Staging Postmodernity: British Drama 1995-2025 3301-LB2057-1ST
The course presents contemporary British drama and theatre. We will discuss selected British plays written and staged in the last three decades, starting with Sarah Kane’s controversial dramas, which represent the so-called in-yer-face theatre, up to Martin Crimp’s latest theatrical experiment based on deep fake technology, or Complicité’s 2024 reimagining of its 1999 play Mnemonic, which asks the questions about the relationship between human and nature, and the search of one’s history and identity. The reading list includes also award-winning and highly acclaimed plays by both older and younger generations of British playwrights: Caryl Churchill, Carol Ann Duffy, Tom Stoppard, Martin McDonagh, Mike Bartlett, Joe Penhall, Sam Steiner, Nina Raine, Alice Birch. We will consider how the selected plays deal with the problems and fears of modernity, addressing issues such as: war and trauma, memory and identity, uncertainty about new technologies, problems with communication, a sense of exclusion, social and ecological effects of consumerism, a sense of threat, and fear of an impending catastrophe. We will also consider how formal innovations and experiments enter into a dialogue with traditional dramaturgy and become a way of expressing experience of fluidity, uncertainty, and anxiety, as well as a means of artistic provocation. We will analyse the texts as well as discuss selected stage performances and their reviews.
List of topics:
• War, violence, trauma (Blasted, Cleansed, Leopoldstadt, The Pillowman)
• Individual and collective memory (Anatomy of a Suicide, Leopoldstadt, Mnemonic)
• Man and technology (A Number, Not One of These People)
• Questions of identity (Cleansed, A Number, The Pillowman, Attempts on Her Life, Mnemonic)
• Otherness, alienation, feeling of exclusion (Blue/Orange, Tribes)
• Limitations of language and attempts at communication (Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons; Escaped Alone)
• Traps of consumerism (Everyman)
• Sense of menace and fear of impending catastrophe (Earthquakes in London, Escaped Alone)
• Facing catastrophe (Earthquakes in London, Everyman, Escaped Alone)
• Theatrical experiment (Attempts on Her Life, Not One of These People)
Type of course
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
Students will be able to:
- understand key terminology, well established methods and theories of drama and theatre studies (K_W02)
- describe methodology and recent developments in the studies on contemporary British drama (K_W03)
- list the characteristics of English grammar, syntax, phonology, phonetics, morphology and pragmatics on an advanced level (K_W05)
- explain principles of designing drama and theatre studies, with special focus on selecting appropriate methods and tools in formulating research questions (K_W07)
Abilities
Students will be able to:
- employ the terminology and methodological tools from literary studies (K_U01)
- employ the methodology of literary studies within English studies, respecting the ethical norms and copyright law (K_U02)
- implement knowledge to describe a problem and identify means to solve it, thereby completing a project in literary studies focusing on contemporary drama (K_U04)
- design one’s own development (K_U11)
Social competences
Students will be ready to:
- undertake life-long learning and personal development, applying skills and competences to select subjects and projects within the course (K_K02)
- value responsibility for one’s own work and respect the work of others, adhering to the professional and ethical norms in various projects and other activities undertaken during the course (K_K03)
Assessment criteria
- participation in discussions
- short presentations
- term paper
- a discussion on the term paper
3 absences are allowed.
Bibliography
Dramatic texts (primary sources)
1. Sarah Kane, Blasted, 1995; or Cleansed, 1998
2. Harold Pinter, Ashes to Ashes, 1996.
3. Martin Crimp, Attempts on Her Life, 1997
4. Joe Penhall, Blue/Orange, 2000
5. Caryl Churchill, A Number, 2002
6. Martina McDonagh, The Pillowman, 2004
7. Mike Bartlett, Earthquakes in London, 2010
8. Nina Raine, Tribes, 2012
9. Sam Steiner, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, 2015
10. Carol Ann Duffy, Everyman, 2015
11. Caryl Churchill, Escaped Alone, 2016
12. Alice Birch, Anatomy of a Suicide, 2017
13. Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt, 2020
14. Martin Crimp, Not One of These People, 2022
15. Mnemonic, conceived by Simon McBurney, A Complicité production, 2024
Optional readings and secondary sources:
• Reviews of performances and interviews with playwrights and artists
• David Lane, Contemporary British Drama, 2011.
• British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics, ed. by Mireia Aragay et al., 2007.
• Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground, ed. by Vicky Angelaki, 2013.
• Aleks Sierz, In-Yer_Face Theatre: British Drama Today, 2001
• Aleks Sierz, Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today, 2011
• Vicky Angelaki, The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange, 2012.
• Gabriele Griffin, “More Than a Number: Reproductive Technologies, Cloning and the Problematic of Fatherhood in Caryl Churchill’s A Number”, Atlantis, 2012
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: