Post-War British Drama: Politics, Trends, and Controversies

Convenor: James Smith. j.smith13@uq.edu.au British theatre of the post Second World War era has been marked by its constant and radical developments, and in this option we will undertake a detailed study of the major dramatists, movements, and themes that have dominated this period. Issues to be considered will include the rise of the New Wave; the impact of historical events such as the break-up of the British Empire and widespread challenges to received class, gender, and sexual structures and norms; the influence of modernist dramatists such as Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett; debates about censorship and scandal; the role of institutions such as the Royal Court Theatre; and more contemporary trends such as in-yer-face, verbatim theatre, and plays that have met with critical success since 2007. We will also consider the historiographical debates concerning this era of British drama, paying particular attention to revisionist accounts that have recently challenged received views of seminal moments on the British stage. This course will consist of five three-hour seminars. Assessment will either be: 1) 5,000 word essay of such a nature that, with revision, it would form an article suitable to be submitted to an academic journal. OR 2) a transcript of a 20 minute conference paper, with a 300-400 word abstract, appropriate PowerPoint presentation, and a brief description of an appropriate conferences this could be delivered to and the revisions you would undertake to expand it to a journal article. Assessment will be marked on a pass/fail basis, but it is a compulsory element in order to complete the course requirements. Seminar 1: The New Wave, The Royal Court, and all that (week of 15 March) Core texts: John Osborne, Look Back in Anger John Arden, Serjeant Musgraves Dance Secondary Reading: Extracts from Tynan and Rebellato (provided), Gibson. Seminar 2: Modes of the British Absurd (week of 22 March) Core Texts

Samuel Beckett, Endgame Harold Pinter, The Caretaker, The Birthday Party Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Secondary Reading: Extracts from Harold Hobson and Esslin (provided) Seminar 3: Censorship, Outrage, Panic, and Prosecution (week of 28 March) Core texts: Edward Bond, Saved Howard Brenton, Romans In Britain Sarah Kane, Blasted Secondary Reading: Newspaper reports and reviews (provided), Urban. Seminar 4: Explorations and adaptations in Epic Theatre (week of 5 April) Core Texts: Edward Bond, Lear John McGrath, The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black Black Oil Peter Brook, US Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine Secondary Reading: Selections from McGrath (A Good Night Out) & Brook (both provided) Seminar 5: Post-millennial theatre trends (week of 12 April) Core Texts Martin McDonagh, The Lieutenant of Inishmore David Hare, Stuff Happens

Polly Stenham, That Face Secondary Reading: Innes, Towards a Post-millennial Mainstream?. Some of these plays are very recent and little in the way of secondary criticism exists. It may be productive to search for reviews of performances online to get a sense of current debates and the state of the field. Select Bibliography Note: this is by no means exhaustive, but selected because (most of) it is readily available at the UQ library. In addition to the mainly survey studies listed here, it will also be beneficial to search for works on the individual authors and texts we study. Also, browsing through journals such as New Theatre Quarterly and Contemporary Theatre Review will give a good sense of the contemporary scene and debates in the field. Anderson, Michael, Anger and detachment : a study of Arden, Osborne, and Pinter (Pitman, 1976) Billington, Michael, State of the Nation: British Theatre Since 1945 (Faber, 2007) Brook, Peter, The Empty Space (Penguin, 1972) Bull, John, Stage Right: Crisis and Recovery in British Contemporary Mainstream Theatre (Macmillan, 1994). Chambers, Colin and Prior, Mike, Playwrights' progress: patterns of post war British drama (Amber Lane Press, 1987) D'Mont, Rebecca and Saunders, Graham (eds), Cool Britannia? : British political drama in the 1990s (Palgrave, 2008) Devine, Harriet, Looking back: playwrights at the Royal Court, 1956-2006 (Faber, 2006) Esslin, Martin, The Theatre of the Absurd, 3rd edition (Methuen, 2001) Gibson, Melissa Dana, 1979 and all that: Periodization in Postwar British Theatre History, Theatre Survey 47:1 (2006), pp. 33-50. Harvie, Jen, Staging the UK (Manchester UP 2005). Hayman, Ronald, British theatre since 1955: a reassessment (Oxford UP, 1979)

Holdsworth, Nadine and Luckhurst, Mary (eds), A concise companion to contemporary British and Irish drama (Blackwell, 2008) Innes, Christopher, Modern British drama, 1890-1990 (Cambridge UP, 1992) Innes, C. D, Towards a Post-millennial Mainstream? Documents of the Times Modern Drama, 50: 3 (2007), pp. 435-52. Itzin, Catherine, Stages in the revolution: political theatre in Britain since 1968 (Methuen, 1980) Kershaw, Baz, The politics of performance: radical theatre as cultural intervention (Routledge, 1992) Lacey, Stephen, British realist theatre: the new wave in its context 1956-1965 (Routledge, 1995) McGrath, John, A Good Night Out (Methuen, 1981) Nicholson, Steve, The censorship of British drama, 1900-1968, (Exeter, 2003) Patterson, Michael, Strategies of political theatre: post-War British playwrights (Cambridge, 2003) Peacock, D. Keith, Radical stages: alternative history in modern British drama (Greenwood Press, 1991) Peacock, D. Keith, Thatcher's theatre: British theatre and drama in the eighties (Greenwood Press, 1999) Rebellato, Dan, 1956 and all that: the making of modern British drama (Routledge, 1999) Rabey, David Ian, British and Irish political drama in the twentieth century : implicating the audience (St. Martin's Press, 1986) Reinelt, Janelle, After Brecht: British epic theater (University of Michigan Press, 1994) Roberts, Philip, The Royal Court Theatre and the Modern Stage (Cambridge UP, 1999) Saunders, Graham, Love Me or Kill Me: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester UP, 2002) Sierz, Aleks In-yer-face theatre: British drama today (Faber, 2001) Sierz, Aleks,Still In-Yer-Face? Towards a Critique and a Summation

New Theatre Quarterly 18:1 (2002), pp 17-24. Shellard, Dominic, British Theatre since the war (Yale UP, 1998) Taylor, John Russell, Anger and after: a guide to the new British drama. (Methuen, 1969) Thomson, David, et al, Theatre Censorship: From Walpole to Wilson (Oxford UP, 2007) Tynan, Kenneth, Theatre writings (Nick Hern, 2007) Urban, Ken, Towards a Theory of Cruel Britannia: Coolness, Cruelty, and the 'Nineties. New Theatre Quarterly 20 (2004), pp 354-372. Wandor, Michelene, Post-war British drama: looking back in gender (Routledge, 2001) Zeifman, Hersh, and Zimmerman, Cynthia (eds), Contemporary British drama, 197090: essays from Modern drama (University of Toronto Press, 1993)

JBS Feb 2010