard Brenton is one of Britain's best-known and most controversial dramatists The Romans in Britain was the play that brought calls to bring back censorship when it was first staged at the National in 1980. It conjures up "an era that is culturally as well as historically remote which is a notoriously difficult task, but Mr Brenton acheives it with great skill and effect...a very good play indeed." In The Thirteenth Night: "He sets the characters of Shakespeare to find the elements in the British character which could transform an Englishman into a Stalin, and closes in on his creation with an overall wit to match his horror" (The Times). The Genius "is teeming with memorable stage pictures, and bristling with Brenton's very best writing: flinty, impassioned, explosive" (Financial Times). In Bloody Poetry "Brenton is doing something markedly ambitious in this phantasmagoric play. He is celebrating the idea of the committed artist who seeks to stir and provoke sullen, defeated bourgeois England. At the same time, with clear-eyed honesty, he shows how difficult it is to upset the moral order" (The Guardian). Greenland is "on the one hand a cry of disillusionment with established political forms, on the other it is full of typically lively Brentonesque satire and lampoons...Brenton's message is a welcome antidote to the madness in which we all now seem to be living and a sharp blast against patriarchy as well as other attendant woes" (City Limits).

Sore Throats

Sore Throats PDF Author: Howard Brenton
Publisher: London : E. Methuen
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description


Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn PDF Author: Howard Brenton
Publisher: NHB Modern Plays
ISBN: 9781848420991
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Commissioned specially for Shakespeare's Globe, Howard Brenton's epic new play that premeired there in July 2010.

Bloody Poetry

Bloody Poetry PDF Author: Howard Brenton
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573690389
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
This fascinating drama, staged to acclaim in London and New York, has in its cast of characters Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and Claire Goodwin. The play is about radicalism artistic, political and more. Taking place in Italy, it concerns the characters' various ideas about radical politics and free love. Along the way, a number of serious questions are raised, not the least of which is why fervent radicals seem so often to be done in by their reprehensible characters. At the end of the play Byron attends the cremation of Shelley on the beach at Viareggio and delivers a stunning ovation over the pyre: "Burn him. Burn us all. A great big bloody beautiful fire."

The Romans in Britain

The Romans in Britain PDF Author: Howard Brenton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472574419
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
First staged at London's National Theatre in 1980, having been commissioned by Peter Hall, The Romans in Britain contrasts Julius Caesar's Roman invasion of Celtic Britain with the Saxon invasion of Romano-Celtic Britain, and finally Britain's involvement in Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the late twentieth century. As these scenes bleed into one another, Brenton suggests what it might have been like for these people to meet. Three Roman soldiers sexually assault a young druid priest. A lone, wounded Saxon soldier stumbles into a field, a nightmare made real. An army intelligence officer begins to lose his mind in the Irish fields. Brenton's sinewy vernaculars summon a lost history of cultural collision and oppression, of fear and sorrow. This edition features an introduction by Philip Roberts, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds, and a foreword by director Sam West.

Making Plays

Making Plays PDF Author: D. Wu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349653055
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Making Plays explores great drama of the last two decades through the eyes of those who write it, and those who direct it. It is at once a masterclass on theatrical technique and a unique insight into the ways in which great dramatists of our time have reacted to a rapidly changing world. In this book Duncan Wu talks to Michael Attenborough, Alan Bennett, Michael Blakemore, Howard Brenton, David Edgar, Sir Richard Eyre, Michael Frayn, Sir David Hare, Nicholas Hytner, and Max Stafford-Clark.

Pravda

Pravda PDF Author: Howard Brenton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 147257480X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart, and democracy itself cannot function. Pravda (which means "truth") is a satire written at the height of Thatcherism when huge political changes were afoot. The play essentially studies, through black humour and close scrutiny, the tabloid ethic and the media industry as a get-rich-quick-fix. In the programme for the original 1985 production of Pravda, Brenton wrote: "Pravda means 'the truth'. English newspapers aren't propaganda sheets. The question is, why do so many of them choose to behave as if they are?" The character of Lambert Le Roux is a South African newspaper tycoon and the owner of several companies, striding his way through the regional papers en route to Fleet Street. Turning broadsheets tabloid, dumbing down the message, and stretching the truth, Le Roux takes no prisoners as he manipulates politicians and creates a media monopoly out of a once-respected industry. Le Roux is bent on dominating England's press as he has elsewhere in the world. As we see Le Roux accomplish his aims, we see also how the press is not the organ of truth we like to think it is. The dissemination of the truth is no longer its primary goal under the 'Lambert Le Rouxs' of our world. What is important now is what sells. The play is an epic satire on the media in the Thatcher era; a morality tale about how Andrew, a young liberal journalist, finally succumbs to Le Roux, who makes him editor of a tabloid; and – allegedly – the play is a direct representation of Rupert Murdoch who, even in 1985, was a major force in media ownership. Howard Brenton's and David Hare's first collaboration since Brassneck in 1973, Pravda was premiered at the National Theatre in May 1985, starring Anthony Hopkins and directed by David Hare, and was awarded the London Standard Best Play Award, the City Limits Best Play Award, and the Plays and Players Best Play Award. This Modern Classics edition features an introduction by Philip Roberts, Emeritus Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds, and a foreword by Jonathan Church.

