Jochen Achilles, Ina Bergmann and Birgit Däwes, eds.
Global Challenges and Regional Responses in Contemporary Drama in English
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2002.
ISBN 3-88476-590-6, 280 pp., EURO 24,50
The volume contains the 14 papers given on the occasion of the eleventh annual conference of CDE, held in Rothenfels by the University of Würzburg.
- Matthew Roudané: Global Challenges, Regional Responses: The Theatre of Sam Shepard
- Hans-Ulrich Mohr: The Significance of ‚Horseplay‘: Global and Regional Dimensions in Sam Shepard’s True West and Far North
- Katharina Ehrhard: Enacting the Farm Crisis of the 1970s: Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class as a Socially Symbolic Act
- Wilfried Raussert: Gender and Performance of Local and Global Conflicts in Postmodern and Contemporary American Drama: LeRoi Jones, José Rivera, David H. Hwang
- Carmen Birkle: Revising America, Revisioning the Past: American Drama in a Global(izing) World
- Kerstin Schmidt: „A Blueprint of an Event“: History, Spectacle, and the Creation of an African American Perspective
- Klaus Benesch: Myth, Media, and the Obsolescene of Postmodern Drama: Don DeLillo’s Tragicomedy Valparaiso
- Marvin Carlson: The Mother Tongue and the Other Tongue: The American Challenge in Recent Drama
- Cordula Quint: Terror of the Contemporary Sublime: Regional Responses to the Challenges of Internationalism and Globalization in the Drama of Caryl Churchill and David Edgar
- Kara McKechnie: Homely Northern Women in Sensible Shoes: Alan Bennett and the Pleasures of Provincialism
- Jürgen Wehrmann: Revising the Nation: Globalization and Fragmentation of Irish History in Sebastian Barry’s Plays
- Birgit Däwes: Local or Global? Negotiations of Identity in Drew Hayden Taylor’s Plays
- Chijioke Uwah: The Theme of Political Betrayal in the Plays of Zakes Mda
- Annette Pankratz / Alyce von Rothkirch / Kathleen Starck / Merle Tönnies: Making Play-Texts Live: Teaching Drama as Experience
Hans-Ulrich Mohr and Kerstin Mächler, eds.
Extending the Code – New Forms of Dramatic and Theatrical Expression
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2004.
ISBN 3-88476-681-3, 264 p., EURO 24,00
The volume contains the 15 papers given at the 12th annual conference of CDE held in Meissen by the University of Dresden.
- Hans-Ulrich Mohr: Introduction: The Code of Contemporary Drama and Theatre and its Functions
- Theodore Shank: Beyond Illusion: American Alternative Theatre
- Aleks Sierz: ‚To Recommend a Cure‘: Beyond Social Realism and In-Yer-Face Theatre
- Anette Pankratz: Signifiying Nothing and Everything: The Extension of the Code and Hyperreal Simulations
- Piet Defraeye: In-Yer-Face Theatre? Reflections on Provocation and Provoked Audiences in Contemporary Theatre
- Silvija Jestrovic: Body and Machine: Extending the Codes in Theatre
of Laurie Anderson and Robert Wilson - Clare Wallace: Dramas of Radical Alterity: Sarah Kane and Codes of Trauma
for a Postmodern Age - Mateusz Borowski: Gendered Bodies – Historical Bodies: The Development
of the Brechtian Convetion in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine and Mark Ravenhill’s Mother Clap’s Molly House - Mark Schreiber: ‚The Celtic Tiger Is Trapped and Speaks With a Twisted Tongue‘: Language, Space, and the Question of Identity in the Plays of Enda Walsh
- Marion Hebach: ‚Published and Perished‘: The Blurring of Boundaries
in Margret Edson’s Wit - Kathleen Starck: Battefield ‚Body‘: Gregory Burke’s Gagarian Way and
Anthony Neilson’s Stiching - Christopher Innes: Cross-Cultural Connections – Indian Signs/English Conventions
- Christiane Schlote: ‚How Many Things Make a Home, and How Many Can We Carry?‘: Staged Migrations and Globalized Aesthetics in Tara Arts‘
Journey to the West - Dieter Riemenschneider: Maori Contemporary Theatre in English: Witi Ihimaera, Woman Far Walking (2000)
- Wumi Raji: Transformed Identities: Cultural Transgression and Postcolonial Transformation in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s and Ngugi wa Mirii’s I Will Marry When I Want
- Adele Edling Shank: Creating Plays for the New Theatre: A Playwriting Workshop
Christoph Houswitschka, Anja Müller, eds.
Staging Displacement, Exile and Diaspora
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2005.
