Abstract This article proposes revisiting Howard Brenton’s The Churchill Play (1974). I contend that the play offers pertinent insights into how authoritarian governments come into being through the implicit cooperation of people who, wittingly or unwittingly, enter into a “conspiracy of obedience.” Although inspired by political issues that were current in Britain in the 1970 s and 1980 s, the play’s illustration of the fragility of democracy resonates with today’s political atmosphere, especially that experienced in the United States. By anchoring my argument to the theories of Bertolt Brecht, I aim to clarify Brenton’s intent and encourage a more parabolic reading of the play – perceiving totalitarianism not as the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, but as the consequence of people’s complacent and self-serving tendencies to comply with the status quo.
{"title":"“It Can’t Happen Here”: Howard Brenton’s The Churchill Play","authors":"J. Saunders","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0019","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article proposes revisiting Howard Brenton’s The Churchill Play (1974). I contend that the play offers pertinent insights into how authoritarian governments come into being through the implicit cooperation of people who, wittingly or unwittingly, enter into a “conspiracy of obedience.” Although inspired by political issues that were current in Britain in the 1970 s and 1980 s, the play’s illustration of the fragility of democracy resonates with today’s political atmosphere, especially that experienced in the United States. By anchoring my argument to the theories of Bertolt Brecht, I aim to clarify Brenton’s intent and encourage a more parabolic reading of the play – perceiving totalitarianism not as the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, but as the consequence of people’s complacent and self-serving tendencies to comply with the status quo.","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"195 - 214"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45600858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson, ed. Performing Dream Homes: Theater and the Spatial Politics of the Domestic Sphere. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, xvi + 238 pp., €84,99 (hardback), €71,68 (ebook).","authors":"Dorothee Birke","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0026","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"320 - 324"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41456877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stephen Greer. Queer Exceptions: Solo Performance in Neoliberal Times. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2019, ix + 222 pp., £80.00 (hardback), £20.00 (paperback), £20.00 (ebook).","authors":"M. Wickstrom","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0039","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"379 - 383"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45731939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shonagh Hill. Women and Embodied Mythmaking in Irish Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019, x + 257 pp., £75.00 (hardback).","authors":"L. Fitzpatrick","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0031","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"344 - 348"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44612764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Marco Galea and Szabolcs Musca, ed. Redefining Theatre Communities: International Perspectives on Community-Conscious Theatre-Making. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2019, 262 pp., £76.00 (hardback).","authors":"Marissia Fragkou","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0032","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"349 - 353"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44239414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Borrowing from both a painting and the retrospective exhibition of David Wojnarowicz, History Keeps Me Awake at Night, this paper targets two recent American plays: Annie Baker’s The Flick (2013) and Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance (2018). In both, the playwrights point to the neglect of history, or rather cultural memory, as I will insist on calling it, as one of the ills affecting a “historicidal” society such as that of the United States. An immersion into the present and concurrent obliteration of one’s cultural inheritance results in a populace easily manipulated in the interests of corporate control, and more importantly for the plays under consideration, into unhappiness and disconnection, an erlebnis, in sum, which proves lethal for individuals and the larger groups of which they form part. Both plays further seem to argue that the most troublesome of such a thing is how little consciousness of the problem there is, a surefire indication that induced amnesia is making alarming headway among the younger generations.
{"title":"When Young Playwrights Are Kept Awake Because of History: Cultural Memory and Amnesia in Recent American Plays","authors":"Ramón Espejo Romero","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Borrowing from both a painting and the retrospective exhibition of David Wojnarowicz, History Keeps Me Awake at Night, this paper targets two recent American plays: Annie Baker’s The Flick (2013) and Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance (2018). In both, the playwrights point to the neglect of history, or rather cultural memory, as I will insist on calling it, as one of the ills affecting a “historicidal” society such as that of the United States. An immersion into the present and concurrent obliteration of one’s cultural inheritance results in a populace easily manipulated in the interests of corporate control, and more importantly for the plays under consideration, into unhappiness and disconnection, an erlebnis, in sum, which proves lethal for individuals and the larger groups of which they form part. Both plays further seem to argue that the most troublesome of such a thing is how little consciousness of the problem there is, a surefire indication that induced amnesia is making alarming headway among the younger generations.","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"263 - 280"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48607663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Clare Finburgh. Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017, xv + 355 pp., £76.50 (hardback), £26.99 (paperback), £21.59 (PDF ebook).","authors":"A. Waal","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0029","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"334 - 338"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47117828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home (2016), a play written and performed solo by James Allen Moad II, a former Air Force pilot, explores the enduring effects of war on American veterans and their families after soldiers return home from the battleground. The play moves beyond the individual representation of a traumatized veteran by addressing two intertwined issues: the collective and transgenerational burden of war, both in the form of physical wounds and/or moral injuries. Outside Paducah contributes to promoting the stage as a dynamic place to think about the war legacy and to question and challenge war itself by stressing the importance of understanding the cost of war on both personal and societal levels. The play shows that the scenes of war fought in foreign lands are brought back to the home territories and families, who become equally demoralised by the perpetuation of war in their homelands. The soldiers return as ghosts of their previous selves and haunt their families and friends from one generation to the next. Therefore, war remains an open wound at the core of the American nation. At the same time, the play sheds some light on the harsh realities of the underprivileged and how joining the military often seems to provide a way out of the world of poverty and lack of resources.
{"title":"Family Matters: Trauma and the Legacy of War in James Allen Moad II’s Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home","authors":"A. Bellot","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Outside Paducah: The Wars at Home (2016), a play written and performed solo by James Allen Moad II, a former Air Force pilot, explores the enduring effects of war on American veterans and their families after soldiers return home from the battleground. The play moves beyond the individual representation of a traumatized veteran by addressing two intertwined issues: the collective and transgenerational burden of war, both in the form of physical wounds and/or moral injuries. Outside Paducah contributes to promoting the stage as a dynamic place to think about the war legacy and to question and challenge war itself by stressing the importance of understanding the cost of war on both personal and societal levels. The play shows that the scenes of war fought in foreign lands are brought back to the home territories and families, who become equally demoralised by the perpetuation of war in their homelands. The soldiers return as ghosts of their previous selves and haunt their families and friends from one generation to the next. Therefore, war remains an open wound at the core of the American nation. At the same time, the play sheds some light on the harsh realities of the underprivileged and how joining the military often seems to provide a way out of the world of poverty and lack of resources.","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"250 - 262"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43332774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：