Despite the recent turn to affects and emotions in the humanities and despite the unceasing popularity of romantic and erotic love as a motif in fictional works of all genres, the subject has received surprisingly little attention in academic studies of contemporary drama. Love in Contemporary British Drama reflects the appeal of love as a topic and driving force in dramatic works with in-depth analyses of eight pivotal plays from the past three decades. Following an interdisciplinary and historical approach, the study collects and condenses theories of love from philosophy and sociology to derive persisting discourses and to examine their reoccurrence and transformation in contemporary plays. Special emphasis is put on narratives of love’s compensatory function and precariousness and on how modifications of these narratives epitomise the peculiarities of emotional life in the social and cultural context of the present. Based on the assumption that drama is especially inclined to draw on shared narratives for representations of love, the book demonstrates that love is both a window to remnants of the past in the present and a proper subject matter for drama in times in which the suitability of the dramatic form has been questioned.

Despite the recent turn to affects and emotions in the humanities and despite the unceasing popularity of romantic and erotic love as a motif in fictional works of all genres, the subject has received surprisingly little attention in academic studies of contemporary drama. Love in Contemporary British Drama reflects the appeal of love as a topic and driving force in dramatic works with in-depth analyses of eight pivotal plays from the past three decades. Following an interdisciplinary and historical approach, the study collects and condenses theories of love from philosophy and sociology to derive persisting discourses and to examine their reoccurrence and transformation in contemporary plays. Special emphasis is put on narratives of love’s compensatory function and precariousness and on how modifications of these narratives epitomise the peculiarities of emotional life in the social and cultural context of the present. Based on the assumption that drama is especially inclined to draw on shared narratives for representations of love, the book demonstrates that love is both a window to remnants of the past in the present and a proper subject matter for drama in times in which the suitability of the dramatic form has been questioned.

This edited collection brings together a team of internationally prominent academics and delivers cutting-edge discourse on the strongly emerging tradition of experimentation in contemporary British theatre - redefining what the dramatic stands for today. Each chapter of the collection focuses on influential contemporary plays and playwrights.

This book focuses exclusively on the exciting and provocative plays produced in England in the last two decades. The primary aim of the collection is to celebrate the truly remarkable range of British drama since 1970, by examining the work of fourteen important and representative playwrights. This emphasis on range applies not only to the dramatists chosen for inclusion but to the critics as well - specifically to the diversity of critical methodology demonstrated in their essays.

This book provides a critical assessment of dramatic literature since 1995, situating texts, companies and writers in a cultural, political and social context. It examines the shifting role of the playwright, the dominant genres and emerging styles of the past decade and how they are related.Beginning with an examination of how dramatic literature and the writer are placed in the contemporary theatre, the book then provides detailed analyses of the texts, companies and writing processes involved in six different professional contexts: new writing, verbatim theatre, writing and devising, Black and Asian theatre, writing for young people and adaptation and transposition. The chapters cover contemporary practitioners, including Simon Stephens, Gregory Burke, Robin Soans, Alecky Blythe, Kneehigh Theatre, Punchdrunk, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Edward Bond, Filter Theatre and Headlong, and offers detailed case-studies and examples of their work.

This guide offers a comprehensive account of British theatre from the 1960s to the present day. Placing critical commentary at the heart of its analysis, it explores how theatre critics and scholars have sought to understand and write about modern theatre, from the earliest reviews to revivals appearing decades later. With studies of contemporary reviews and archival material, Contemporary British Drama offers readers the opportunity to learn about British theatre in its original context and to chart shifting critical perceptions over the decades. It provides a crucial juxtaposition between the development of British theatre and its contemporaneous critical response, supplying an invaluable insight into the critical climate of recent decades. From feminist playwrighting to In-Yer-Face theatre, this is the ideal companion for undergraduate students of literature and theatre in need of an introduction to the debates surrounding contemporary British drama.

This book examines British playwrights' responses to the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries since 1945, from Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to Sarah Kane’s Blasted and Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. Using the work of Julie Sanders and others working in the fields of Adaptation Studies and intertextual criticism, it argues that this relatively neglected area of drama, widely considered to be adaptation, should instead be considered as appropriation - as work that often mounts challenges to the ideologies and orthodoxies within Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, and questions the legitimacy and cultural authority of Shakespeare’s legacy. The book discusses the work of Howard Barker, Peter Barnes, Edward Bond, Howard Brenton, David Edgar, Elaine Feinstein and the Women’s Theatre Group, David Greig, Sarah Kane, Dennis Kelly, Bernard Kopps, Charles Marowitz, Julia Pascal and Arnold Wesker.