The Routledge Drama Anthology and Sourcebook: From Modernism to Contemporary Performance

881 Pages·2010·8.79 MB·English

by  Maggie B. Gale

The Routledge Drama
Anthology and
Sourcebook
From Modernism to Contemporary
Performance
Edited by
Maggie B. Gale and John F. Deeney
The Routledge Drama
Anthology and Sourcebook
From Modernism to Contemporary Performance
The Routledge Drama Anthology and Sourcebook is a groundbreaking compilation of the key movements in
the history of modern theatre, from the late nineteenth century to contemporary performance practice.
Each of the book’s five sections comprises a selection of plays and performance texts that define the period,
reproduced in full and accompanied by key theoretical writings of performers and critics that inform and
contextualize their reading. Substantial introductions from experts in the field also provide these sections
with an overview of the works and their significance.
The works span:
– Naturalism and symbolism
– The historical avant-garde
– Early political theatres
– The performance of ideology
– Contemporary performance
This textbook provides an unprecedented collection of comprehensive resource materials which will
facilitate in-depth critical analysis. It enables a dialogue between Chekhov, Strindberg, Lorca, Marinetti
and Artaud, Brecht, Churchill, Fornes, Ravenhill and Gómez-Peňa, among many other key practitioners.
Maggie B. Gale is Professor and Chair of Drama at the University of Manchester, England. Her publi-
cations include: West End Women: Women on the London Stage 1918–1962 (1996); British Theatre Between
the Wars 1918–1939 (2000), with Clive Barker; The Cambridge Companion to the Actress (2007), with John
Stokes, and J. B. Priestley: Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists (2008).
John F. Deeney is Senior Lecturer in Drama at Manchester Metropolitan University, England. He is the
author of many essays and articles on contemporary playwrights, editor of Writing Live: An Investigation
of the Relationship Between Writing and Live Art (1998) and author of Mark Ravenhill: Routledge Modern and
Contemporary Dramatists (2010).
Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is
also an award-winning playwright and the author of 1956 and All That: The Making of Modern British Drama
(1999) and Theatre and Globalization (2009) as well as many essays and articles on post-war and contem-
porary British theatre and drama.

Routledge Drama Anthology
and Sourcebook
From Modernism to Contemporary Performance
Edited by Maggie B. Gale and John F. Deeney
with Dan Rebellato
First published 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Selection and editorial material © 2010 Maggie B. Gale and John F. Deeney
Individual chapters © the contributors
Typeset in Bembo MT Pro 11/14pt by Fakenham Photosetting Ltd, Fakenham, Norfolk
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–46606–6 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–46662–2 (pbk)
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction – Maggie B. Gale xv
Part 1: Naturalism and Symbolism: Early Modernist Practice 3
Introduction – Dan Rebellato 6
1. Thérèse Raquin (Émile Zola) 25
2. Miss Julie (August Strindberg) 51
3. Three Sisters (Anton Chekhov) 68
4. When We Dead Awaken (Henrik Ibsen) 98
5. Interior (Maurice Maeterlinck) 120
6. Naturalism in the Theatre (Émile Zola) 126
7. Preface to Miss Julie (August Strindberg) 138
8. A New Art of the Stage (Arthur Symons) 147
9. The Modern Drama (Maurice Maeterlinck) 153
10. Tragedy in Everyday Life (Maurice Maeterlinck) 158
11. On the Complete Pointlessness of Accurate Staging (Pierre Quillard) 163
Part 2: The Historical Avant-Garde: Performance and Innovation 166
Introduction – Maggie B. Gale 170
1. King Ubu (Alfred Jarry) 191
2. The Breasts of Tiresias (Guillaume Apollinaire) 207
3. The Spurt of Blood (Antonin Artaud) 219
4. Murderer the Women’s Hope (Oskar Kokoschka) 222
5. Genius and Culture and Bachelor Apartment (Umberto Boccioni) 225
6. Feet (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti) 228
7. Genius in a Jiffy or a Dadalogy (Raoul Hausmann) 230
8. The Public (Federico García Lorca) 232
9. The Meaning of the Music Hall (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti) 249
10. Theatre and The Plague and No More Masterpieces (Antonin Artaud) 252
11. The First Surrealist Manifesto and The Second Surrealist Manifesto (André Breton) 266
12. Futurist Scenography (Enrico Prampolini) 274
13. Theater, Circus, Variety (László Moholy-Nagy) 277
Part 3: Early Political Theatres 286
Introduction – Maggie B. Gale and John F. Deeney 290
