Contemporary Drama Research Articles

The Demystification of the Author and Metatheatre: Lee Hall’s Shakespeare in Love

Lee Hall’s Shakespeare in Love, reworking Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman’s original film, delves into the themes of literary inspiration and authorship. Hall’s play represents Shakespeare as a impotent writer and lover, subverting the longstanding conception of Shakespeare as a cultural icon. Will, the demystified Shakespeare in Hall’s play, is depicted as a writer inspired by the more famous contemporary playwright Marlowe. Marlowe’s influence on Will, moreover, reflects Hall’s self-consciousness about his work being overshadowed by the accomplishments of Stoppard’s film. Hall’s effort to overcome his anxiety of influence vis-a-vis Stoppard results in a series of theatrical experiments. In the play, the making of Romeo and Juliet is completed by multiple voices and collaborative efforts that contribute to the composing and staging of Will’s play. Hall thus underscores the multiple facets of theatrical authorship that deconstruct the notion of an isolated genius. His play foregrounds in a unique metatheatrical frame the production of a play as a process. Hall’s dramaturgical attempt to differentiate his adaptation from the original film results in emphasizing the dynamics of performance. Hall demonstrates his own creativity by dramatizing the national bard demystified in the very process of collaborative work that ironically consolidates his immortality.

Witnessing Trauma in Simon Stephens’ Motortown

Simon Stephens is one of the most
 important contemporary playwrights whose popularity spreads out both Britain
 and continental Europe. His Motortown
 (2006) consists of eight scenes. Having structural order and correlations with
 each other, these scenes depict notions of fear, violence, anxiety and
 traumatic experiences. The play’s protagonist, Danny, is a British soldier who
 is sent to Iraq for his military service and comes back home with his traumatic
 memories. Simon Stephens portrays a political play which discloses the
 tormenting process of Danny’s unsuccessful treatment back home. Stephens also
 depicts traumatic patterns and major trauma factors observed as the lack of
 family support and psychological disorders of contemporary British society,
 which are the disappointing results of war in Iraq. Applying the trauma theory
 and taking into consideration the effects of war, this study will illustrate
 Danny’s personal background and his traumatic experiences which become central
 among other characters in contemporary British culture.

Драматургія Саад аль-Фараджа в контексті розвитку театральної справи в Кувейті другої половини ХХ століття

The purpose of the article is to study the activities of theaters in Kuwait in general and the interpretation of their contemporary Arabic drama on their scenes in particular against the backdrop of political events in the Middle East in the second half of the twentieth century. The author focuses on the creative work of Sa’ada al-Faraj, a famous actor, theatrical figure, playwright, and public figure in Kuwait. The researcher focuses on political circumstances that have brought about the actualization of individual topics that affect Sa’ad al-Faraj’s plays, analyzes how the confrontation between Israel and the Arab world, the policies of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser influenced the speculations of the creative intelligentsia of Kuwait. Essential for the author of the article is the problem of political censorship in modern Kuwait, which caused the short-lived scenic life of a number of plays Saad al-Faraj. Much of the intelligence is devoted to the peculiarities of poetry in drama Sad al-Faraj. In the time of his creative establishment, the artist was under the significant influence of European innovative movements in the twentieth century, and this greatly influenced the artistic image of his texts. In the center of the researcher’s attention is a play by Sa’ad al-Faraj “Tradition is another nature”, which clearly show the receptions of the epic theater Bertolt Brecht. The methodology of the research is to apply political science in order to expedite the full disclosure of the public context in the activities of Kuwait theaters and the works of playwright Sa’ad al-Faraj. Introducing the work of the Kuwaiti playwright in the world context, the author relies on system-structural and comparative methods. Essential in considering a particular dramatic work was the use of theatrical-critical analysis. The novelty of the work. For the first time, comprehensively and using political methodology and drawing on an art-study analysis, the activities of theaters in Kuwait in the second half of the twentieth century have been explored. The scientific circle introduces important information about the creative work of Sa’ad al-Faraj, which is carried out an art-study analysis of his play “Tradition is another nature”. Conclusions. Summarizing the above mentioned in Kuwait, all the major theatres were under the supervision of the governmental censor, which, according to al-Faraj, found it desirable to use the theatre only to disseminate culture ‘by presenting random and irrelevant examples from the repertoire of world theatre’.

