Abstract This paper explores the themes of hospitality and trauma in Alexandra Wood’s The Human Ear (2015) by focusing on the modes of encounter with the Other in the play. As Lucy, a woman in her twenties, tries to come to terms with the death of her mother as a result of an unspecified bomb attack, she finds out that her estranged brother, Jason, killed himself. In the meantime, however, a man who claims to be her brother keeps turning up at her door, and through these encounters we can trace the possibilities and limits of hospitality. By referring to the theories of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Sara Ahmed on home and hospitality, this paper argues that in The Human Ear, the redefinition of the relationship with the Other is represented as a means to come to terms with trauma as Lucy’s process of welcoming the stranger is connected to her process of healing from trauma.
{"title":"“You Don’t Know Who This Man Is”: Hospitality and Trauma in Alexandra Wood’s The Human Ear","authors":"Büşra Erdurucan","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the themes of hospitality and trauma in Alexandra Wood’s The Human Ear (2015) by focusing on the modes of encounter with the Other in the play. As Lucy, a woman in her twenties, tries to come to terms with the death of her mother as a result of an unspecified bomb attack, she finds out that her estranged brother, Jason, killed himself. In the meantime, however, a man who claims to be her brother keeps turning up at her door, and through these encounters we can trace the possibilities and limits of hospitality. By referring to the theories of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Sara Ahmed on home and hospitality, this paper argues that in The Human Ear, the redefinition of the relationship with the Other is represented as a means to come to terms with trauma as Lucy’s process of welcoming the stranger is connected to her process of healing from trauma.","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"233 - 249"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47375530","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":"Daphne P. Lei and Charlotte McIvor, ed. The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance. London: Methuen Drama, 2020, 280 pp., $157.00 (hardback), $126.00 (PDF ebook), $126.00 (EPUB/MOBI ebook).","authors":"Markus Wessendorf","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0038","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"374 - 378"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43205785","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":"Roxanne Rimstead and Domenico A. Beneventi, ed. Contested Spaces, Counter-Narratives, and Culture from Below in Quebec and Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2019, 348 pp., $71.25 (hardback), $71.25 (ebook).","authors":"J. Koustas","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0033","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"354 - 358"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43438805","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 Both Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (1990) and Harlem Duet (1997) are Canadian feminist appropriations of William Shakespeare. Both deal, at least partly, with Othello, and both can be considered subversive re-visions of Shakespeare’s play which aim to articulate oppositional intervention in the canon. These similarities notwithstanding, the plays have not often been studied concurrently. Also, while several critics have explored them, mostly separately, in terms of their adaptation/appropriation of Shakespeare, seeking to spell out the transformations they have brought to the “original” text, little has been said about how the iconic figure of Shakespeare still holds sway in these new dramas, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees. Likewise, their dramatization of the character of Othello remains rather understudied. This essay explores the “new” Othellos of the two plays, contending that their positioning in the two texts evinces some similarities while their characterization differs widely, given the plays’ generic difference, but mostly the two playwrights’ rather divergent feminist perspectives which, in turn, substantially shape the plays’ respective appropriation techniques.
{"title":"“My Skin Is Not Me”: The Transformations of William Shakespeare’s Othello in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet","authors":"I. Sassi","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Both Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (1990) and Harlem Duet (1997) are Canadian feminist appropriations of William Shakespeare. Both deal, at least partly, with Othello, and both can be considered subversive re-visions of Shakespeare’s play which aim to articulate oppositional intervention in the canon. These similarities notwithstanding, the plays have not often been studied concurrently. Also, while several critics have explored them, mostly separately, in terms of their adaptation/appropriation of Shakespeare, seeking to spell out the transformations they have brought to the “original” text, little has been said about how the iconic figure of Shakespeare still holds sway in these new dramas, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees. Likewise, their dramatization of the character of Othello remains rather understudied. This essay explores the “new” Othellos of the two plays, contending that their positioning in the two texts evinces some similarities while their characterization differs widely, given the plays’ generic difference, but mostly the two playwrights’ rather divergent feminist perspectives which, in turn, substantially shape the plays’ respective appropriation techniques.","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"215 - 232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43347102","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":"William C. Boles, ed. After In-Yer-Face Theatre: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, xvi + 251 pp., £79.99 (hardback), £63.99 (ebook).","authors":"Aleks Sierz","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0036","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"369 - 373"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45163952","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":"Jenn Stephenson. Insecurity: Perils and Products of Theatres of the Real. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: U of Toronto P, 2019, viii + 286 pp., $75.75 (hardback), $57.75 (ebook).","authors":"C. Megson","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0034","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"359 - 363"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47203298","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 According to Ernest Renan, a nation is formed by its collective memory; it is a country’s shared experiences which enable it to become (in Benedict Anderson’s much later coinage) an “imagined community.” Building on these ideas, commentators such as Kavita Singh and Lianne McTavish et al. have shown how museums play a key role in helping nations to form an identity and understand their past. However, as these critics and those from other disciplines (including postcolonial studies) have noted, museums can also reflect and reinforce the unequal power dynamics between nations which result from colonialism and neocolonialism. This article demonstrates that these ideas are directly relevant to the 2019 play A Museum in Baghdad by the Palestinian-Irish playwright Hannah Khalil. This play is set in the Museum of Iraq in three different time periods: “Then (1926), Now (2006), and Later” (an unspecified future date) (3). Khalil uses specific characters – most notably, Gertrude Bell during the “Then” sections, the Iraqi archaeologists Ghalia and Layla during the “Now” sections, and a “timeless” character called Nasiya who appears across the time periods – to question the degree to which the museum is perpetuating Western views of Iraq.