1. How the Vote Was Won (Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St John) 310
2. Hoppla, We’re Alive! (Ernst Töller) 319
3. Love on the Dole (Ronald Gow and Walter Greenwood) 366
vi Contents
4. E5mc² (Hallie Flanagan Davis) 393
5. Johnny Noble (Ewan MacColl) 421
6. Suffrage Theatre: Community Activism and Political Commitment (Susan Carlson) 435
7. The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (Walter Benjamin) 445
8. The Street Scene (Bertolt Brecht) 469
9. Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction (Bertolt Brecht) 475
10. Rehabilitating Realism (Sheila Stowell) 481
11. The Author as Producer (Terry Eagleton) 487
Part 4: Ideology and Performance/The Performance of Ideology 496
Introduction – John F. Deeney 501
1. Blues for Mister Charlie (James Baldwin) 524
2. The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil (John McGrath) 562
3. Enter the Night (Marie Irene Fornes) 587
4. Far Away (Caryl Churchill) 605
5. Scenes from Family Life (Mark Ravenhill) 612
6. Theory of Cultural Production (Alan Sinfield) 625
7. The Theory and Practice of Political Theatre (John McGrath) 635
8. Fortynine Asides for a Tragic Theatre (Howard Barker) 653
9. Re-acting (to) Empire (Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins) 656
10. Me, My iBook, and Writing in America (Mark Ravenhill) 667
Part 5: Contemporary Performance/The Contemporaneity of Practice 678
Introduction – Maggie B. Gale and John F. Deeney 683
1. Stories From The Nerve Bible [Excerpts] (Laurie Anderson) 705
2. Polygraph (Robert Lepage and Marie Bressard) 716
3. ‘Confess to Everything’: A Note on Speak Bitterness (Tim Etchells) and Speak Bitterness
(Tim Etchells/Forced Entertainment) 734
4. The Story of M (SuAndi) 751
5. Supernintendo Ranchero (Guillermo Gómez-Peña) 770
6. Myth Today (Roland Barthes) 774
7. The Precession of Simulacra [Extracts] (Jean Baudrillard) 782
8. Aspects: Text – space – time – body – media (Hans-Thies Lehmann) 790
9. Dramaturgy and Montage (Eugenio Barba) 816
10. Laurie Anderson in Interview (edited by Nicholas Zarbrugg) 829
11. Away from The Surveillance Cameras of the Art World: Strategies for Collaboration and
Community Activism (Guillermo Gòmez-Peña) 837
Index 851
Illustrations
1. The Italian actress Giacinta Pezzana as the mother in Thérèse Raquin at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in 1879 38
2. Charlotte Emmerson as Thérèse and Ben Daniels as Laurent in Thérèse Raquin from a new version
by Nicholas Wright, directed by Marianne Elliot at the Royal National Theatre, London in 2006 38
3. Charlotte Emmerson as Thérèse and Ben Daniels as Laurent in Thérèse Raquin from a new version
by Nicholas Wright, directed by Marianne Elliot at the Royal National Theatre, London in 2006 39
4. The first production in Stockholm of Miss Julie in November 1906, at The People’s Theatre 52
5. Sandra Prinsoo and John Kani as Miss Julie and Jean in The Baxter Theatre Centre’s 1985 production
of Miss Julie 63
6. From the Moscow Art Theatre 1901 production of Three Sisters 76
7. Drei Schwestern (Three Sisters) at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, 2009 78
8. From the Moscow Art Theatre 1901 production of Three Sisters 88
9. Lynn Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave and Gemma Redgrave in Robert Strura’s 1991 production of
Three Sisters 91
10. Steffi Kühnert (Olga), Jule Böwe (Irina) and Bibiana Beglau (Masha) in Drei Schwestern
(Three Sisters) at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, 2009 95
11. When We Dead Awaken, Theater Ibsen, Skien, Norway, 2006, directed by Morten Traavik 99
12. When We Dead Awaken, Theater Ibsen, Skien, Norway, 2006, directed by Morten Traavik 99
13. Four Portraits of Mr Ubu by Alfred Jarry 192
14. Ubu directed by Jean Vilar at the Théàtre National Populaire, in 1958 197
15. Presto, The People of Zanzibar and Lacouf in Les Mamelles de Tirésias, 24 June 1917 211
16. Guillaume Apollinaire and members of the cast of Les Mamelles de Tirésias, 24 June 1917 212
17. A sequence from Artaud’s The Spurt of Blood, directed by Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz for the
Theatre of Cruelty season at the LAMDA Theatre, London in 1964 220
18. The magician (Walter Vidarte) making his final entry in the closing scene of The Public directed by
Lluís Pasqual, in Madrid, 1987 247
19. Moholy-Nagy, Human Mechanics (Variety) 278
20. Moholy-Nagy, The Benevolent Gentleman (Circus Scene) 279
21. Hoppla, We’re Alive! from the Berliner-Schauspielschule studio production, 1984 321