A Modern Theater Language Consultant Approach: An Analysis of Matjaž Zupančič’s Play Hodnik (The Corridor)

The aesthetics of stage speech have changed with the development of new practices in staging plays. Unique and peculiar themes have encouraged and promoted a different, more modern approach by language consultants. Moreover, the spoken realization of a text in the theater is also always affected by the circumstances on stage and a set of other theatrical forms of expression. This article describes the process of transforming a theater text into spoken reality on the stage based on an excerpt from the staging of the contemporary play Hodnik (The Corridor) by Matjaž Zupančič. It raises open questions regarding standard spoken language and language in theater in general by examining this phenomenon from a different point of view.

Snow in Midsummer , by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig. Based on the Classical Chinese Drama The Injustice to Dou E That Moved Heaven and Earth by Guan Hanqing. U. S. Premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland Oregon, August 2–October 27, 2018

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: SNOW IN MIDSUMMER, BY FRANCES YA-CHU COWHIG. BASED ON THE CLASSICAL CHINESE DRAMA THE INJUSTICE TO DOU E THAT MOVED HEAVEN AND EARTH BY GUAN HANQING. U. S. PREMIERE AT THE OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, ASHLAND OREGON, AUGUST 2-OCTOBER 27, 2018. CATHERINE SWATEK The University of British Columbia Snow in Midsummer (hereafter “Snow”), a very free adaptation of the Yuan drama Injustice to Dou E (Dou E yuan, hereafter “Injustice”) in two acts, is the first fruit of a project initiated in 2015 by the Royal Shakespeare Company, to commission new translations of Chinese classic plays and inspire adaptations of them by contemporary playwrights.1 The play had its first run at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon from 23 February to 25 March 2017, and a second run, in a new production with a different cast, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival from 2 August to 27 October of 2018. This review is based on the production in Ashland, where I attended two performances near the end of its run. Cowhig was attracted to a play about a female ghost seeking revenge because, in her words, “I was drawn to the idea of a wronged woman going on a quest to clear her name.”2 Having lived in China and Taiwan, off and on, for more than ten years (her mother is Chinese, her father served in the State Department with postings in China), she also drew inspiration from ghost films when adapting a Yuan dynasty play to explore contemporary issues having to do with environmental degradation, the ravages of global capitalism, and the particular difficulties faced by women, in this case marginalized rural women in China. These issues emerge in the play in an urban setting, an industrial town called New Harmony located somewhere in China’s north, but they resonate beyond China.3 To judge by production photos posted at the Royal Shakespeare Company website, the set design for the Stratford production was a brutalist but vibrant 1 For this project and its history, go to https://www.rsc.org.uk/about-us/our-work-in-china/ chinese-classics-translation-project/research-and-development-for-the-chinese-classics-project. 2 For this interview with the playwright, go to: http://sincerelyamy.com/2017/02/28/ interview-rscs-snow-in-midsummer-writer-frances-ya-chu-cowhig/. 3 In the words of one critic, “Cowhig mobilizes the play’s Chinese setting to invite audiences in Britain (where the play was first staged) and the U.S. to make critical connections to their own CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 37. 2 (December 2018): 161–170© The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2019 DOI 10.1080/01937774.2019.1589665 evocation of a teahouse-cum-bar, constructed of rough beams embellished with neon signs in Chinese.4 The cast of eleven (nine for the Oregon production) included actors of Asian heritage for most of the lead roles,5 mostly wearing modern clothes but with some use of more traditional dress. In Ashland the set was a largely bare stage, with actors also in modern dress most of the time. Its use of several key props in a minimalist setting struck me as more in keeping with traditional xiqu staging, and suited the play’s dystopian theme. The props included a table of Chinese design, a hospital bed, a grill for broiling lamb skewers, a giant statue of the goddess Guanyin, several plastic chairs, and modern funerary objects (floral wreaths and paper items for burning that included a sportscar, tv set, video game, and bottle of beer). The bright colors of these funerary objects, and of some of the costumes, contrasted with the drabness of a set consisting of a gray brick building at stage left with leaves piled up against it. This use of color to enliven a bare stage is also reminiscent of traditional Chinese drama (fig. 1). Cowhig’s adaptation takes the form of a sequel, set three years after the death of the female protagonist of Guan Hanqing’s play, Dou E (now Dou Yi, pronounced “Yee”). A brief prologue—reminiscent of the opening wedge of Yuan drama—introduces Dou...

