Twenty-First Century Drama: What Happens Now

349 Pages·2016·3.004 MB·English

by  Siân Adiseshiah, Louise LePage (eds.)

TWENTY-FIRST
CENTURY DRAMA

what happens now
edited by
siân adiseshiah and louise lepage
Twenty-First Century Drama

Siân Adiseshiah • L ouise LePage
Editors
Twenty-First Century
Drama
What Happens Now
Editors
Siân Adiseshiah Louise LePage
School of English and Journalism Department of Film, Theatre &
University of Lincoln Television
United Kingdom University of Reading
United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-137-48402-4 ISBN 978-1-137-48403-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-48403-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936726
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For Lucien and Xanthe

C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction: What Happens Now 1
Siân Adiseshiah and Louise LePage
Part 1 B eyond Postmodernism: Changing
Perspectives on Drama 15
2 Room for Realism? 17
Elaine Aston
3 Beyond Belief: British Theatre and the
‘re-enchantment of the world’ 37
Chris Megson
4 The Emancipated Shakespeare: or, What You Will 59
Stephen Bottoms
5 The Twenty-First-Century History Play 81
Paola Botham
vii
viii CONTENTS
Part 2 Austerity and Class Returns 105
6 Back to the Future: Gendering the
Economy in Twenty-First-Century Drama 107
Louise Owen
7 Translating Austerity: Theatrical Responses
to the Financial Crisis 129
Mark O’Thomas
8 ‘Chavs’, ‘Gyppos’ and ‘Scum’? Class in
Twenty-First-Century Drama 149
Siân Adiseshiah
Part 3 Borders, Race, Nation 173
9 These Green and Pleasant Lands: Travellers,
Gypsies and the Lament for England in Jez
Butterworth’s Jerusalem 175
Nadine Holdsworth
10 ‘Sexy Kilts with Attitude’: Scottish Theatre in 
the Twenty-First Century 191
Trish Reid
11 The Politics of Innocence in Contemporary
Theatre about Refugees 213
Emma Cox
Part 4 New Humans, New Dramaturgies, New Worlds 237
12 The New Genetics, Genocide and Caryl Churchill 239
Mary Luckhurst
CONTENTS ix
13 Twenty-First Century Casting: Katie Mitchell,
Cognitive Science and ‘painting with people’ 257
Marie Kelly
14 ‘Thinking Something Makes It So’:
Performing Robots, the Workings of Mimesis
and the Importance of Character 279
Louise LePage
15 Anthropo-Scenes: Staging Climate Chaos
in the Drama of Bad Ideas 303
Una Chaudhuri
Select Bibliography 323
Index 339