This wide-ranging Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama offers challenging analyses of a range of plays in their political contexts. It explores the cultural, social, economic and institutional agendas that readers need to engage with in order to appreciate modern theatre in all its complexity. An authoritative guide to modern British and Irish drama. Engages with theoretical discourses challenging a canon that has privileged London as well as white English males and realism. Topics covered include: national, regional and fringe theatres; post-colonial stages and multiculturalism; feminist and queer theatres; sex and consumerism; technology and globalisation; representations of war, terrorism, and trauma.

This collection of fifteen essays offers both student and theatergoer a guide to the stage plays, novel, and screenplays of one of the most celebrated British dramatists since Noel Coward. Readers will find that the general and accessible description and analyses in these essays makes the large body of Stoppard's writing clear and approachable while preserving its rich humor. This is the first collection of essays to appear in many years addressing all of Stoppard's major work. It provides insights into the recent plays, Arcadia and Invention of Love, as well as the first extended examination of his work for screen, including a discussion of his co-authored, academy award-winning screenplay Shakespeare in Love. Photographs from key productions, a biography and chronology complete the volume and prepare the reader for future work by this extraordinary writer.

Publisher Description

Dramaturgy of Form examines verse in twenty-first-century theatre practice across different languages, cultures, and media. Through interdisciplinary engagement, Kasia Lech offers a new method for verse analysis in the performance context. The book traces the dramaturgical operation of verse in new writings, musicals, devised performances, multilingual dramas, Hip Hop theatre, films, digital projects, and gig theatre, as well as translations and adaptations of classics and new theatre forms created by Irish, Spanish, Nigerian, Polish, American, Canadian, Australian, British, Russian, and multinational artists. Their verse dramaturgies explore timely issues such as global identities, agency and precarity, global and local politics, and generational and class stories. The development of dramaturgy is discussed with the focus turning to the new stylized approach to theatre, whose arrival Hans-Thies Lehmann foretold in his Postdramatic Theatre, documenting a turning point for contemporary Western theatre. Serving theatre-makers, scholars, and students working with classical and contemporary verse and poetry in performance contexts; practitioners and academics of aural and oral dramaturgies; voice and verse-speaking coaches; and actors seeking the creative opportunities that verse offers, Dramaturgy of Form reveals verse as a tool for innovation and transformation that is at the forefront of contemporary practices and experiences.

Presents new scholarship on the innovative playwright Caryl Churchill, discussing her major plays alongside topics including sexual politics and terror.