Being European

During the campaign for Iceland’s independence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, theatre was considered an important site for the representation of the nation. Emphasis was placed on producing and staging local plays dealing with the nation’s folklore, myths and history, thereby strengthening a sense of the roots of national identity. The article examines the longing for a representation of the nation in late nineteenth-century theatre as well as the attempts of the Reykjavik Theatre Company to stage the nation during theso-called ‘Icelandic Period’ (1907-20), before analyzing the distinctive changes in the company’s repertoire following the decision of the Icelandic parliament to build a national theatre in 1923. The staging of the nation, which had been dominated by nineteenth-century cultural nationalism, took a turn in the late 1920s towards representing the nation as a member of European metropolitan culture through an increased focus on international contemporary drama, bourgeois bedroom farce and classical drama. The image of the modern Icelanders, as represented on the stage in the 1920s, was that of the middle-class bourgeoisie.

“What Is this Place...?” – Howard Barker’s Spatial Scenography

Abstract This article seeks to identify some key scenographic principles that govern contemporary British playwright Howard Barker’s stage spaces. The influence of Barker’s dramatic work is widely recognized and has been the subject of sustained academic study for a number of decades. Despite Barker’s scenographic engagement with his own playwriting since the late 1990 s, the corresponding academic engagement with this aspect of his work remains scant. This article therefore offers the first sustained consideration of Barker’s spatial scenography, engaging in a detailed analysis of select examples of Barker’s drama from the late 1990 s to mid-2000s. It also draws upon archival materials of productions by The Wrestling School company to compare the implicit scenography as evident in the play text to its realization in production. The analysis approaches Barker’s spatial scenography through the lens of aesthetic discourse, with particular focus on the notion of the postmodern sublime as postulated by Lyotard and Johnson, among others, in order to discuss the subject matter in a suitably non-reductive, yet critical manner.