Thatcher's Theatre

Thatcher's Theatre PDF Author: D. Keith Peacock
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313031770
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The Thatcher administration of 1979 to 1990 had a profound and apparently lasting effect on British theatre and drama. It is now roughly a decade since the fall of Margaret Thatcher and, with the benefit of hindsight, it has become possible to disentangle fact from fantasy concerning her effect on the British theatre. During her administration, there was a significant cultural shift which affected drama in Britain. While some critics have argued that the theatre was simply affected by financial cutbacks in arts subsidies, this volume challenges that view. While it looks at the economic influence of Thatcher's policies, it also examines how her ideology shaped theatrical and dramatic discourse. It begins by defining Thatcherism and illustrating its cultural influence. It then examines the consequences of Thatcherite policies through the agency of the Arts Council of Great Britain. Having established this political and cultural environment, the book considers in detail the effect of Thatcher's administration on the subject-matter and dramatic and theatrical discourse of left-wing drama and on the subsidized political theatre companies which proliferated during the 1970s. Attention is then given to the development of constituency theatres, such as Women's and Black Theatre, which assumed an oppositional cultural stance and, in some cases, attempted to develop characteristic theatrical and dramatic discourses. The penultimate chapter deals with the effect of Thatcherite economic policy and ideology on new writing and performance, while the final chapter draws conclusions and suggests that the cultural shift perpetrated by the Thatcher regime has altered the status of subsidized theatre from an agency of cultural, spiritual, social, or psychological welfare to an entertainment industry which is viewed as largely irrelevant to the workings of society.

In Your Face

In Your Face PDF Author: Mandy Merck
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814756395
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
At a time when "sexy" can be an adjective for anything, when sexual awareness is declared to be advancing faster in months than in the past half century, and when pundits warn of sexual overload, the actual representation of sex is still deemed confrontational, aggressive, "in your face." While critics accuse the academy of an obsession with sexuality, they also complain that nothing that appears to refer to sex really does. In readings ranging across film, drama, opera, fine art, and critical theory, Mandy Merck considers these phenomena as well as the role of the dog in anti-porn propaganda, the unacknowledged significance of the lesbian hand, and the early retirement of the phallus. Other topics include the relationship of women's tennis and prostitution, the gendering of the wild and the tame in the age of AIDS, and the sexlessness of postmodern criticism. In Your Face ends with the face and its alleged desecration by fellatio. Germaine Greer's condemnation of Bill Clinton for "fucking the faces of little girls" is examined in the light of one of Monica Lewinsky's endearments for the President--"fuckface." In a country whose last great Presidential scandal revolved around a key witness known only as "Deep Throat" and whose current Chief Executive works in the "Oral Office," giving head is going down in history. Analyzing the strange relationship of Linda Lovelace, Camille Paglia, and Paul de Man, In Your Face concludes by considering desire and disgust in high and low places.

Drawing the Line

Drawing the Line PDF Author: Howard Brenton
Publisher: NHB Modern Plays
ISBN: 9781848423725
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A vivid telling of the chaotic story of the partition that shaped the modern world. London, 1947. Summoned by the Prime Minister from the court where he is presiding judge, Cyril Radcliffe is given an unlikely mission. He is to travel to India, a country he has never visited, and, with limited survey information, no expert support and no knowledge of cartography, he is to draw the border which will divide the Indian sub-continent into two new Sovereign Dominions. To make matters even more challenging, he has only six weeks to complete the task. Wholly unsuited to his role, Radcliffe is unprepared for the dangerous whirlpool of political intrigue and passion into which he is plunged - untold consequences may even result from the illicit liaison between the Leader of the Congress Party and the Viceroy's wife... As he begins to break under the pressure he comes to realise that he holds in his hands the fate of millions of people. Drawing the Line premiered at the Hampstead Theatre, London in December 2013. "Powerful... a fascinating play which views colonial culpability from an unexpected and singularly revealing angle." - Independent "Brenton is a masterly storyteller... the play expertly draws you into the maelstrom." - Financial Times "Brenton knows how to make history manifest... gives a vivid picture of the pressures of the time." - Guardian "Fleet and fascinating." - WhatsOnStage "Crisp, elegant and revelatory... a fascinating story of mixed intentions and rushed folly." - The Stage Howard Brenton is a prolific playwright whose plays have been staged at the Royal Court Theatre, National Theatre, RSC and Shakespeare's Globe among others. Other writing work includes collaborations with David Hare and thirteen episodes of the BBC1 drama series Spooks.

Law and the Image

Law and the Image PDF Author: Costas Douzinas
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226569543
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Discussing the diverse relationships between law and the artistic image, this book includes coverage of the history of the relationship between art and law, and the ways in which the visual is made subject to the force of the law.