{"title":"Memory, National Identity Formation, and (Neo)Colonialism in Hannah Khalil’s A Museum in Baghdad","authors":"M. Midhin, David Clare, N. Abed","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0025","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract According to Ernest Renan, a nation is formed by its collective memory; it is a country’s shared experiences which enable it to become (in Benedict Anderson’s much later coinage) an “imagined community.” Building on these ideas, commentators such as Kavita Singh and Lianne McTavish et al. have shown how museums play a key role in helping nations to form an identity and understand their past. However, as these critics and those from other disciplines (including postcolonial studies) have noted, museums can also reflect and reinforce the unequal power dynamics between nations which result from colonialism and neocolonialism. This article demonstrates that these ideas are directly relevant to the 2019 play A Museum in Baghdad by the Palestinian-Irish playwright Hannah Khalil. This play is set in the Museum of Iraq in three different time periods: “Then (1926), Now (2006), and Later” (an unspecified future date) (3). Khalil uses specific characters – most notably, Gertrude Bell during the “Then” sections, the Iraqi archaeologists Ghalia and Layla during the “Now” sections, and a “timeless” character called Nasiya who appears across the time periods – to question the degree to which the museum is perpetuating Western views of Iraq.","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"304 - 319"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46642692","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}
Pub Date : 2021-10-23DOI: 10.1515/jcde-2021-frontmatter2
{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-frontmatter2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-frontmatter2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42161547","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 The article explores Mojisola Adebayo’s two-hander STARS (preliminary workshop performance, Ovalhouse, 2018) through the lens of Afrofuturism. The play will be discussed in regard to future-making technologies. By analysing the overt as well as subtle references to science fiction and its tropes, this article lays out how Afrofuturism informs the play and how it is formative in liberating the main character. Furthermore, questions of violence against women, forms of resistance, and the function of the imagination will be examined. Adebayo deftly weaves Afrofuturist concerns into the everyday experiences of marginalised groups who face discrimination and exclusion, irrespective of whether their marginalisation is based on culture, gender, or age. Through this, the play offers ways of dealing with bodily and historical trauma and exclusion, while simultaneously addressing violent and harmful practices and power relations. The play may be set in the present and deals with current issues, but its performance of the future – in regard to resistance and liberation – proves to be its central feature.
{"title":"Travel Beyond Stars: Trauma and Future in Mojisola Adebayo’s STARS","authors":"Renzo Baas","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2021-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2021-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The article explores Mojisola Adebayo’s two-hander STARS (preliminary workshop performance, Ovalhouse, 2018) through the lens of Afrofuturism. The play will be discussed in regard to future-making technologies. By analysing the overt as well as subtle references to science fiction and its tropes, this article lays out how Afrofuturism informs the play and how it is formative in liberating the main character. Furthermore, questions of violence against women, forms of resistance, and the function of the imagination will be examined. Adebayo deftly weaves Afrofuturist concerns into the everyday experiences of marginalised groups who face discrimination and exclusion, irrespective of whether their marginalisation is based on culture, gender, or age. Through this, the play offers ways of dealing with bodily and historical trauma and exclusion, while simultaneously addressing violent and harmful practices and power relations. The play may be set in the present and deals with current issues, but its performance of the future – in regard to resistance and liberation – proves to be its central feature.","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":"9 1","pages":"95 - 113"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/jcde-2021-0007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43849340","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}
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