Editor's Note

This issue of the Edith Wharton Review features four articles that analyze canonical novels by Wharton through the framework of adaptation studies, the role of intertextuality in the author's depiction of the psychodynamics between two of her best-known characters, Wharton's artistic engagement with the fiction of women regionalist writers of the Northeast and Appalachian South, and the influence on Lawrence Selden of forensic crime-scene analysis in the final scene of The House of Mirth. These readings indicate the value of atypical archival sources to Wharton studies, as well as the need to be alert to her engagement with contemporary drama and works of regional fiction, while the fourth article demonstrates Wharton's capacity to imbue her characters with perspectives shaped by ideologies not only of class and race, but of science.In the first article, Bethany Wood expands the scope of archival sources and methodologies relevant to Wharton scholarship in her article on Philip Moeller's 1934 RKO film adaptation of The Age of Innocence, asserting the need to rethink what adaptation studies has concluded about the process by which this film version was created. Wood argues that “traditional subjects and cultural hierarchies” shaping the field of adaptation studies, along with Wharton's own “disregard for film … and downplaying of theater,” have created gaps in our understanding of efforts to bring the novel to the screen in the 1920s and 1930s. Wood draws on the RKO Radio Pictures Studio Records at UCLA's Charles E. Young Research Library to discuss the process of adapting the film for the 1934 version, which, she demonstrates, was focused on making a story set in the 1870s accessible to modern audiences.Lucas McCarthy considers a scene few have studied to analyze Wharton's use of intertextuality to communicate the dynamics of the romantic liaison between Ellen Olenska and Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence. McCarthy discusses an “intertextual dialogue” between the ribbon-kissing scene in Dion Boucicault's script and stage performance of The Shaughraun (1874) and the novel. He argues that the performance of Boucicault's play attended by the couple provides a model for their relationship, which they enact repeatedly after seeing the play. The article offers a new reading of the final scene in Paris as a “shared performance” by Newland and Ellen linked to The Shaughraun.Martha Billips examines the relation of Summer to fiction by a network of regionalists who published in the Atlantic Monthly. Her discussion of “stories of encounter” within the tradition of regional fiction apposes Wharton's novel with Mary Noailles Murfree's “The Star in the Valley” (1878) and Sarah Orne Jewett's “The White Heron” (1886). Billips compares the portrayals of an encounter between an urban, male visitor and a local rural girl present in all three narratives, and in doing so demonstrates that Wharton, who disparaged Jewett and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, nevertheless took up subjects and published in venues shared by regionalist writers.In the final piece, Mary Marchand examines the invention of the forensic “scene” by a new science, which “revealed that objects contain records of past activities.” Her article considers the final chapter of The House of Mirth, where, Marchand argues, Selden's examination of the objects in Lily's room suggest that the “literary influence of forensic science was felt far beyond the genre of detective fiction.” Her consideration of the “testimony of objects” in the final scene of The House of Mirth as signifying a “forensic imagination” that shapes Selden's attitude and actions as he examines Lily Bart's room the morning after her death is a strikingly original reading.I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to my Edith Wharton Review colleagues Sharon Kim, Myrto Drizou, and Shannon Brennan, as well as the members of the editorial board, whose expertise and commitment to scholarship on Wharton and her circle has made my work on this issue, my first as editor, so rewarding. I am also indebted to the staff at Penn State University Press, who have supported tirelessly the new editorial team and patiently answered our many questions. I wish to express my gratitude to Meredith Goldsmith, who so ably negotiated the transition to Penn State, broadened the mission of the journal, and improved it in ways large and small. Looking ahead, the Edith Wharton Review will continue to publish high-quality scholarship on Wharton, Wharton in the context of other authors, and her relation to other writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We also seek submissions related to Wharton's archive, Wharton and periodical culture, the author's social networks, and her nonfiction writing.

Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman

Multimodal Technologies in LEGO House: A Social Semiotic Perspective

Children’s playworlds are a complex interweaving of modes, with the border areas between the digital and non-digital often becoming increasingly blurred. Growing in popularity and prevalence, multimodal technologies blending digital and non-digital elements present novel opportunities for designers of toys and play-spaces as well as being of interest to researchers of young children’s contemporary play and learning. Opened in Denmark in September 2017, LEGO House defines itself as the ‘Home of the Brick’, a public attraction aiming to support play, creativity and learning through multiple interactive LEGO experiences spanning digital and non-digital forms. Offering a rich context for considering multimodal perspectives on contemporary play, this article reports on a range of multimodal technologies featured in LEGO House, including digital cameras, scanners, and interactive tables used in combination with traditional LEGO bricks. Three LEGO House experiences are considered from a multimodal social semiotic perspective, focusing on the affordances of multimodal technologies for play, and the process of transduction across modes, in order to explore the liminal border-areas where digital and non-digital play are increasingly mixed. This article proposes that LEGO House presents an innovative ‘third space’ that creates opportunities for playful interaction with multimodal technologies. LEGO House can be seen as part of a growing recognition of the power of play, both in its own right and in relation to learning, acknowledging that meaning-making happens in informal times and places that are not positioned as direct acts of teaching. Furthermore, it is suggested that multimodal technologies embedded into the play-space expand opportunities for learning in new ways, whilst highlighting that movement between digital and non-digital forms always entails both gains and losses: A matter which needs to be explored. Highlighting the opportunities for meaning-making in informal, play-based settings such as LEGO House therefore has the potential to recognise and give value to playful meaning-making with multimodal technologies which may otherwise be taken for granted or go unnoticed. In this way, experiences such as those found in LEGO House can contribute towards conceptualisations of learning which support children to develop the playfully creative skills and knowledge required for the digital age.

