Can theatre change the world? If so, how can it productively connect with social reality and foster spectatorial critique and engagement? This open access book examines the forms and functions of political drama in what has been described as a post-Marxist, post-ideological, even post-political moment. It argues that Bertolt Brecht's concept of dialectical theatre represents a privileged theoretical and dramaturgical method on the contemporary British stage as well as a valuable lens for understanding 21st-century theatre in Britain. Establishing a creative philosophical dialogue between Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Rancière, the study analyses seminal works by five influential contemporary playwrights, ranging from Mark Ravenhill's 'in-yer-face' plays to Caryl Churchill's 21st century theatrical experiments. Engaging critically with Brecht's theatrical legacy, these plays create a politically progressive form of drama which emphasises notions of negativity, ambivalence and conflict as a prerequisite for spectatorial engagement and emancipation. This book adopts an interdisciplinary and intercultural theoretical approach, reuniting English and German perspectives and innovatively weaving together a variety of theoretical strands to offer fresh insights on Brecht's legacy, on British theatre history and on the selected plays. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Can theatre change the world? If so, how can it productively connect with social reality and foster spectatorial critique and engagement? This book examines the forms and functions of political drama in what has been described as a post-Marxist, post-ideological, even post-political moment. It argues that Bertolt Brecht's concept of dialectical theatre represents a privileged theoretical and dramaturgical method on the contemporary British stage as well as a valuable lens for understanding 21st-century theatre in Britain. Establishing a creative philosophical dialogue between Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Rancière, the study analyses seminal works by five influential contemporary playwrights, ranging from Mark Ravenhill's 'in-yer-face' plays to Caryl Churchill's 21st century theatrical experiments. Engaging critically with Brecht's theatrical legacy, these plays create a politically progressive form of drama which emphasises notions of negativity, ambivalence and conflict as a prerequisite for spectatorial engagement and emancipation. This book adopts an interdisciplinary and intercultural theoretical approach, reuniting English and German perspectives and innovatively weaving together a variety of theoretical strands to offer fresh insights on Brecht's legacy, on British theatre history and on the selected plays.

One of Bertolt Brecht's best-loved and most performed plays, The Threepenny Opera was first staged in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin (now the home of the Berliner Ensemble). Based on the eighteenth-century The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, the play is a satire on the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic, but set in a mock-Victorian Soho. With Kurt Weill's music, which was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce the jazz idiom into the theatre, it became a popular hit throughout the western world. This new edition is published here in John Willett and Ralph Manhein's classic translation with commentary and notes by Anja Hartl.

The first of its kind, this companion to British-Jewish theatre brings a neglected dimension in the work of many prominent British theatre-makers to the fore. Its structure reflects the historical development of British-Jewish theatre from the 1950s onwards, beginning with an analysis of the first generation of writers that now forms the core of post-war British drama (including Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker) and moving on to significant thematic force-fields and faultlines such as the Holocaust, antisemitism and Israel/Palestine. The book also covers the new generation of British-Jewish playwrights, with a special emphasis on the contribution of women writers and the role of particular theatres in the development of British-Jewish theatre, as well as TV drama. Included in the book are fascinating interviews with a set of significant theatre practitioners working today, including Ryan Craig, Patrick Marber, John Nathan, Julia Pascal and Nicholas Hytner. The companion addresses, not only aesthetic and ideological concerns, but also recent transformations with regard to institutional contexts and frameworks of cultural policies.

Shortlisted for The TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize 2023 As the first full-length study to analyse utopian plays in Western drama from antiquity to the present, Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre offers an illuminating appraisal of the objectives of utopianism as manifested in drama through the ages, and carefully ascertains the added value that live performance brings to the persuasion of utopian thought. Siân Adiseshiah scrutinises the distinctive intervention of utopian drama through its examination alongside the utopian prose tradition – in this way, the book establishes new ways of approaching utopian aesthetics and new ways of interpreting utopian drama. This book provides fresh understandings of the generic features of utopian plays, identifies the gains of establishing a new genre, and ascertains ways in which this genre functions as political theatre. Referring to over 40 plays, of which 18 are examined in detail, Utopian Drama traces the emergence of the utopian play in the Western tradition from ancient Greek Comedy to experimental contemporary work. Works discussed in detail include plays by Aristophanes, Margaret Cavendish, George Bernard Shaw, Howard Brenton, Claire MacDonald, Cesi Davidson, and Mojisola Adebayo. As well as offering extended attention to the work of these playwrights, the book reflects on the development of utopian drama through history, notes the persistent features, tropes, and conventions of utopian plays, and considers the implications of their registration for both theatre studies and utopian studies.

It is a fact that today’s British stages resound with powerfully innovative voices and that, very often, these voices have been those of young women playwrights. This collection of essays gives visibility and pride of place to these fascinating voices by exploring the vitality, inventiveness and particularly strong relevance of these poetics. These women playwrights sometimes invent radically new forms and sometimes experiment with conventional ones in fresh and unexpected ways, as for example when they re-energize naturalism and provide it with new missions. The plays that are addressed are all concerned with the necessity to grasp the complexity of the contemporary world and to further investigate what it means to be human. Intimate or epic, and sometimes both at once, visionary or closer to everyday life, these plays approach the contemporary world through a multitude of prisms – historical, scientific, political and poetic – and open different and visionary perspectives.

Infrastructure comprises a combination of sociotechnical, political, and cultural arrangements that provide resources and services. The contributors to this volume show, in their respective fields, how infrastructures are both generative forces and the materialized products of quotidian practices that affect and guide people's lives. Organized via shared conceptual foci, this volume demonstrates infrastructuralist perspectives as an important transdisciplinary approach within the humanities.