John McGrath – författare

Why is it that a handful of the population achieve phenomenal results and the majority struggle to keep their heads above water? They might have the same circumstances and same sorts of opportunities, yet the results can be radically different.Real success is something that eludes most of us, but it doesn''t have to. In a world so full of opportunities it is within everyone''s power to turn their life around. Whether in our career, relationships, health or finances, John McGrath believes we are all capable of seizing opportunties and turning failure into advantage if we change our attitude: attitude is everything. You Don''t Have To Be Born Brilliant is about achieving magnificence in every area of your life.

This is an edition of nine of McGrath''s plays for the English 7:84 theatre company. It covers McGrath''s work for the company spanning four decades, from the 1960s through to the 1990s

The book has a substantial contextualising introduction and commentary on the plays by Nadine Holdsworth, one of the leading specialists in the work of John McGrath. This is set alongside supporting documents such as programme notes, reviews, letters etc.

The plays and theatre work of John McGrath are studied in many theatre departments but they have not been available to the reader. The English plays constitute a powerful influence on the theatre in general, and are included in all theatre histories of the period; this collection should make them available to students, audiences and the public at large with an interest in theatre and in the social issues of their periods.

In Loving Big Brother the author tackles head on the overstated claims of the crime-prevention and anti-terrorism lobbies. But he also argues that we desire and enjoy surveillance, and that, if we can understand why this is, we may transform the effect it has on our lives. This book looks at a wide range of performance and visual artists, at popular TV shows and movies, and at our day-to-day encounters with surveillance, rooting its arguments in an accessible reading of cultural theory.

Constant scrutiny by surveillance cameras is usually seen as - at best - an invasion of privacy, and at worst an infringement of human rights. But in this radical new account of the uses of surveillance in art, performance and popular culture, John E McGrath sets out a surprizing alternative: a world where we have much to gain from the experience of being watched.

This iconoclastic book develops a notion of surveillance space - somewhere beyond the public and the private, somewhere we will all soon live. It''s a place we''re just beginning to understand.

In Loving Big Brother the author tackles head on the overstated claims of the crime-prevention and anti-terrorism lobbies. But he also argues that we desire and enjoy surveillance, and that, if we can understand why this is, we may transform the effect it has on our lives. This book looks at a wide range of performance and visual artists, at popular TV shows and movies, and at our day-to-day encounters with surveillance, rooting its arguments in an accessible reading of cultural theory.

Constant scrutiny by surveillance cameras is usually seen as - at best - an invasion of privacy, and at worst an infringement of human rights. But in this radical new account of the uses of surveillance in art, performance and popular culture, John E McGrath sets out a surprizing alternative: a world where we have much to gain from the experience of being watched.

This iconoclastic book develops a notion of surveillance space - somewhere beyond the public and the private, somewhere we will all soon live. It''s a place we''re just beginning to understand.

Music abounds in twentieth- century Irish literature. Whether it be the "thought-tormented" music of Joyce’s "The Dead", the folk tunes and opera that resound throughout Ulysses, or the four- part threnody in Beckett’s Watt, it is clear that the influence of music on the written word in Ireland is deeply significant. Samuel Beckett arguably went further than any other writer in the incorporation of musical ideas into his work. Musical quotations inhabit his texts, and structural devices such as the da capo are metaphorically employed. Perhaps most striking is the erosion of explicit meaning in Beckett’s later prose brought about through an extensive use of repetition, influenced by his reading of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music. Exploring this notion of "semantic fluidity", John McGrath discusses the ways in which Beckett utilised extreme repetition to create texts that operate and are received more like music. Beckett’s writing has attracted the attention of numerous contemporary composers and an investigation into how this Beckettian "musicalized fiction" has been retranslated into contemporary music forms the second half of the book. Close analyses of the Beckett- inspired music of experimental composer Morton Feldman and the structured improvisations of avantjazz guitarist Scott Fields illustrate the cross- genre appeal of Beckett to musicians, but also demonstrate how repetition operates in diverse ways. Through the examination of the pivotal role of repetition in both music and literature of the twentieth century and beyond, John McGrath’s book is a significant contribution to the field of Word and Music Studies.