Lynette Goddard – författare

The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century British Theatre and Performance provides a broad range of perspectives on the multiple models and examples of theatre, artists, enthusiasts, enablers, and audiences that emerged over this formative 100-year period.

This first volume covers the first half of the century, constructing an equitable and inclusive history that is more representative of the nation''s lived experience than the traditional narratives of British theatre. Its approach is intra-national – weaving together the theatres and communities of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The essays are organised thematically arranged into sections that address nation, power, and identity; fixity and mobility; bodies in performance; the materiality of theatre and communities of theatre. This approach highlights the synergies, convergences, and divergences of the theatre landscape in Britain during this period, giving a sense of the sheer variety of performance that was taking place at any given moment in time.

This is a fascinating and indispensable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, postgraduate researchers, and scholars across theatre and performance studies, cultural studies, and twentieth-century history.

The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century British Theatre and Performance provides a broad range of perspectives on the multiple models and examples of theatre, artists, enthusiasts, enablers, and audiences that emerged over this formative 100-year period.

This first volume covers the first half of the century, constructing an equitable and inclusive history that is more representative of the nation''s lived experience than the traditional narratives of British theatre. Its approach is intra-national – weaving together the theatres and communities of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The essays are organised thematically arranged into sections that address nation, power, and identity; fixity and mobility; bodies in performance; the materiality of theatre and communities of theatre. This approach highlights the synergies, convergences, and divergences of the theatre landscape in Britain during this period, giving a sense of the sheer variety of performance that was taking place at any given moment in time.

This is a fascinating and indispensable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, postgraduate researchers, and scholars across theatre and performance studies, cultural studies, and twentieth-century history.

This indispensable overview of modern black British drama spans seven decades of distinctive playwriting from the 1950s to the present. Interweaving social and cultural context with close critical analysis of key dramatists'' plays, leading scholars explore how these dramatists have created an enduring, transformative and diverse cultural presence.

Errol John wrote Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (1958) after becoming disillusioned about the lack of good roles for black actors on the British theatre scene. While this situation has only slightly improved since, his response has become the most revived black play in Britain, from its original production at the Royal Court in 1958, to the National Theatre in 2012. It depicts the lives of a black community living in poverty in a shared tenement yard in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in the mid-1940s, showing how each of the characters carries dreams of escaping to create better lives for themselves and their families.

Lynette Goddard focuses on how the play articulates the narratives of migration that prompted many Caribbean people to uproot from their homes on the islands and move to the England in the post-war era. For some of them, these dreams of a new life became a reality, but they were experienced differently across genders and generations.

Errol John wrote Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (1958) after becoming disillusioned about the lack of good roles for black actors on the British theatre scene. While this situation has only slightly improved since, his response has become the most revived black play in Britain, from its original production at the Royal Court in 1958, to the National Theatre in 2012. It depicts the lives of a black community living in poverty in a shared tenement yard in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in the mid-1940s, showing how each of the characters carries dreams of escaping to create better lives for themselves and their families.

Lynette Goddard focuses on how the play articulates the narratives of migration that prompted many Caribbean people to uproot from their homes on the islands and move to the England in the post-war era. For some of them, these dreams of a new life became a reality, but they were experienced differently across genders and generations.

The Methuen Drama Book of Plays by Black British Writers provides an essential anthology of six of the key plays that have shaped the trajectory of British black theatre from the late-1970s to the present day. In doing so it charts the journey from specialist black theatre companies to the mainstream, including West End success, while providing a cultural and racial barometer for Britain during the last forty years.

It opens with Mustapha Matura''s 1979 play Welcome Home Jacko which in its depiction of a group of young unemployed West Indians was one of the first to explore issues of youth culture, identity and racial and cultural identification. Jackie Kay''s Chiaroscuro examines debates about the politics of black, mixed race and lesbian identities in 1980s Britain, and from the 1990s Winsome Pinnock''s Talking in Tongues engages with the politics of feminism to explore issues of black women''s identity in Britian and Jamaica. From the first decade of the twenty-first century the three plays include Roy Williams'' seminal pub-drama Sing Yer Hearts Out for the Lads, exploring racism and identity against the backdrop of the World Cup; Kwame Kwei-Armah''s National Theatre play of 2004, Fix Up, about black cultural history and progress in modern Britain, and finally Bola Agbage''s terrific 2007 debut, Gone Too Far!, which examines questions of identity and tensions between Africans and Caribbeans living in Britain.

Edited by Lynnette Goddard, this important anthology provides an essential introduction to the last forty years of British black theatre.