Fernand Crommelynck’s dramaturgy and its interpretation by Vsevolod Meyerhold and Les Kurbas

Fernand Crommelynck’s dramaturgy and its interpretation by Vsevolod Meyerhold and Les Kurbas

Gender and Time in Ahmed Yerima’s Aetu

SummaryThis article explores the effects of time and historical change on Nigerian feminist literature by focusing on the work of a prolific contemporary Nigerian playwright, Ahmed Yerima. The history of Yerima’s writing reveals a shift from plays with historical themes to plays which engage explicitly with questions of gender and gender-related oppression. In this way, his writing trajectory provides one example of the growing importance of gender concerns in Nigerian literature. The article goes further to present an exegesis of one of Yerima’s gender-focused plays, namely Aetu, published in 2007. It looks at the play’s engagement with the way in which traditional Yoruba practices fix women in socially subordinate positions. It also considers the play’s handling of time in relation to feminist concerns with time and non-linearity.

Fifty Shades of Bluebeard? Dukas'sAriane et Barbe-Bleuein the Twenty-First Century

AbstractWith the appearance of opera videos in 2013 (DVD) and 2015 (YouTube), Paul Dukas'sAriane et Barbe-Bleue(1907) has been revived for twenty-first-century audiences. Not only has this formerly obscure work migrated to a mass-media landscape of personalized digital consumption, but its cultural recontextualization has also been extended to the interpretations staged in those opera videos. Both challenge historical, feminist readings ofAriane. Updating the action to modern scenes of abduction and captivity, these productions recast Ariane as victim and reframe the opera as part of the present discourse on sexual violence. As these recent productions ofArianeresonate with broader aesthetic tendencies in current popular culture, I trace parallels between the opera and three such examples from 2015. Selecting works that exemplify the trend of repackaging the Bluebeard tale as contemporary drama, I cite the filmsFifty Shades of GreyandRoom, and the Netflix seriesThe Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

David Krasner, A History of Modern Drama, Volume II: 1960–2000

This review looks positively on David Krasner’s expansive and in-depth A History of Modern Drama: Volume II: 1960–2000. Krasner’s book is important for the ways in which he eschews the debate on where modern drama ends and contemporary drama begins. Instead, he persuasively categorizes dramatic eras according to the differing techniques found in modernism and postmodernism.

The Racial Unconsciousness of the Parisian Public Theatre: Borders and Demotions in Francophone Contemporary Drama

This article analyses the impact of France’s colonial heritage on French and Parisian public theatre. Theatrical programming corresponds to an imaginary still structured by a cultural and social construction of race that reflects the past of the “Grande Nation.” Three different plays by Ivorian dramatist Koffi Kwahulé are examined, each depicting situations of demotion experienced by French citizens of foreign origin. I argue that the way French public theatre is structured and administered today mirrors, to a certain extent, real situations of tension reflecting the disparities between the “centres” (symbols of power and homogeneity) and the “peripheries” (socio-economic and cultural spaces of relegation structured by a racial imaginary). I also analyse the concept of the border as a geographic, economic, and sociocultural paradigm, allowing us to understand, in the French and francophone contexts, what unites and divides – or more accurately, how francophone writers and French writers of foreign origin can still be condemned in the twenty-first century to a sort of exile from metropolitan Paris, the capital of a Jacobin state.

