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In this course, we will discuss contemporary British plays from a broad perspective that includes eminent figures like Harold Pinter, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, as well as less established dramatists. We will look at texts that still largely conform to the English tradition of social realism – for example Roy Williams’ Sing Yer Hearts Out For The Lads (2002), a play about racism set in a London pub during the screening of a football match between England and Germany – as well experimental plays that seek for new forms, such as Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life (1997), which radically deconstructs the idea of character, and Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1996), whose initial realistic setting literally explodes and which has become a representative of ‘in-yer-face’ theatre. We will also consider the cultural and political relevance of the plays; some of them – for instance Sarah Daniels’s Beside Herself (1990), a play about sexual child abuse – have a clear political (in this case feminist) agenda, while it is more difficult to determine the ‘message’ of other plays, for instance of Pinter’s Party Time (1991). Our analysis will always pay attention to the possible ways of staging the plays, and we will deepen this aspect by discussing Simon Stephens’ recent play Wastwater (2011) and its current production at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. |