ISBN 3-88476-681-3, 256 S., kt., € 24,00 (2005)
The volume contains 13 papers given on the occasion of the thirteenth annual conference of CDE at Vierzehnheiligen, organised by the University of Bamberg in 2004.
- Christiane Schlote / Kathleen Starck: From Displacement to Arrival: Reflections on Exile and Diaspora in the Theatre
- Jorge Huerta: Dealing With Displacement: Comedy in Chicano Theatre
- Ricarda Klüssendorf: Negotiating Difference, Identity, and Community: Tony Kushner’s Jews in „the land behind the Statue of Liberty“
- Henning Schäfer: Counteracting Displacement: Native Theatre as a Tool for Healing the Wounds of the Residential School System
- Markus Wessendorf: Contemporary Drama in Hawai’i: Representations of Displacement and Diaspora in Edward Sakomoto’s Obake and Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl’s Ola Na Iwi
- Franz Meier: „Stop being Indian!“ Identity, Hybridity and the Dis/Misplacement of (Post-)Colonial ‚Images‘ in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink
- Deirdre Osborne: The State of the Nation: Contemporary Black British Theatre and the Staging of the UK
- Anja Müller: „We are also Europe: “ Staging Displacement in David Greig’s Plays
- Guy Stern: Unfinished Stories
- Rudolf Weiss: „Me Johnny Weismuller, you Thomas Mann:“ German Writers Exiled in Dreamland: Christopher Hampton’s Tales from Hollywood
- Ulrike Behlau: Remembering the Holocaust in British-Jewish Drama of the 1990s: Diane Samuels, Julia Pascal and Harold Pinter
- Annette Kern-Stähler: The Presentness of the Past: The Prosecution and Staging of Displaced War Criminals in Britain
- Jan Hollm: CDE Workshop 2004: Pity and Fear for the Average Student? How to Teach Plays of Displacement, Exile, and Diaspora
Thomas Rommel, Mark Schreiber, eds.
Mapping Uncertain Territories – Space and Place in Contemporary Theatre and Drama
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2006.
ISBN 3-88476-826-3, 216 S., kt., EUR 23,00 (2006)
The volume contains 15 papers given on the occasion of the fourteenth annual conference of CDE at the University of Bremen in 2005.
- Mark Schreiber: Introduction
- Aleks Sierz: Alternative or Mainstream? London Fringe Theatre in Image and Reality
- Michael Raab: The West End – an Increasingly Marginal Place?
- Una Chaudhuri: Hell in the Heartland: Mapping Post-Abu Ghraib America
in Sam Shepard’s The God of Hell - Kathleen Starck: Current Global Conflict and the Invasion of the Private in
The Pull of Negative Gravity and When the Bulbul Stopped Singing - Graham D. White: Compelled to Appear: The Manifestation of Physical Space Before the Tribunal
- Ursula Canton: Guantanamo: Documenting a Real Space?
- Susan Blattès and Betrand Koszul: From Page to Stage: Construction of Space in Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis
- Christina Wald: „What discoveries do we bring back from that alien terrain?“ The Spatialisation of Trauma and the Exploration of the
Paedophile’s Mind in Bryony Lavery’s Frozen - Alyce von Rothkirch: „Art can save culture:“ Welsh Stagings of Place
in Selected Works by Eddie Ladd and Ed Thomas - Donald Pulford: Staging Past and Present Simultaneously: Andrew Bovell’s Holy Day (The Red Sea)
- Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe: The Space of Consciousness: New Possibilities
for Contemporary Theatre - Terry L. Price: Shifting Place
- Neal Harvey and Joanne Tompkins: Virtual Reality and Negotiating Problems of Real Theatre Space
- Reade W. Dornan: Screen to Stage: Positioning the Subject in Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes
- Michelene Wandor: A Dramatic Writing Workshop: Mapping the Territories
form Imagination to Page to Stage and Back Again
Christoph Henke, Martin Middeke, eds.
Drama and/after Postmodernism
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2007.
ISBN 978-3-88476-936-2, 396 pp., EUR 35,00 (2007)
The eighteen essays collected in this volume address a wide range of topics and examine the work of various contemporary playwrights. The essays investigate how and to what extent the aesthetics of contemporary drama reflect upon the postmodern preference for difference, plurality, uncertainty, ambiguity, hybridity, fragmentation, or performativity; for the deconstruction of teleological history and the subject; for carnivalesque playfulness and irony; but also for the non-representable sublime in art. The essays reveal how vital postmodernist discourse and poetics are in the field of contemporary theatre and drama in English, and they also set out to prove how productive contemporary Anglophone playwrights are in producing new narratives and cutting-edge images which interact with our readings.