Staging Henrik Ibsen’s and Jon Fosse’s Mental Landscapes

Norway’s best-known contemporary playwright Jon Fosse has often been compared to Henrik Ibsen, no less because of the two dramatists’ common emphasis on their native physical landscape as a mirror of the protagonists’ emotional and existential conflict. In Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea (1888) and in Fosse’s Someone is Going to Come (1996) in particular, characters and actions – although generated within specific geographical and cultural co-ordinates – rise to the level of archetypes and acquire timeless significance.This comparative study traces a continuum from the modernist Ibsen to Fosse’s humanistic postmodernism in so far as the authors’ treatment of psychology, structure, and landscape exposes ideas and endorses themes and images, which in turn account for similar patterns of staging. In a context whereby myth and allegory are projected against a background defined by the ocean and unfamiliar horizons, the markedly schematic representation of existential dread in both plays reveals strong visual conceits that are uncannily similar to the effect that one cannot really read or direct Fosse without making a mental note of Ibsen’s drama. The “haunted” nature of the spectator’s experience notwithstanding, both texts seem to be a director’s ideal material, hosting the natural environment so intensely so that it becomes an extension of the characters, punctuating the important stations in their lives and adding emotional and sensory texture to their words and their actions. From the point-of-view of a theatre director, decoding the plays’ imagistic identity becomes primarily an immersive experience in the Nordic landscape – of both nature and the mind.

The function of monologue in contemporary drama

The monologue as an opening of inner thoughts gained its popularity in the drama field already in the second half of the 20th century. Influenced by such writers as M. Duras, P. Handke, B. Strauss, H. Müller, M. Koltès, it started to be more and more intensively used in contemporary drama, which practises inner monologue and the flow of un/consciousness. That’s why this article ‘The function of monologue in contemporary drama’ presents the types of monologues and analyses how their functions are changing.

A teacher's response to ‘“Where the wild things are” – an insider's experience of the contemporary classroom’

ABSTRACTIn this piece of writing, I respond to Anon's reflections on her/his experiences of being taught Drama in a British high school, recently published in this journal (see Anon. 2017. ‘“Where the wild things are” – an insider's experience of the contemporary drama classroom’, RIDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 22:2, 216–219). As a Drama teacher working in UK education for 13 years, I empathised with the teacher in Anon's account of the drama classroom. In order to provide a contextualisation of UK arts education that form the broader landscape of Anon's account, I reflect on the pressures of drama teaching in the contemporary classroom partly created by the UK government's marginalisation of arts subjects in schools.

Spregelburd’s Stubbornness


 
 
 In recent years I have almost religiously gone to see something by or featuring Rafael Spregelburd whenever I visit Argentina, on stage or screen. On my last trip, this March, alongside two films(Florencia Percia’s debut Cetáceos and Lucrecia Martel’s historical drama Zama) and a talk, in conversation with the academic Gabriel Guz, it was his ambitious play La terquedad (Stubbornness). Spregelburd is widely acknowledged as one of Argentina’s most significant contemporary dramatists. His work appears regularly on European festival stages, and has won prizes worldwide. He has translated Harold Pinter, Sarah Kane, and other British playwrights for performance in Spanish. Yet it is a number of years now since The Argentine Moment appeared at London’s Royal Court, and his namewill hardly be familiar to British readers. Some may recognise him as a screen actor, playing the proverbially tortured political artist, gruff husband to the eponymous heroine, and love rival to SamHuntington’s lead in Nico Casavecchia’s Finding Sofia (2016).
 
 

Violence, Speech, and Reality: The Case ofCinq Visages pour Camille Brunelle

This article focuses on the connection between violence, obscenity, language, and character in contemporary Quebec theatre and how it might help us redefine the tension between theatre and reality, questioning anew oppositions such as artifice/authenticity or theatricality/performativity. Using Guillaume Corbeil’s Cinq visages pour Camille Brunelle, this article proposes that even if contemporary playwrights use a resemblance with reality (resemblance of language, discourse, ideas, or characters), the ‘stage’ should not try to refer to the ‘real world.’ I argue that the question of reality and post-reality is in need of a new definition. Theatre could be redefined as a new space, acting as a mediator between the real and the fictional, making use of both at the same time. Recent plays in Quebec have seen a decrease in physical violence in favour of violent speech, and this undoes the binary that associates the real with action and violence and speech with artifice. When characters use violent speech, they are perpetually caught between transparency and opacity, authenticity and artifice.