22. Love on the Dole, from the Skipton Little Theatre, Yorkshire, England in the 1930s 374
23. Love on the Dole at the Lowry Theatre, Salford, Manchester, 2004 384
24. Diane Sands in Blues for Mister Charlie at the ANTA Theater, New York, 1964 525
25. Blues for Mister Charlie at the ANTA Theater, New York, 1964 560
26. Bill Paterson as the English (in tweeds) stag hunter meeting a kilted Scots hunter (John Bett), in 7:84 Scotland’s
production of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, 1973 575
27. John Bett and Elizabeth MacLennan (7:84 Scotland) in The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black,
Black Oil, 1973 576
28. Far Away at the Royal Court Theatre, 2000, directed by Stephen Daldry 608
29. Stories from the Nerve Bible, Laurie Anderson 706
30. Stories from the Nerve Bible, Laurie Anderson 707
viii Illustrations
31. Stories from the Nerve Bible, Laurie Anderson 709
32. Polygraph (Ex Machina/Robert Lepage) from the Harbourfront Festival’s Quayworks, Toronto, 1990 722
33. Polygraph (Ex Machina/Robert Lepage) from the Harbourfront Festival’s Quayworks, Toronto, 1990 723
34. Polygraph (Ex Machina/Robert Lepage) 725
35. Speak Bitterness (Forced Entertainment), Essen tour, 2009 737
36. Speak Bitterness (Forced Entertainment), Essen tour, 2009 741
37. Gómez-Peña as ‘El Veteran Survivor’ 771
38. a–k Actor’s first montage: Kosuke Nomura in Sequence A 822
39. a–n Actor’s second montage: Etienne Decroux in Sequence B 824
40. a–j Director’s montage: the new sequence 826
41. Performance jamming session at Theater Arnaud 839
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the numerous people involved in the making of this anthology. Firstly,
thanks to all the artists and scholars who gave permission to reproduce their texts and photographs,
and especially to Tim Etchells and Forced Entertainment who let us use the latest ‘version’ of Speak
Bitterness. Secondly, to all the people at Routledge who were excited and engaged by the project
and who have encouraged us, especially when the task seemed too vast: Talia Rodgers, Moira
Taylor and Ben Piggott in particular. For those who have worked to clear permissions, thanks for
all your hard work and patience. We would also like to thank all our students at the University
of Manchester, and Manchester Metropolitan University, who have worked with many of the
materials included in this anthology over the past few years, and who have offered thoughtful
and interesting responses to them. This project would not have been possible without the advice
and encouragement of our friends and colleagues: John Stokes, Maria Delgado, Dan Rebellato,
Viv Gardner, James Thompson, Vicki Hutchison, Rose Whyman and Sue Cole. Many thanks to
those who have offered support such as Eamon McKay, Mel Kenyon, Andrew Quick and Robin
Nelson, and especially Aleksander Dundjerovic, for his initial work and advice in setting up the
volume. Editorial advice and detailed responses to the anthology in its early stages and to the essays
from readers, teachers and practitioners were vital, and for this we thank in particular Aikaterini
Drakopoulou, Alison Jeffers, Linda Taylor and Shane Kinghorn. Special thanks to Hayley Bradley
who worked feverishly as an assistant on the project from early on, and to Oscar and Sol Partridge
for accepting chocolate and promises of cinema trips as a bribe when their mum needed to work
over weekends. Finally, enormous thanks to Jenny Hughes, who spent far more time and energy
than was reasonable to expect, encouraging us, helping with shaping the ideas developed in this
volume, and in editing and refining our writing for which we are both forever in her debt.
This book is dedicated to the theatre and performance artists who have made our lives richer
through their work.
The publishers wish to thank the following for their permission to publish work in full or extracts.
Émile Zola, Therese Raquin, translated and © Pip Broughton, Oberon Books/Absolute Classics
2003.
August Strindberg, Miss Julie, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, new version translated by Frank
McGuinness. Copyright © 2000 Frank McGuinness. Kind permission of TGA, The Gersh
Agency, New York, and Casarotto Ramsay & Associates Limited, London.
Anton Chekhov, The Three Sisters (Penguin) © 1954 Elisaveta Fen, pp. 247–330. Reproduced by
kind permission of the Estate of Elisaveta Fen.
Henrik Ibsen, When We Dead Awaken, translation by William Archer, 1903. Public domain.
Maurice Maeterlinck, Interior, translation by Dan Rebellato. Reproduced by permission of SCP
Schmidt & Goldgrab on behalf of M. Louis Van Goitsenhoven Maeterlinck.