Concise Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Drama

Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick. She has published widely on twentieth and twenty-first century British theatre and is the author of Joan Littlewood's Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Theatre & Nation (Palgrave, 2010) and Joan Littlewood (Routledge, 2006). She has also edited John McGrath’s collected writings on theatre, Naked Thoughts That Roam About (Nick Hern, 2002) and his Plays for England (Exeter University Press, 2005). Mary Luckhurst is Professor of Modern Drama and co-founder of the prestigious new Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the  University of York. She has edited A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama (Blackwell 2006) and is the author of Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre (2006), co-author of The Drama Handbook: A Guide to Reading Plays (2002), and co-editor of Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 1660-2000 (2005). She has also edited The Creative Writing Handbook: Techniques for New Writers (1996), On Directing: Interviews with Directors (1999), and On Acting: Interviews with Actors (2002) and Playing for Real (Palgrave 2010). She is a National Teaching Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and in 2012-13 was among 14 leading UK scholars to be awarded an international scholarship in recognition of her outstanding contributions to theatre pedagogy and research.

“This volume provides valuable insight into the issues and practices of contemporary theater.  Summing Up: Highly recommended.  Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.”  (Choice, 1 January 2014)

• List of Illustrations ixNotes on Contributors xAcknowledgements xiiiIntroduction 1Nadine Holdsworth and Mary LuckhurstPart I National Politics and Identities 51 Europe in Flux: Exploring Revolution and Migration in British Plays of the 1990s 7Geoff Willcocks2 ‘I’ll See You Yesterday’: Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and the Captivating Past 26Claire Gleitman3 Black British Drama and the Politics of Identity 48D. Keith Peacock4 Northern Irish Drama: Speaking the Peace 66Tom MaguirePart II Sites, Cities and Landscapes 855 The Production of ‘Site’: Site-Specific Theatre 87Fiona Wilkie6 Staging an Urban Nation: Place and Identity in Contemporary Welsh Theatre 107Heike Roms7 The Landscape of Contemporary Scottish Drama: Place, Politics and Identity 125Nadine HoldsworthPart III The Body, Text and the Real 1478 The Body’s Cruel Joke: The Comic Theatre of Sarah Kane 149Ken Urban9 Physical Theatre: Complicite and the Question of Authority 171Helen Freshwater10 Verbatim Theatre, Media Relations and Ethics 200Mary LuckhurstPart IV Science, Ethics and New Technologies 22311 Theatre and Science 225David Higgins12 From the State of the Nation to Globalization: Shifting Political Agendas in Contemporary British Playwriting 245Dan Rebellato13 Theatre for a Media-Saturated Age 263Sarah GormanIndex 283