Ellen Redling, Peter Paul Schnierer, eds.
Non-Standard Forms of Contemporary Drama and Theatre
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2008.
ISBN 978-3-86821-040-8, EUR 26,00
The essays collected in this volume add up to a morphology of contemporary drama in English. They investigate unusal formats and experimental texts as well as innovative performance practices. Many of the fourteen international contributors, however, acknowledge the pervasise and persistent influence the well-made play exerts even in the twenty-first century.
Monika Pietrzak-Franger, Eckart Voigts-Virchow, eds.
Adaptations – Performing Across Media and Genres
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009.
ISBN 978-3-86821-148-1, EUR 32,50
The papers collected in this volume address the complex issue of stage adaptation. The essays enquire into the processes involved in theatrical adaptation, highlighting the multi-layering, hybridity and palimpsestuous character of onstage adaptations. They attend to a wide spectrum of problems which include issues of classification, the question of media and generic transpositions as well as the intra- and intertextuality of onstage adaptations. Various papers also address the processes and problems of transculturation and indigenization. This collection, therefore, offers a platform for a positive reconsideration of stage plays and live theatre in adaptation studies. In reverse, the study of adaptation also proves vital to the field of contemporary theatre and drama studies as it helps to deconstruct problematic notions of fidelity and originality, emphasizing instead the complexity of adaptive processes on the stage and beyond.
Werner Huber, Margarete Rubik, Julia Novak, eds.
Staging Interculturality
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2010.
ISBN 978-3-86821-148-1, EUR 32,00
The articles collected in this volume have come out of the 18th international CDE conference (Vienna, 2009) and set out to examine how contemporary drama and theatre in English engage in the discourse of interculturality. Apart from autobiographically-oriented keynote lectures by playwrights Tanika Gupta and Simon Stephens these papers address the themes of interculturality and multiculturalism across a wide range of topics, ethnicities, and methodologies. They deal not only with the obvious themes of ethnic encounters and intercultural conflicts but also with issues of hybridity, globalisation, immigration, and the diaspora experience.
Cristina Delgado-García
Rethinking Character in Contemporary British Theatre: Aesthetics, Politics, Subjectivity
Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2015.
ISBN 978-3-11-040390-9, 228 pp., hardb., € 99,95 (2015)
The category of theatrical character has been swiftly dismissed in the academic reception of no-longer-dramatic texts and performances. However, claims on the dissolution of character narrowly demarcate what a subject is and how it may appear. This volume unmoors theatre scholarship from the regulatory ideals of liberal humanism, stretching the notion of character to encompass and illuminate otherwise unaccounted-for subjects, aesthetic strategies and political gestures in recent theatre works. To this aim, contemporary philosophical theories of subjectivation, European theatre studies, and experimental, script-led work produced in Britain since the late 1990s are mobilised as discussants on the question of subjectivity. Four contemporary playtexts and their performances are examined in depth: Sarah Kane’s Crave and 4.48 Psychosis, Ed Thomas’s Stone City Blue and Tim Crouch’s ENGLAND. Through these case studies, Delgado-García demonstrates alternative ways of engaging theoretically with character, and elucidating a range of subjective figures beyond identity and individuality. Alongside these analyses, the book traces a large body of work that has experimented with speech attribution since the early twentieth-century. This is a timely contribution to contemporary theatre scholarship, which demonstrates that character remains a malleable and politically-salient notion in which understandings of subjectivity are still being negotiated.
Claudia Georgi
Liveness on Stage: Intermedial Challenges in Contemporary British Theatre and Performance
Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2014.
ISBN 978-3-11-034653-4, 274 pp., hardb., € 109,95 (2014)
Theatre is traditionally considered a live medium but its ‚liveness‘ can no longer simply be taken for granted in view of the increasing mediatisation of the stage.
Drawing on theories of intermediality, Liveness on Stage explores how performances that incorporate film or video self-reflexively stage and challenge their own liveness by contrasting or approximating live and mediatised action. To illustrate this, the monograph investigates key aspects such as ‘ephemerality’, ‘co-presence’, ‘unpredictability’, ‘interaction’ and ‘realistic representation’ and highlights their significance for re-evaluating received notions of liveness. The analysis is based on productions by Gob Squad, Forkbeard Fantasy, Station House Opera, Proto-type Theater, Tim Etchells and Mary Oliver. In their playful approaches these practitioners predominantly present such media combination as a means of cross-fertilisation rather than as an antagonism between liveness and mediatisation.
Combining an original theoretical approach with an in-depth analysis of the selected productions, this study will appeal to scholars and practitioners of theatre and performance as well as to those researching intermedial phenomena.