Madness in Contemporary British Theatre

Madness in Contemporary British Theatre PDF Author: Jon Venn
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030797821
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This book considers the representation of madness in contemporary British theatre, examining the rich relationship between performance and mental health, and questioning how theatre can potentially challenge dominant understandings of mental health. Carefully, it suggests what it means to represent madness in theatre, and the avenues through which such representations can become radical, whereby theatre can act as a site of resistance. Engaging with the heterogeneity of madness, each chapter covers different attributes and logics, including: the constitution and institutional structures of the contemporary asylum; the cultural idioms behind hallucination; the means by which suicide is apprehended and approached; how testimony of the mad person is interpreted and encountered. As a study that interrogates a wide range of British theatre across the past 30 years, and includes a theoretical interrogation of the politics of madness, this is a crucial work for any student or researcher, across disciplines, considering the politics of madness and its relationship to performance.

Madness in Contemporary British Theatre

Madness in Contemporary British Theatre PDF Author: Jon Venn
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030797821
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book considers the representation of madness in contemporary British theatre, examining the rich relationship between performance and mental health, and questioning how theatre can potentially challenge dominant understandings of mental health. Carefully, it suggests what it means to represent madness in theatre, and the avenues through which such representations can become radical, whereby theatre can act as a site of resistance. Engaging with the heterogeneity of madness, each chapter covers different attributes and logics, including: the constitution and institutional structures of the contemporary asylum; the cultural idioms behind hallucination; the means by which suicide is apprehended and approached; how testimony of the mad person is interpreted and encountered. As a study that interrogates a wide range of British theatre across the past 30 years, and includes a theoretical interrogation of the politics of madness, this is a crucial work for any student or researcher, across disciplines, considering the politics of madness and its relationship to performance.

The Wonderful World of Dissocia

The Wonderful World of Dissocia PDF Author: Anthony Neilson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350200999
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
'Anthony Neilson's 2004 play is half a lark, half deadly serious' TIME OUT 'A profane, madcap, Alice-in-Wonderland trip morphs into something much more profound in Anthony Neilson's weirdly compelling 2004 study of mental instability' EVENING STANDARD Lisa Jones is on a journey. It's a colourful and exciting off-kilter trip in search of one lost hour that has tipped the balance of her life. The inhabitants of the wonderful world she finds herself in – Dissocia – are a curious blend of the funny, the friendly and the brutal. This Student Edition of Anthony Neilson's 2004 play, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival, features a commentary and notes by anna six. It introduces students to debates surrounding mental health and situates Neilson within a British theatrical tradition, including through an interview with him.

Contemporary British Theatre

Contemporary British Theatre PDF Author: T. Shank
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349250910
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Contemporary British Theatre surveys the complex and dynamic theatre of the eighties and early nineties reflecting a country that is multicultural, multiethnic and multinational. The contributors - artists, scholars and critics - offer insights into the unique forms of theatre performance devised to express the tensions and pressures of our time. For the paperback edition a new preface has been written, including several updating pieces from individual contributors.

Madness at the Theatre

Madness at the Theatre PDF Author: Femi Oyebode
Publisher: RCPsych Publications
ISBN: 9781908020420
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Madness at the Theatre studies the theatrical representation of madness from the classical Greek period through to the 21st century. Professor Oyebode charts the portrayal of madness by the world's great playwrights across the centuries and argues that whereas acts of madness are described but unseen in Greek drama, Shakespeare brought these behaviours to centre stage. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries aberrant behaviour was portrayed in domestic settings by Ibsen - theatrical madness became a family drama. Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill drew on their own families for their explorations of madness and addiction. Pinter's masterful use of the ambiguity of language finds strong echoes in the psychiatric clinic. Soyinka emphasised the social context - the personal malady as reflection of a greater malaise in society. Finally, Sarah Kane created plays that were the physical embodiment of her inner world. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the language of drama, the depiction of mental illness, and in the wider place of madness as a concept within society.

Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre

Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre PDF Author: Tom Drayton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350286435
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Postmodern theatre is dead. A new theatre is rising – one that combines the well-worn postmodern aesthetics of irony, detachment, and deconstruction with a paradoxical interest in authenticity, engagement, and re-construction. Whilst recent scholarship has treated these evolving interests as unrelated shifts in performance aesthetics, this volume proposes a new understanding: that these are part of a wider emerging cultural paradigm – metamodernism. Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre is the first book to focus on metamodernism and performance, offering a pioneering framework by which to identify and understand metamodern theatre. By drawing critical links between the works of performance theorists such as Anne Bogart and Andy Lavender and the metamodern as defined by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, this book makes a clear, vital, and urgent case for the use of the term metamodernism within mainstream theatre scholarship. Focussing on small-scale theatre companies across the UK – including Poltergeist, YESYESNONO, Middle Child and The Gramophones, many of whom have not been documented in academia before – this book also provides a unique analysis of the theatre made by British millennials, a generation who have been distinctly affected by specific structures of contemporary precarity coinciding with this wider cultural shift. Through this, Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre makes a crucial contribution towards understanding emergent developments in post-millennial theatre practice across Britain and beyond.

Rethinking Character in Contemporary British Theatre

Rethinking Character in Contemporary British Theatre PDF Author: Cristina Delgado-García
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110411229
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
The category of theatrical character has been swiftly dismissed in the academic reception of no-longer-dramatic texts and performances. However, claims on the dissolution of character narrowly demarcate what a subject is and how it may appear. This volume unmoors theatre scholarship from the regulatory ideals of liberal humanism, stretching the notion of character to encompass and illuminate otherwise unaccounted-for subjects, aesthetic strategies and political gestures in recent theatre works. To this aim, contemporary philosophical theories of subjectivation, European theatre studies, and experimental, script-led work produced in Britain since the late 1990s are mobilised as discussants on the question of subjectivity. Four contemporary playtexts and their performances are examined in depth: Sarah Kane’s Crave and 4.48 Psychosis, Ed Thomas’s Stone City Blue and Tim Crouch’s ENGLAND. Through these case studies, Delgado-García demonstrates alternative ways of engaging theoretically with character, and elucidating a range of subjective figures beyond identity and individuality. Alongside these analyses, the book traces a large body of work that has experimented with speech attribution since the early twentieth-century. This is a timely contribution to contemporary theatre scholarship, which demonstrates that character remains a malleable and politically-salient notion in which understandings of subjectivity are still being negotiated.

Contemporary British Theatre

Contemporary British Theatre PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description


Performance, Madness and Psychiatry

Performance, Madness and Psychiatry PDF Author: A. Harpin
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9781137337245
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This exciting collection of essays explores the complex area of madness and performance. The book spans from the 18th century to the present and unearths the overlooked history of theatre and performance in, and about, psychiatric asylums and hospitals. The book will appeal to historians, social scientists, theatre scholars, and artists alike.

Sarah Kane’s Theatre of Psychic Life

Sarah Kane’s Theatre of Psychic Life PDF Author: Leah Sidi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350283134
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Sarah Kane was one of the landmark playwrights of 1990s Britain, her influence being felt across UK and European theatre. This is the first book to focus exclusively on Kane's unique approach to mind and mental health. It offers an important re-evaluation of her oeuvre, revealing the relationship between theatre and mind which lies at the heart of her theatrical project. Drawing on performance theory, psychoanalysis and neuroscience, this book argues that Kane's innovations generate a 'dramaturgy of psychic life', which re-shapes the encounter between stage and audience. It uses previously unseen archival material and contemporary productions to uncover the mechanics of this innovative theatre practice. Through a radically open-ended approach to dramaturgy, Kane's works offer urgent insights into mental suffering that take us beyond traditional discourses of empathy and mental health and into a profound rethinking of theatre as a mode of thought. As such, her theatre can help us to understand debates about mental suffering today.

Contemporary British Drama

Contemporary British Drama PDF Author: Catherine Rees
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350309559
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This guide offers a comprehensive account of British theatre from the 1960s to the present day. Placing critical commentary at the heart of its analysis, it explores how theatre critics and scholars have sought to understand and write about modern theatre, from the earliest reviews to revivals appearing decades later. With studies of contemporary reviews and archival material, Contemporary British Drama offers readers the opportunity to learn about British theatre in its original context and to chart shifting critical perceptions over the decades. It provides a crucial juxtaposition between the development of British theatre and its contemporaneous critical response, supplying an invaluable insight into the critical climate of recent decades. From feminist playwrighting to In-Yer-Face theatre, this is the ideal companion for undergraduate students of literature and theatre in need of an introduction to the debates surrounding contemporary British drama.