ENG40700 Post-War British Theatre: From Anger to Arcadia (and back to anger)
This course takes as its beginning point the theatre of anger and how that theatre is constructed as apposite to the mainstream, conventional theatre. This anger is not unchanging however, but is constantly being reinvented, recharged, from John Osborne and Shelagh Delaney in the 1950s, to Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill in the 1990s. Yet there is a parallel post-war tradition, of order and rhetoric, from Terence Rattigan to Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn. During the course, we will explore both strands and consider how their performances may both oppose and overlap each other.
In-depth work on these playscripts and writers will include investigation of their production history, relationships between particular playwrights, players, directors and performance institutions, and consideration of the socio-political background to the playscripts, their genesis and production. The idea of a ‘national theatre’ will be considered, as will questions of form and address, the canon and the avant-garde.
The assigned critical reading for each week will be available either through JSTOR or in the SU Copy Centre. You are expected to have read both the primary text and the critical reading.
In addition, you are expected to give one individual presentation and one group presentation during the course of the semester.
Week One
Introduction – critical readings from Dan Rebellato, 1956 and all that: The Making of Modern British Drama ; Michael Billington, State of the Nation: British Theatre Since 1945; Philip Roberts, The Royal Court Theatre and the Modern Stage .
Week Two
A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney (1958)
Week Three
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (1965)
Week Four
Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill (1979)
Week Five
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (1993)
Week Six
Copenhagen by Michael Frayn (1998)
Week Seven
Blasted by Sarah Kane (1995)
Critical reading:
Week Eight
Blue Heart by Caryl Churchill (1997)
My Arm by Tim Crouch (2003) – Available in SU Copy Centre as out of print.
Week Nine
Black Watch by Gregory Burke (2006)
***
Assessment
You will be assessed on three factors:
- Presentation – individual (10%)
- Presentation – group (10%)
- End of Semester Essay (80%)
For your individual presentation (7-10 minutes), you can choose to discuss any aspect of the play. Suggestions for topics include:
- Performance issues (e.g. set, pace, costume, theatre size)
- Scene analysis (choose a scene/passage and consider what is significant/dramatically interesting about it/how is it key to the play)
- Performance context (e.g. how Delaney’s work fits in with or reacts against the dominant modes of 1950s British drama)
- Historical context (why does Churchill read contemporary (1970s) London against a Victorian colonial context?)
For your group presentations, you will be asked to work together to research, write and deliver a presentation that will shape and advance the seminar discussion. These presentations will happen over the last two weeks of the course. They are your opportunity, not only to work together as a team, but to lead discussion for the seminar as a whole. It is up to the presentation group to nominate critical reading for these final seminars, which can range from reviews, to journal articles, to news pieces (e.g. the establishment of the Scottish National Theatre).
Critical reading (much of this is available as course material in the SU Copy Centre):
- Arthur K. Oberg, ‘A Taste of Honey and the Popular Play’, Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature , Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer, 1966), pp. 160- 167. Available on JSTOR.
- Michelene Wandor, Look Back in Gender, pp. 39-43.
- Victor Cahn, Chapter 5 ‘The Homecoming’, Gender and Power in the Plays of Harold Pinter (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), pp.55-74.
- Esslin, Martin, ‘The Homecoming’, Pinter: the Playwright (London: Methuen Drama, 1992), pp.125-145.
- James Harding, ‘Cloud Cover: (Re)Dressing Desire and Comfortable Subversions in Caryl Churchhill's Cloud Nine ’, in PMLA (113:2), 1998 Mar, 258-72.
- Amelie Kritzer, Chapter 6 ‘Sex and Gender’, The Plays of Caryl Churchill: Theatre of Empowerment (London: Macmillan Press, 1991), pp. 111-137.
- Paul Edwards, ‘Science in Hapgood and Arcadia’, The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard , ed. Catherine E. Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.171-184.
- C.D. Innes, Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century, chapter on Stoppard, pp.393-426.
- Reed Way Dasenbrook, ‘Copenhagen : The Drama of History’, Contemporary Literature, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 218-238. Available on JSTOR
- Section on Frayn in Innes, Modern British Drama, pp. 386-392.
- Stephenson, Heidi and Natasha Langridge, ‘Interview with Sarah Kane’, Rage and Reason: Women Playwrights on Playwriting (London: Methuen, 1997).
- Saunders, Graham, Love Me or Kill Me: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp.37-70.
